Last Updated on November 19, 2022 by maximosecrets

This action was another that was introduced into Maximo specifically for software assets, but may have a wider use with physical assets, or those physical assets with onboard software.

I’ve created a new item MS365 – Microsoft 365 in the Item Master application. I’ve marked the “Add as Spare Part” so that we can see what items have been added to the assets when the item has been issued. I’ve also set the “Maximum Quantity Issued” to 1.00 as we do not want the assets having more than one copy of MS365. The MS365 item is not set to rotating as each copy is not individually serialised, and so there is no need to create asset records for each item we want to install.

The MS365 item was added to the SOFTWARE storeroom and set to ACTIVE status, rolling down this status to organizations and inventory. 

Item MS365 in SOFTWARE storeroom is at ACTIVE status and I’ve purchased and received 100 copies, Current Balance is 100.

When you start to use the action – Issue Current Item to Multiple Assets, then the quantity is 0.00 as no assets have currently been selected. You can choose the bin or lot that the item will be issued from, not relevant in this case. There are two buttons at the bottom, we will use the Select More Assets button.

The transaction type is ISSUE, but you can use the same action to RETURN the software of an earlier version that is being retired.

You can use any of the fields above the table window to filter for assets that you want to select, then use the Refine button to perform a query. I just used the filter window to find the 22 laptop assets owned by the people who work away from the offices, these assets are at the locationA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More called FIELDSTAFF.

Pressing OK, then adds those assets to the table window. You might notice that only a quantity of 10 was transferred through to this dialog from the Select Assets dialog. This is because I forgot to use the Select All Records check box on each page of 10 from the results, so only the first 10 assets were selected.

If the asset had a GL account and we had set a commodity code for item MS365 which had a corresponding resource code, then a full GL Debit Account should be created for each selected asset. I’ve now pressed OK to complete the issue to the 10 assets.

In the Assets application, I have checked that the item has been issued by looking at the Spare Parts table window. The IssuedQty field is set to 1.00. The “Add as Spare Part” field on the Item Master record has created the record in the Spare Parts table window.

If you went to issue item MS365 to one of the assets again, in this case asset 7111, you would receive the error message “BMXAA1940E – You have exceeded the item maximum issue quantity for asset 7111.” This is the “Maximum Quantity Issued” field on Item Master taking effect.

You can use the same action for returning items to a storeroom. In this case it is easiest to find the assets by adding the item, we are deinstalling (returning) an old ACROBAT_8 software from 9 laptops where it was found.

This adds the 9 assets to the “Issue Current Item to Multiple Assets/GL Accounts” dialog. Notice this is returning a quantity of 9 to the SOFTWARE storeroom, one from each of the 9 assets. The Transaction Type is RETURN.

You cannot use the action Issue Current Item to Multiple Assets for an item that is marked as “Rotating?”, you will receive the error message “BMXAA1941E – Cannot issue rotating items to multiple assets.”

If I return to the Assets application and asset 7111, you will see that the action did not remove the ACROBAT_8 item from the Spare Parts table window, but it reduced the IssueQty field by one.