In the Inventory and Stocked Tools applications the current balance and the available balance of the item/tool is displayed, but how are they calculated, obvious, or not so? There are several other balance records, this article explores when they are used.

I will start with a Summary, the detail provides an illustration of the tests that were performed.

Summary

Available Balance Summary:

• Current Balance – this is the balance expected to be found in all non-staging bins. The result of issues, returns and transfers since the last physical count. The total of Current Balance across the bins in Inventory Balances.
• Hard Reserved Quantity Not Staged – the total of hard reservations that have not been staged ready for transfer.
• Hard Reserved Quantity Shipped – The quantity of hard reserved items that were shipped but have not been received at the destination storeroom.
• Total Quantity Shipped – The quantity that has been shipped as part of a transfer, but which have not been fully received at the destination storeroom. This is the total shipped irrespective of the type of reservation.
• Expired Quantity in Stock – The quantity of a LOT item that has exceeded its expiration date.
• Quantity Available – the quantity available is the current balance less hard reservations not staged, less expired stock.

Other Balance Summary Information:

• Quantity Currently Reserved – The total quantity of all reservations of all types for this item and storeroom
• Hard Reserved Quantity – The total quantity of reservations of type HARD or APHARD.
• Soft Reserved Quantity – The total quantity of reservations of type SOFT or APSOFT.
• Quantity Staged – The total quantity of item in staging bins, both issues and transfers.
• Quantity in Holding LocationA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More – The total quantity of items that have been shipped to another storeroom which have been received but not passed through the inspection process.
• Picked Quantity – Introduced in Maximo 7.6.1.2, it is the quantity that has been picked using the Manage Inventory Work Center.

If Quantity Currently Reserved > Hard Reserved Quantity + Soft Reserved Quantity, the difference is the quantity of reservations with a reservation type of BACKORDER.

There is an OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More setting which determines whether negative current balances and negative available balances are allowed or disallowed. Default is for both to be disallowed for a new organization.

Adding the Item to a Storeroom

In the Item Master application, we can use the Add Items To Storeroom action. For item 1007 – Apple AirPods Pro, we will add a quantity to the CENTRAL storeroom in the BEDFORD site.

A second dialog opens to allow you to enter initial data for the item in the CENTRAL storeroom, I have entered a Unit Cost of $249.00, a Default Bin of A26-1 and a Current Balance of 3.00.

In the Inventory application for item 1007 in the CENTRAL storeroom, in the Available Balance Summary section we can see that the Current Balance is 3.00 and the Quantity Available is also 3.00.

Issue Item via Staging

In Inventory Usage application I have created a new record of Usage Type ISSUE on the CENTRAL storeroom and selected on line 1 item 1007 and a quantity of 1.00 which will be issued to AJE – Andrew Jeffery at location OFF401. With the inventory usage record at ENTERED state there is no change to the current balance or available quantity. If we changed status to COMPLETE the current balance and quantity available would be expected to be reduced by 1.00, but what happens when we move the item to a staging bin by changing the status to STAGED?

Before I do this in the Inventory application, I will create a default staging bin of ST12.

With the Inventory Usage record now at STAGED state the Current Balance has been reduced to 2.00 as has the Quantity Available. In the Other Balance Summary Information section, the Quantity Staged shows 1.00.

The Inventory Balances table window shows a current balance of 2.00 in Bin A26-1 and a staged balance of 1.00 in the Staging Bin ST12.

Incidentally, if this was an item for which previous issues had occurred the MATUSETRANS.CURBAL field will still show 3.00 as there has been no issue yet for the quantity that has been staged. A MATUSETRANS record is not created until the Inventory Usage record is set to COMPLETE. 

While there is no MATUSETRANS record yet, there is a MATRECTRANS record of transaction type STAGETRANSFER, the move from bin A26-1 to ST12.

When the Inventory Usage record is moved to COMPLETE state then the Quantity Staged is reduced to 0.00 and the Inventory Balances record for the record with a Staging Bin has been deleted.

Notice on the right-hand side under the Issue History section the Last Issue Date has been set to time now and the “Year to Date” quantity has been incremented to 1.00.

Desktop Requisition – Reservations

In my next test I have used a Desktop Requisition to request the same item 1007 – Apple AirPods Pro. The reservation type was set to Automatic, and the Required Date was set for a few days’ time on Friday 19-February-2021.

With the Desktop Requisition 1006 submitted the Current Balance and Quantity Available are still both set to 2.00. The Other Balance Summary Information section shows the Quantity Current Reserved set to 1.00 reserved, and the two fields below this will indicate the type of reservations, in this case Soft Reserved Quantity is 1.00.

The action Add/Modify Reservations is used to determine the types of reservations made and their required dates and quantities. For Requisition 1006 and Line 1 the reservation type is APSOFT – Automatic Soft. 

Automatic reservations are set to APSOFT, APHARD or BACKORDER depending on the required date, the lead time to purchase and whether the reservation will force available balance to become negative. Understanding reservations will be the article which I intend to write next.

I have modified this reservation to be a HARD reservation due today.

In the Inventory application for item 1007 in the CENTRAL storeroom the Current Balance is still 2.00 but the Quantity Available is now 1.00 because the reservation is a hard reservation, the reservation type might be either HARD, APHARD, or BACKORDER. 

The Hard Reserved Quantity now shows 1.00 and the Soft Reserved Quantity has been changed back to 0.00. In the Available Balance Summary section, the Hard Reserved Quantity Not Staged shows 1.00.

Transfer more than Quantity Available

In the next test I am using a new Inventory Usage record of type TRANSFER with the aim to transfer a quantity of 2.00 from the CENTRAL storeroom to the HARDWARE storeroom. The current balance is 2.00 but one of these has a hard reservation.

When attempting to change the status to STAGED we get the following error messages:

• BMXAA7691E – The status of inventory usage 1025 cannot be changed to STAGED.
• BMXAA7693E – The current requested quantity will cause a negative available balance for inventory usage line 1. Change the requested quantity before continuing with the transaction.

The reason for the message is that I have Disallowed Negative Available Balances, this is an Organizations application setting – Inventory Defaults.

Transfer including Shipping

I have changed the quantity to transfer to 1.00 and used the action Change Status to Staged. 

In the Inventory application for item 1007 the Current Balance has been reduced to 1.00 and the Quantity Available is reduced to 0.00, the Quantity Staged is set to 1.00. The Inventory Balances record has the record showing the quantity 1.00 in the ST12 staging bin.

On the Inventory Usage application, I have now used the action Change Status to Shipped.

On the Inventory application the Quantity Staged is now set to 0.00 and the Total Quantity Shipped field in the Available Balance Summary section shows 1.00. There is no record yet for this item in the HARDWARE storeroom.

In other tests I performed, when transferring an item from one storeroom to another, when made against a hard reservation of type APHARD or HARD, then the Hard Reserved Quantity Shipped was set to 1.00. 

In the Shipment Receiving application I have used the Select Shipped Items action to select the shipment from CENTRAL to HARDWARE for item 1007 – Apple AirPods Pro. As there is no need for an inspection then on save the Receipts are set to COMPLETE.

In the CENTRAL storeroom the Total Quantity Shipped is reset to 0.00, the shipment is completed. 

In the HARDWARE storeroom the Current Balance and Quantity Available are both set to 1.00.

Items with Lot Type of LOT

Item 11453 has been marked with a Lot Type of LOT, this was performed in the Item Master application. In the Inventory application for the CENTRAL storeroom there is a Current Balance of 17 but the Quantity Available is 0.00. This is because the Expired Quantity in Stock indicates 17.00.

Scrolling further down to the Inventory Balances table window there are two bins with the same Lot number a total quantity of 17.00. Over on the right-hand side you can see that the Expiration Date for the lot is 01-January-2015, well in the past, it has expired.

In the Other Balance Summary Information section, the Quantity Currently Reserved is 4.00 but there is no Hard Reserved Quantity, and the Soft Reserved Quantity is only 2:00, is this a mistake?

Using the action Add/Modify Reservations and filtering by Item 11453 and Storeroom CENTRAL we see that there are four reservations, each with a quantity of 1.00, a quantity of 2.00 at APSOFT and quantity 2.00 with a reservation type of BACKORDER. The backorder reservations are not included in either the Hard Reserved Quantity or Soft Reserved Quantity fields.

Internal PO with a Shipped Hard Reservation

An Internal Purchase Order can be used to create a reservation. In this case on the PO header, I had checked the Internal field in the Vendor section and selected CENTRAL in the storeroom field. This is an order on the CENTRAL storeroom in the BEDFORD SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More.

On the PO Line, item 1007 was selected, a quantity of 1.00, and in the Charge To section I have selected the HARDWARE storeroom and a reservation type of HARD. This is a reservation made for a transfer from CENTRAL to HARDWARE storerooms.

PO 1107 has been approved (APPR).

We will now set up an Inventory Usage document for the transfer, this can be done automatically. Inventory Usage document 1026 has the Usage Type of TRANSFER and is a demand on the CENTRAL storeroom. The button Select Reserved Items shows item 1007 with reserved quantity of 1.00 for transfer To Storeroom HARDWARE and requested on internal PO 1107 and PO line 1.

I have changed the Inventory Usage document direct from ENTERED to SHIPPED using the action Change Status to Shipped.

On the Inventory application for item 1007 and the CENTRAL storeroom the Current Balance is now 0.00 and the Total Quantity Shipped is 1.00. Notice the Quantity Available is -1.00 although we have indicated that in Organizations application to Disallow Negative Available Balances.

The Quantity Currently Reserved is now 2.00, Hard Reserved Quantity is 1.00 and Soft Reserved Quantity is 0.00 and what we discovered earlier was that when there is a difference between these three fields then another reservation may exist a BACKORDER reservation. 

When we check the reservations using the action Add/Modify Reservations, we find that the internal purchase order 1107 has gone onto a BACKORDER reservation type. This is not a Hard reservation and that would account for why Hard Reservation Quantity Shipped was not set to 1.00.

In the Shipment Receiving application, when we start the receiving process and use the Select Shipped Items button, we can select item 1007. The inspection status goes to WINSP – Waiting to be Inspected. At this point the quantity of the item is in the sites’ holding location called RECEIVING.

Back in the Inventory application you can tell when an item has arrived at the To Storeroom site because the Quantity in Holding Location will be incremented, 1.00.

After using the Change Inspection Status action and completing the shipment, the Receipt Status for the internal PO is now set to COMPLETE.

Both the Total Quantity Shipped and Quantity in Holding Location are reset after the transfer is complete for the item. The Quantity Available is -1.00 because there is still a hard reservation and the Current Balance is 0.00.

Manage Inventory Pick List

In Maximo 7.6.1.2 the Manage Inventory Work Center introduced the ability to create a pick list of the reserved items. Pick Lists are not available in the Inventory or Inventory Usage applications although you can see a reference to the Pick List on the Inventory Usage application and the quantity of an item picked in the Inventory application.

For this illustration I first moved a quantity of 1 back from the HARDWARE storeroom to the CENTRAL storeroom.

In the Managed Inventory Work Center you can see a hard reservation for item 1007 – Apple Airpods Pro, a quantity of 1. The reservation record is selected for adding to a pick list. The “Create picks” button is used.

The Create Pick List dialog opens. I have entered “Andrews List” as the description. The Required Date is today. There is only 1 reservation line added to the pick list. The “Pick list” button is then used. 

When the reservation has been picked you use the Pick button. This creates a MATRECTRANS record with a transaction type of PICKTRANSFER.

When picked, the Picked Quantity will be incremented, it is now set to 1.00.

Organizations – Inventory Defaults

In the Organizations application and the action Inventory Defaults there are two sets of radio buttons for whether to accept Negative Current Balance and Negative Available Balance. You can see I have these set to disallow both.

I cannot see why you would allow negative current balances for all items. If the item does not exist, then how can you issue or transfer it?

The default for Available Balances for a new organization is to disallow negative available balances. Do not read this literally as you can see when there is a hard reservation, and a transfer is made on the item the available quantity does go negative.

The BACKORDER reservation type only occurs when Negative Available Balances are disallowed. Some Maximo consultants have not been aware of this reservation type, simply because in the MAXDEMO database existing organization are set to Allow Negative Available Balances. 

I think it is better to get the error messages when trying to issue an item and there is existing hard reservation that would cause the available balance to become negative. Hence, why the default to Disallow Negative Available Balances is preferred.