This post is part of the In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central (Inventory and Warehouse Management), how do I… series and of the wider In Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, how do I… series which I am posting as I familiarise myself with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
In an earlier article, I covered creating bins for a location manually, but Business Central does contain a function which allows you to create bins for locations in bulk.
This function is the Bin Creation Worksheet; however, before you can use this function you first need to create the worksheet and bin templates.
To do this, search for Bin Creation Worksheet Templates. Enter a Name and Description for the template and set the Type to Bin; once you’ve done this, make sure the line is selected and click Related » Template » Names:
Enter a Name, Description and select a Location Code; this is the name of the worksheet and the location for which you want to create bins:
With the worksheet template created, we now need to create the bin template; for basic inventory functionality, we only need to provide a Code and [/b]Location Code[/b]; other fields are available, but these are used for more advanced warehousing functionality.
Multiple bin templates for the same location can be created, all of which can be used in the bulk creation of bins at the location, although this can only be done by running the process multiple times, once for each bin template code.
Once the above has been done, search for Bin Creation Worksheet. Select the Name thta you created in the previous steps and then click the Calculate Bins… button on the action bar:
In the pop-up Calculate Bins page, select the Bin Template Code.
You can specify the from numbers for the Rack, Section and Level as well as the Field Separator.
Marking the Check on Existing Bin will only calculate bins which do not exist. Once you’ve set the values to the requirements, click Ok to calculate the bins:
The calculated bins will be displayed in the list view at the bottom of the Bin creation Worksheet; you can see that the range of bins from O-01-0001 O-01-0005 aren’t showing as they already existed; if I hadn’t marked the Check on Existing Bin toggle these bins would have been calculated and caused a problem when I tried to create the bins; by excluding them I have avoided that error.
The calculate routine can, in theory, be run a number of times, with the calculated bins being appended to the bottom of the list view each time, but the check for existing is only looking at the ones which have actually been created on the location and not just calculated. So if you do run it multiple times without creating the bins, you need to be careful to make sure you don’t have duplicates as this will cause an error.
To create the calculated bins, click the Create Bins button on the action bar:
When prompted, click Yes to create the bins:
Once the bins have been created, you’ll see a blank bin creation worksheet, ready for you to select options for the next set of bins to create.