Considerations for Creating Material Statuses

Material statuses provide more flexible control of transacting material. For example, you can create a Damaged material status to disable damaged material from being shipped to a customer.

Before creating material statuses, you should:

  • Determine if material statuses are necessary

  • Determine allowed and disallowed transaction types

  • Determine material statuses to define

Determining if Material Statuses are Necessary

Consider the needs of your organization, and whether it is necessary to create material statuses.

For example, if your organization operates on a small scale or you want to manage the statuses or items manually, it might not be necessary to create material statuses. By default, all the material is in Active status, which allows transactions with no restrictions.

Determining Allowed and Disallowed Transaction Types

Consider the needs of your organization, and the transaction types that should be allowed.

For example, damage to your warehouse's racks is making locations in the racks, and the material in those locations, inaccessible. You can create a material status to disallow transactions on the inaccessible material. Once the damaged racks have been repaired, you can create a material status to allow transactions on the material that is once again accessible.

Determining Material Statuses to Define

Consider the needs of your organization, and the material statuses that are necessary to define for your organization.

Following are examples of questions that you can ask when determining material statuses for your organization:

  • What are the kinds of items that are handled in the warehouse?

  • Does the consumption of material needs to be restricted when it needs to inspected for quality assurance?

  • Should users be allowed to ship material, such as food or pharmaceuticals, to customers if the refrigerator storing the material is broken?