Physical Inventory General Process

1. General

The Physical Inventory (PI) as a whole is divided into three parts, from which one includes the main PI process, another is the cycle-counting process and the third is the inventory sampling process. The cycle-counting and the inventory sampling processes are only special ways to create PI documents, afterwards the main PI processes are used.

1.1 Description

Every company must carry out a physical inventory of its warehouse stocks at least once per fiscal year to balance its inventory. Various procedures can be implemented for this.

The SAP System supports the following physical inventory procedures:

• periodic inventory:

In a periodic inventory, all stocks of the company are physically counted on the balance sheet key date. In this case, every material must be counted.

• continuous inventory:

With the continuous inventory procedure, stocks are counted continuously during the entire fiscal year. In this case, it is important to ensure that every material is physically counted at least once during the year. You can use the same transactions for 'continuous inventory' as for 'periodic inventory'. The only difference is, that you count a material more than one time per fiscal year.

• cycle counting:

Cycle counting is a method of physical inventory where inventory is counted at regular intervals within a fiscal year. These intervals (or cycles) depend on the cycle counting indicator set for the materials

• inventory sampling:

In inventory sampling, randomly selected stocks of the company are physically counted on the balance sheet key date. If the variances between the result of the count and the book inventory balance are small enough, it is presumed that the book inventory balances for the other stocks are correct.

A PI document can only be created for the current FI year and for the previous FI year. The criterion in which FI year the PI document will be created depends on the (planned) count date. Please note, that as with a usual material posting, the PI difference for the previous FI year can only be posted until the first period of the new FI year.

 

1.2 Physical Inventory Processes

1. Create physical inventory document
2. Entering the Physical Inventory Count
   • Recount
3. Post inventory differences

1.3 Tables and PI indicators

The related database tables for the PI documents are

IKPF	physical inventory document header-data
ISEG	physical inventory document segments

Key-fields are

MANDT	Client
IBLNR	Physical inventory document number
GJAHR	Fiscal year
(ZEILI	Line number) only ISEG

In every stock table there are indicators for the PI process. These are used to monitor the PI status.

 

2.1 Online transactions

MI01	Create physical inventory document
MI02	Change physical inventory document
MI03	Display physical inventory document
MI04	Entering the Physical Inventory Count
MI05	Change count
MI06	Display count
MI07	Post inventory differences

MI08	Post Count and differences (MI04 + MI07)
MI09	Enter count without reference to a document (MI01 + MI04)
MI10	Post document, Count and Differences(MI01 + MI04 + MI07)
MI11	Recount