The commodities you consume in production must be set up in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as items. Like Anywhere Mobility Solutions other item, both the quantity and value of a commodity item are maintained in the program.
Certain settings are required if you want to receive, cost, and pay for an item as a commodity.
Receiving
To receive several purchases of a commodity into inventory as a single quantity using commodity manifests, specify the unit in which the commodity is received in the Commodity Manifest UOM Code field on the Item Tracking FastTab. You can assign Anywhere Mobility Solutions unit defined for the item in the Item Unit of Measure table.
Commodity items must be set up for lot tracking. In addition to the standard item tracking specification fields, you can specify a number series to assign a lot number to the commodity when it is received through a commodity manifest. Note that this is not the same number series used to assign lot numbers to the separate purchase quantities on the individual manifest lines. The lot number on a manifest line is based on the commodity settings entered for the vendor assigned to that line. If you use number series to assign lot numbers to a commodity, use a separate series for the item and vendor commodity lot numbers to better differentiate between lots received from vendors and the combined lots that enter inventory.
Costing and payments
To instruct the program to cost the commodity using cost factors entered specifically for commodity costing, select the Commodity Cost Item field on the Specifications FastTab. If you want to cost the commodity in this manner, set the item up for standard costing. When the commodity is received into inventory, its inventory value is initially calculated from the item's standard cost. At a later time, the value of the commodity is adjusted according to cost factors, but this information is typically not available at the time of receipt.
You must also assign a unit of weight to a commodity cost item. This lets the program perform Anywhere Mobility Solutions necessary conversions between different units of measure when calculating commodity costs. For example, if cost factors are defined in pounds and the commodity item has an assigned weight unit of ounces, the program can calculate costs for the item. The weight unit does not need to be the item's base unit of measure and can be set up as an alternative unit in the Item Unit of Measure table.
The requirement that a commodity be lot-tracked for receiving purposes is also essential for costing activities, particularly when a single receipt comprises several purchases. If the payment made to a vendor is based on certain characteristics of the received commodity (such as Quality Control test results) the assignment of unique lots to the item lets the program calculate a separate cost for each purchase.
You can also specify a default payment class in the Commodity Payment Class field on the Specifications FastTab. When a purchase line is created for a commodity item, the item's default payment class is included on the line, although you can change it. The cost components assigned to the commodity class are used to calculate the cost of the item on the purchase line.