The "Shelf Life Requirements" table is accessible from the Items, Customers, Vendors list and card pages as well as the search bar and is the place to store any shelf life rules you want Business Central to use when processing Receipts, Shipments and Picks. Where accessed from the Item, Customer or Vendor, certain fields will auto-populate with that criteria within the page. An example of how you can access this from the Item card is shown below.
The Transaction Type field must be populated and can either be 'Sales' or 'Purchase'. This is ultimately used to determine what the shelf life is based on.
The Source No is then used to hold either the Customer or Vendor number. If the shelf life being stored only relates to an Item, this can remain blank but where populated, will be used to store the Shelf life for that Transaction Type + Source No. When this is populated, the Customer/Vendor Name will auto-populate.
The Item No field is then populated with the Item that will be used to specify Shelf Life against. If the shelf life to be stored is only related to the Customer or Vendor than this can remain blank and will be used in the calculation for that transaction type overall. Where an Item No is stated, the Item Description will auto-populate. The hierarchy the app uses to determine which shelf life to apply first per Transaction Type is:
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- Customer/Vendor + Item
- Customer/Vendor
- Item
A Minimum Shelf Life or a Minimum % of Shelf Life is required for every entry (either or must be populated, never both for the same line). Where a formula is entered in the Minimum Shelf Life field, Business Central will use that calculation in accordance with the above hierarchy. From the sales side it is using the 'Shipment Date' to check the minimum date and from the purchase side it is using the 'Expected Receipt Date' to calculate whether the transaction you are entering an Expiry date in on the Item Tracking Lines is acceptable for that entry. Where Minimum % of Shelf Life is being used, a nominal value can be added which will then use the Minimum Shelf Life for that Item, for the same Transaction Type where no Source No is stated and base the % from there.
E.g. where 90% has been specified in the example below for Item 1004 for Vendor 20000, the calculation will be based on a Purchase entry for that same Item No only, hence it will use the 11M as the base amount and require 90% of that shelf life, so if on a Receipt, I entered an expiration date of 9 Months or more, it would be acceptable.
Where an Item with a Lot number is added to the "Item Tracking Lines" page, a check will be done against the shelf life information stored to determine if that transaction and entered Expiry date is within the setup parameter. Where it is not, a warning message will appear advising the User of the expected Minimum Expiration Date according to the criteria for that Item and transaction but also allowing the original expiration date to be used and the warning ignored if desired. Therefore this does not act as a hard stop to the process.
