Lanham Associates | Inbound Container Extension Fact Sheet

Importing Goods from Offshore Vendors

If you import goods from overseas, keeping track of what was ordered, what is shipping and what should be paid for, FOB, can get messy and complicated. Distributors and manufacturers often send Purchase Orders to their offshore vendors, and while the vendors try, container contents rarely match the original purchase orders.

Lanham Inbound Container

Built inside Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, Lanham’s Inbound Container solution has the same look and feel as Dynamics 365 Business Central, the same intuitive user interface, and the same drill-down capabilities. All of your data is kept in Business Central so it is available at all times for any of your business needs.

Inbound Container, a key Lanham supply chain extension, streamlines your processes, and brings total visibility to your On-The-Water inventory. It imports information from an ASN (Advanced Ship Notice) or a spreadsheet to the Business Central Inbound Container document, matching the PO lines to the container contents.

Inbound Container
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Clearing Up Confusion

The product’s “Container Tracking” process uses the Business Central Inbound Container Document to reconcile and update open Purchase Orders associated with the ASN or spreadsheet, while assigning the container number to each Purchase Receipt line. A Purchase Invoice is then prepared to pay the vendor prior to the container shipping. The resulting information is essential to both your internal inventory planning and accounting practices.

As the products ship, accurate container contents are transferred to an On-The-Water location and also create Open Transfers from the On-The-Water location to the designated warehouse with updated Expected Receipt Dates.

Transfers to the Designated Warehouse

Once the container arrives, contents are counted or scanned to set the final transfer quantities from the On-The-Water location to the designated warehouse.

Additional Functionality

In addition to reconciling your On-The-Water shipment with your POs, the system can also:

Show cost, weight, and volume totals for the Inbound ASN in statistical form. (This can be used for declarations or insurance value).
Allow verification of differences in price reflected from the PO to the ASN (must be included by vendor) through a Cost Discrepancy Check feature.
Design different receiving options based on your own grouping. For example, if you want to create a putaway receipt just for inspection items, you can specify the grouping on your ASN prior to receiving, to create different receipts for your different operations.

Visibility

Visibility in the Inbound Container processes makes On-The-Water inventory available for your consideration throughout your entire inventory planning cycle.

There are also benefits for Accounting, including using the “Item Charges” in Business Central which, in conjunction with Inbound Container, will now provide landed costs for incoming product.

Tighten up your business practices. Know what inventory you have On-The-Water. Pay your offshore vendors only for what has actually shipped. Gain visibility to what should be backordered. And, see what you can actually expect to arrive, in which particular timeframe. Let Lanham’s Inbound Container make your life easier and your business more accurate and efficient.

Inbound Container Extension Fact Sheet