Previously, the process involved creating sub-locations for “Damaged” and “Refurbished” items and moving the item from one sub-location to another. This approach caused issues because costing is maintained per sub-location. Since purchases are never made in the “Damaged” sub-location, the costing ends up using the retail price refunded on the RMA as the cost, which is incorrect.
The Inventory Status feature addresses this problem by allowing you to have a single Location while treating each status like a Lot. You can move the item between different Lots/Statuses within the same Location, ensuring uniform costing. This is why NetSuite presents the Inventory Details dialog whenever inventory is affected for an item with inventory statuses; it needs to know which status bucket to impact, similar to how it would need to know which Lot to impact.
For example:
- Issue an RMA for a damaged product to be returned.
- Receive the RMA into the warehouse Location with a status of “Damaged.”
- Perform the necessary repairs.
- Change the Inventory Status from “Damaged” to “Refurbished.”