Physical Inventory with respect to MM

Overview Guide For Physical Inventory

Considering you have basic understanding of the process as discussed above let
us jump in to the functional and technical process of the same.

Functional Cycle:

Now let us discuss the same steps as above in the functional point of view.

Before getting into the process I would like to show you the stock of the articles
that will be considered for this process. Below screen shots will display the MMBE
and MB5B report of the two articles that are considered. The same report will be
displayed again at the end of the document to show the differences registered
through the physical inventory process.

First Article MMBE and MB5B Report:

Second Article MMBE and MB5B Report:
 • Creating Physical Inventory Document:

T-Code: MI01

This is the T-code which will create the physical Inventory Document, the
document number will be used as the reference further with respect to all the
materials in them. The initial screen of the t-code will be as below. You have to
input the details like Plant, storage location as mandatory and other details in the
screen if needed.

Once the Plant and storage locations are inputted, on enter we will get the screen
as below where we enter the articles that needs to be counted.

We have to keep adding the materials that needs to be counted, remember we

cannot enter quantity here.

This step is only to register materials that will be counted against the inventory
document that is about to be created. In the below example am entering only two
materials for explaining the concept.

Once the material is entered they will disappear from the screen and the screen
will prompt for next input. You can find the same with the help of item number in
the left. Since I have entered two materials already the screen is prompting for
third entry as shown below.
On saving the T-code we will get the inventory record number generated as shown
below in the bottom:

One Key point here is we are allowed to enter only 333 items as part of one
inventory document. If we need to add more items then we need to create new
inventory document.

• Changing Physical Inventory Document:

Now to know all the materials that has been entered or to add /delete any
materials from the physical inventory document we can reach out to MI02. The
initial screen will be as below, input the inventory document number along with the
fiscal year and press enter.
The next screen will be as below, in case you want to delete any material click on
the deletion indicator as marked below in red. For confirmation you can find
deleted check box checked as marked in blue.

If there is a need to add any other material then you can navigate through edit
option a shown below, this will take you to the screen similar to MI01 t-code. Both
are shown below:
 • Counting Physical Inventory Document:

Now we should be good to proceed ahead with counting as we are sure on the
materials as part of the process. The T-code used for counting is MI04.

The initial screen looks as below, we are required to enter the inventory number
and enter.

Once you enter the next screen we will be allowed to enter the quantity for all the
materials that are part of the inventory document number as shown below. As part
of our cycle am inputting quantities of 100 and 200 for the two articles as shown
below.

One important point to note here is we must check the zero count indicator
(Marked in Green above) in case we don’t have any quantity to enter or the quantity
is Zero.

Upon saving we will get the confirmation for the count entered at the bottom as
shown below.
 • Change the Count of Physical Inventory Document:

This step involves recounting your already counted inventory document number.
The t-code is MI05, you can straight away enter into the Inventory document
number after inputting the details in the initial screen. You will get the details of the
inventory document number and the quantity field will be editable here hence we
can enter our new quantity here. Both the screen shots are given below, here am
increasing the quantity of one material from 100 to 101. If we don’t have any
change we can ignore this step.
Post changing the quantity we get a confirmation as shown in the below image at
the bottom.
 • Processing the differences and Posting the inventory document:

T-code: MI07

This T-code is used clear out the differences of the quantity that was counted
against the quantity that is present in the system. The initial screen is as below,
enter the inventory document number and proceed.
On entering on to the next screen we will find the difference of each material
between the quantity counted and quantity present. The difference in the sales
value will also be displayed in the fields to the right as shown below.
This step also gives us a chance to check whether there is a huge differences or
there are any suspicious materials to be checked again, in case yes those
materials can be rechecked again. We can manually recheck the quantity. In case
if there is a need to change the quantity we can do the recount using T-code MI05
as explained above.

If everything is positive we can go ahead and post the same quantity that has been
counted. In this step the counted quantity will be posted in the back end system.
We can also find a material document number created against it.

Please Note that MI07 is the transaction to process one inventory document at a
time, in case multiple inventory documents needs to be posted you can use MI37.
The initial screen is shown below for reference.

Now we can see the standard MM reports to inspect the quantity, it should reflect
the quantity that was counted and posted during the inventory process as
discussed above.

First Article MMBE and MB5B Report:

Second Article MMBE and MB5B Report:

Technical Cycle:

Now since we have better understanding about the functional cycle, achieving the
same requirement through technical program will be easy to understand.

If you follow above process, we did the entire cycle with just two articles. Hence
forth the complete cycle can be completed in a very short span. Consider if we
have more than 50K materials to count either within the same storage location or
with different storage location or sometimes may be with different plants as well.
In this case completing the entire cycle as discussed above is going be a herculean
task, none of us in our organization will be given that much time to complete this
cycle through the process discussed above. Henceforth programming the entire
cycle and bringing the process into the technical world is very important and also
helps us in finishing the cycle real quick.
As discussed above the maximum time that will be taken during the cycle will be
only during creation of physical inventory document and counting the same. The
rest of process like postings can actually happen real quick since we have mass
processing option.

So in this technical discussion am going to elaborate to accomplish creating the

inventory document and counting the same. One key factor here is just ensure you
always input correct quantity to be posted just to avoid detour and save time.

The first step of the technical implementation is collecting the data into an internal
table. This purely based on the business scenario. You can either collate the data
in an excel and later you can convert into an internal table or you can record the
data in a custom table and pick it up from there directly into an internal table. Now
considering the humongous data in our internal table let us discuss how we
accomplish it through code.

First step: Creating Physical Inventory Document Number (MI01)

As we know the first step is to create the inventory number, we are also aware of
the fact that we can have only 333 items per inventory document. So it’s imperative
that we to have run the cycle with only 333 items at one instant. Ensure your loop
continues on the internal table by dividing the entries into 333.

One technical tip here is you can use Appending lines of statement as shown
below.

APPEND LINES OF gt_count_data FROM count_start TO count_end TO gt_data.

Here the internal table GT_COUNT_DATA will be holding our humongous data and
the variables COUNT_START and COUNT_END will be holding starting and ending
line item number that must be fetched. In the first cycle COUNT_START will be
holding 1 and COUNT_END will be holding 333. After that during each iteration the
variable values will be increased by 333. The internal table GT_DATA will be holding
the 333 entries that should be processed during each cycle run.

Now coming back to inventory document creation. The FM that helps for creating
inventory document is BAPI_MATPHYSINV_CREATE_MULTI. The BAPI will be
called as shown below:
Now let us discuss on what needs to be fed to the BAPI for successful creation of
Inventory document number.

The Parameter LS_HEAD should be fed with following field values.

Field Values

Plant on which the materials are to be posted.

PLANT
Considering the above functional cycle it must be 1010

Storage Location on which the materials are to be

STGE_LOC posted. Considering the above functional cycle it must
be 1000

This must be the date on which the count was made for
PLAN_DATE
the materials.

This is the data on which the inventory document is

DOC_DATE
created, by default it must be current date.

If we wanted to refer all the materials entered to some

value we can input the same. It can be any value,
PHYS_INV_REF
basically this is for referring the materials that are
grouped under each iteration

By marking this field as X, the materials involved in this

iteration cannot be counted again until this document
FREEZEBOOKINV
is either deleted or posted successfully. In other words
two cycles for the same material cannot run in parallel.

The table ITEMS should be fed as below:

Initially this table must be only filled with below fields:

• MATERIAL = Materials that are involved

 • STOCK_TYPE = Defaulted to value 1.

MAXITEMS à The value here must be 333, this is the maximum item count that can
be entered.

Once all the values are passed above and the BAPI is executed, it returns back the
inventory number on successful execution.

In case if there are any issues with input, the errors will be provided through the
internal table RETURNS.

If there are no errors with input then the RETURNS table will have 334 (One entry
more than ITEMS table) entries as result. The entries will also posses the physical
inventory document created against all the 333 materials which should be one.

Kindly note that the 333 is the maximum entry that is allowed, you can also have
entries less than that.

During this process there are few issues that are very common returned by BAPI. I
would like to highlight those and their remedies. This would aid you during your
implementation.

• Material Lock Issue: Ensure that the material is not in use in any other
transaction, this would stop us from creating the inventory document
Number.
 • Material Does not Exist with respect to storage Location: This error
occurs when the materials are not extended to the subjective storage
location. You have to ensure that the materials is extended to the storage
location.

• Material Not Extended to EP Storage Location: This error is similar to the

above one but it requires different parameter to update. This Error occurs
when the subjective Storage location is not maintained in the EP. Storage
Location (MARC-LGFSB). This is usually returned as a error with Error
Number 006, this assignment can be fixed by updating the field with the
required storage location using BAPI:

CALL FUNCTION 'BAPI_MATERIAL_MAINTAINDATA_RT'.

• Few Master Data Errors with Respect UOMs and other parameters.

• An inventory Document already exist: This Happens when there are

certain inventory documents already existing for the same data that we are
processing now. The former inventory documents must be cleared first
before processing the current data.
The issues discussed above are common issues that can be handled easily.

Second step: Counting Physical Inventory Document Number (MI04)

Up-to this step we have our materials connected with the physical inventory
document. We will now be ended up with physical inventory documents each
containing maximum of 333 materials.

In this step we are supposed to count the materials, in other words we have to
enter the counted quantity against each material. Assuming that we have all the
required data in the internal table we can proceed to fetch the quantity and update
it with the required materials. Technically this is achieved through below BAPI
Implementation.

Now let us discuss on what needs to be fed to the BAPI for successful count of
Inventory document number.
Field Values

Input the physical inventory Document Number that

PHYSINVENTORY
has been generated in the above step.

FISCALYEAR Current Fiscal Year during which this cycle is run

This must be date on which the count was made for the
COUNT_DATE
materials, usually the current date.

The table ITEMS should be fed as below, Initially this table must be only filled with
below fields:

• ITEM = Item Number which must incremented from 1 up-to

maximum of 333.

• MATERIAL = Materials that are involved

• ENTRY_UOM = UOM using which the count is made.

 • ENTRY_QNT = Respective Quantity against the Material.

• ZERO_COUNT = In case if the quantity is Zero then this Indicator Must be

marked as X.

Now once all the above parameters has been passed correctly we can run the BAPI
and check for its results. This will complete the counting Process of the cycle.

Now as you see unlike functional cycle the technical cycle does not encourages
options like deleting any material after entered or changing the count after entered
etc. so it’s imperative that you need to have correct data to process. In case you
wanted options to change the document or re-count then you have to code
separately which is not advised.

Now considering we are successful until this point, there is only one step that is
pending as stated below.

• Posting the differences through MI07. As discussed above if we wanted to

process each document one after another then we can go through MI07
else we can use MI37 to process Mass Data.

Thus we complete the MM Inventory cycle both through Functional cycle and
Technical cycle. Hope this document helps to understand the concept better.

Few Important T-codes For Quick Reference:

• MI01 --> Creation of Physical Inventory Document

• MI02 --> Changing Physical Inventory Document

• MI04 --> Counting Physical Inventory Document

• MI05 --> Changing Physical Inventory Document Count

• MI07 --> Posting Individual Physical Inventory Document

• MI37 --> Mass Posting of Physical Inventory Document