How we plugged a garbage data-in scenario - result of a flawed ERPNext initial setup.

A customer approached us having a pressing issue with their ERP stock operations - primarily stemming from a bad implementation at the start.
This was a typical case where the client wanted in a hurry, get started with their ERP operations and cared little about data hygiene, and proper way of initial setting up of their configurations and masters in the ERP. Masters such as - Item, Customer, Supplier, Chart-of-Accounts, Tax and a bunch of others.
You get an illusionary feeling that your ERP operations are running, you are able to bill the customer, add your suppliers and raise POs and move your production pipeline - all good -
Now the rubber hits the road is when you need meaningful reports (MIS) that can provide actionable insights into your operations based on which you can make appropriate business decisions - you are stuck with bad data. A typical garbage-in-garbage-out scenario.
When you have millions of transactional data in unusable state not able to use them in any meaningful way - that is when the reality hits you bad.
Also you are not able to produce any statutory reports (typically for your Taxation requirements) whatsoever from your ERP.
This is why it is of utmost importance to have in place basic correctness in terms of the initial ERP setup and configurations at the start itself - in terms of proper master configurations and other key configuration in the ERP. If you get this right - you will have a smooth sale with your ERP.
The case in point here is about Item masters that were created in the ERP without batch or serial options enabled.

Basic Customer profile

The Problem

There are about 600 odd item masters that are created without batch-number or serial number option enabled. As a result of this wrong setup initially, there are about half a million non-batch stock transactions for these items - and the items are lying in various stocking warehouse locations. In this scenario we need to solve Enable Has-Batch number option in those 600 odd item masters Update the non-batch stock items of about half a million transactional records with batch number

The realized solution

Keeping the data integrity of ERP in mind - we stuck with standard APIs / Features of ERPNext in solving this issue.
Following core functionalities is what we identified to realize an elegant solution to the problem:

1. *Duplicating the Item Master
2. Repack Stock Entry Repack Entry is created for item bought in bulk, which is being packed into smaller packages. For example, item bought in tons can be repacked into Kgs.
3. Merge with Existing

Putting these 3 standard features, our team built a custom Merge-In tool
Here is the steps of how we updated all non-batch stocks with batch number, and at the same time rectified the Item Masters with Has-Batch feature enabled back. All these steps are 100% automated through a custom feature we built called the Merge-In Tool.

Step#1:Need to create a new item master which will act as a replacement of old items.

Step#2:Need to create a repack stock entry for deducting (by taking the source warehouse) all stock from all warehouses from all items and adding it (by taking the target warehouse) into all items which have been created for them as a replacement.

Here the system will deduct all non-batch stock and will provide us the stock in new items with batches.

Step#3: Immediately after step#2, we have to enable ‘Has Batch No’ from the back-end for all non-stock items.

Step#4: And immediately after step#3, we have to MERGE all non-batch items into the new items created as a replacement for old ones.

Step#5: Immediately after this step #4, we have to restrict the ‘Has Batch No’ as mandatory whenever someone wants to create the new inventory items in the system.

All this done over bulk data upload from the custom Item Merge-in tool:

Indeed an original solution that was realized here.

A quick intro about us: We are Tacten LLP— a Bangalore-India based ERPNext partner company that offers full line of services around ERPNext and Frappe. We are a team of software developers and domain experts with an obsessive focus on helping our customers exceptionally succeed with ERPNext and Frappe. Our primary area of expertise are in the Manufacturing and Healthcare domain. We have the extensive experience of implementing ERPNext for several domestic and international clients under our belt.