Options?  Flexibility?  Less rigid thinking in design?   What if it 's only required under certain circumstances?   Then you can write conditions under which you can force entry but the system doesn't force it. 

Traceability can be a legal obligation in some countries but not all. So if facing a multi-countries companies, it's nice to be able to have lot management one country and no lot management on another.

What?????

Can you contextualize your answer please and make it relevant to the question posted. 

Exactly, the problem is that if you want lots, just not at receiving but when you pick for. manufacturing. It does not work! That is what Im talking about. Typical software design that nobody tests. 

I do no understand. 

You want to pick from a lot when entering product for manufacturing but you do not want to assign a lot number to that product lot when it is received?    So you would assign a lot after it's received so you could pick it from the lot.

Or you want to make up a lot number when you issue it to manufacturing? 

This is a very common practice, I dont understand how come there is no documentation from Sage about it.

Basically you receive multiple pallet, they are all closed hundreds of boxes with eaches inside, we are talking about thousands of products, each one of them with a lot. When you receive them, you are not going to be opening each pallet to enter each lot, so you receive them without lot. Then at the time of material picking for the work  order, you pick the product and you enter the lot. Thats it as simple as that. That is what optional lot is supposed to mean.

>>That is what optional lot is supposed to mean.

That's might be called deferred lot assigment at issue or something.   

APICS says page 45 8th edition "Lot Number Control - Assignment of unique numbers to each instance of a RECEIPT and CARRYING forth that number into subsequent management processes so that in review of an end item, each lot consumed from raw materials through end item can be identified as having been used for the manufacture ...  

There is more in the book about lots.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”

― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

When you receive lotted items on a PO certain controls are in place related to QC that can be awkward. I think i might have at one time figured out how to shut those off.

Are the lot assignments sequential? 

We use optional lots when trying to track some inventory for a design change.  We don't use versions as these are existing products, and not new products.  What is nice about optional lots, is when the inventory is flushed out and we are only stocking the "newer design", you can turn off lot control.  So then we aren't maintaining lots for products we really don't need to lot control.

I think you misunderstood what "optional lot" means in X3. By setting a product to be "Optional Lot", you have an option choose whether or not you want to lot control that product at receiving. So for the same product, you could have some that are lot controlled and some that are not lot controlled co-exist in your inventory. However, that is NOT the same as delaying lot number assignment. 

The whole reason for lot control is for traceability. Should there be a problem on one of the material during production, you need to be able to trace back to which purchase receipt it's coming from. The lot number would be the thread that connects your inventory to that receipt record. If you only record the lot number at work order consumption, even though you recorded LOT123, you would have no way to know when it was received and under which PO it was received from.

For your scenario, an option would be setting the product to be mandatory lot, but creating a DOCK type location. When you are receiving product into a Dock type location, you would NOT need to enter the lot number. Then you can go through the "Put away plan" function to enter the lot number as you move them from the Dock type location to a regular stock location.  Since the put away plan is entered by receipt, this process can track the later entered lot number back to the original PO. Please note that you would NOT be able to use/consume the material until the put away process is complete. 

Great thank you so much, I will give it a try.

The benefit of using optional lot is to be able to have for the same product some part of the stock managed with lot and some other part of the stock with no lot (a blank lot number). As lot is managed on the product level, this would give you the abilityto have a site where you track lot and another site where you don't. 
I hope I made my use case example clearer.

Hi all

Two questions:

1) I'm trying to do some inter-company transactions between two companies with different lot management rules. For the "Supplier" one we want to manage lots but for the "client" one we don't want to do that.

Since the product record is unique we tried to use "optional lots" and make the delivery with lot and the receipt without it.

However we had issues on the receipt, since the inter-company are forcing us to receive the same lot present on the delivery. We can't even change for our own lot. We are forced to use our supplier lot.

Entry rules on category are "free" for lot management on receipt and still we can't do anything. Any idea? I'm thinking on using "STJTOENT" entry point to do what I want but now I have the issue number 2:

2) For optional lots setup I changed product record to that management type, however even when I tried to do a receipt of a normal supplier I still can't receive it with no lot.

The only way that we achieved to do receipts with no lot for "optional lots" was using "DOCK" type locations, like Mike Tsai said. Is it a setup problem or we can't do it for other location types? We need to received it on an internal location and use it for sales purposes, so received in DOCK is not a viable option. Julien Patureau can you help since you said it works for the same product to do that different management for each site?

Any help or suggestion is welcome.

There are no standard work around. Once you decide to track a lot number in your system, the lot is tracked in all transactions and accross all sites. And this is useful as lot management is done for traceability: if you remove the lot number you will break the traceabiliy! So I don't recommand to do so even using bespoke as it's defeating the usage of lot number. 

If you need to recall your lot once received on the 'client' site du to a defect for instance, you won't be able to identify the stock linked to the lot number. What about an inter-site return from client to supplier, then the lot number should be re-created?
In your situation, I would challenge the business to understand why only partial lot tracking is requested AND what would be the inconvenience to have lots enabled on the 'client' site?

Hello Julien, you are right and I think the same way and already discussed that with the client but the "client side" said that they can't manage lots because they don't have the people to do that detailed management. Of course its better for traceability and it should be done but the client want this way and i need do understand the possibilities.

Above, you told that optional lot permit to manage the same product with "lot" and "no lot" in two different companies right?

What I'm trying to do is to receipt 2 documents of the same product in the same site, one with lot and one without. Is it possible? If so, why can't i do that?

In my previous tries, with optional lot i am always obligated to receipt with lot.

Next, I want to understand how i can deliver from one company with lot and receive the same product with no lot, or at least just with supplier lot. Is it possible in standard? if not can i do it with the entry point i mentioned?

Thank you in advance

When you set 'optional lot' on a product you have the ability to force a 'blank' lot to avoid created a new lot number:

Please be sure to manage 'Free' entry lot management on the category:

Now regarding inter-site or inter-company stock transfer, the stock transferred will keep the lot number. Hence there is no additional time or effort for the receiving site! The receipt process (from a inter-site / inter-company delivery) will be the same with or without lot management.

Of course, using an entry point you can modify this behavior but to me this would be a useless customization so I do not recommand this path.