Stock-to-Fleet
A wizard for converting standard Business Central stock items into rental fleet. Each unit becomes a rental item with a fixed asset of its own, and the stock leaving and the fixed assets' cost are prepared on journals for you to check and post, or posted straight away if you prefer.
How it fits in
When a piece of equipment moves from "stock you sell" to "fleet you rent", several things have to happen at once: the inventory needs to come off the books, a Rental Item record needs to be created, and a Fixed Asset record needs acquisition cost posted against it. The Stock-to-Fleet wizard does all of that in one guided flow rather than asking you to remember every step.
The wizard takes a stock Item as its starting point. For each unit you choose it creates:
A Rental Item of the Rental Item Type you choose, on hand at the Output Location as soon as you finish. It takes its description from the item (the first 50 characters), and its prices, posting groups and other settings from the type.
A Fixed Asset of its own, linked to the Rental Item, with the item's unit cost as its acquisition cost.
The stock leaving and the fixed assets' cost are then prepared on journals for you to check and post: a negative adjustment on the item journal, and an acquisition line for each fixed asset on the FA G/L journal or the FA journal (see Which fixed asset journal). Until the item journal is posted, the units count both as stock and as fleet. If you would rather the wizard posted everything itself, see Posting straight away.
Where to launch the wizard
The wizard is available from two places, both of which start with a stock Item record:
Item card: open the Item you want to convert, then use the Stock to Fleet action on the ribbon.
Items list: select the Item in the list, then use the Stock to Fleet action on the list ribbon.
The wizard will not open for an item that is blocked, an item that has variants (it cannot yet choose a variant, and a guess would take the wrong stock) or an item tracked by package. It says why.
Walkthrough: running the wizard
The wizard has three steps. Its banner shows a progress bar, a gear that turns a notch with each step, and the step number.
Says what the wizard does, what is posted when you finish and what is left on journals for you. Select Next to choose the stock.
Item No., Item Description and Inventory come from the item and cannot be changed. Inventory is the stock across all locations.
Quantity: how many units become rental fleet. It starts blank, so it is always a deliberate choice. For a serial-tracked item it is always 1: such an item becomes fleet one unit at a time.
Location: where the stock is taken from. Leave it blank for stock held with no location. Changing it clears the bin, serial and lot, and copies the location to Output Location on the next step.
Bin: needed where the location keeps its stock in bins (Bin Mandatory). The list shows only the bins at the location that hold this item.
Serial No.: shown for a serial-tracked item. The list shows only the serial numbers of this item in stock at the location.
Lot No.: shown for a lot-tracked item. The list shows only the lots of this item in stock at the location.
Rental Item Type (required): the type the new rental items belong to. They take their prices, posting groups and fixed asset settings from it.
Output Location: where the new rental items are hired from. It starts as the location the stock is taken from.
Under When you select Finish, the wizard lists what it will create and on which journals. Select Finish.
What the wizard checks
The wizard is built to be hard to get wrong. When you select Next on Which stock, it checks that:
- the quantity is at least 1 and no more than is in stock at the location you chose;
- a bin is chosen where the location keeps its stock in bins, and that bin holds the quantity;
- for a lot-tracked item, a lot is chosen and it holds the quantity at the location;
- for a serial-tracked item, the serial number is in stock at the location.
When you select Finish, before it creates anything, it checks:
- that Essential Rental is registered or active in this environment;
- on Essential Rental Setup: the item journal template and batch (unless everything is posted straight away), and the Rental Items and Fixed Assets No. Series number series;
- Fixed Asset Nos. on FA Setup;
- on the rental item type: a Depreciation Book Code for a book that exists, and an FA Posting Group;
- the template and batch for the fixed asset journal that book needs (unless everything is posted straight away), and, where that is the FA G/L journal, an Acquisition Cost Bal. Acc. on the FA posting group;
- that no rental item already has the serial number.
If anything is missing it stops and says what to fill in, and nothing is created. Everything Finish does happens in one go, so a problem part-way through leaves nothing behind.
Which fixed asset journal
Business Central only posts a fixed asset acquisition from the journal that matches the depreciation book, so the wizard reads the depreciation book of the rental item type:
G/L Integration - Acq. Cost switched on: the acquisition lines go on the FA G/L journal, at Default FA G/L Journal Template and Acquisitions FA G/L Journal Batch on Essential Rental Setup, balanced against the FA posting group's Acquisition Cost Bal. Acc.
Switched off: the acquisition lines go on the FA journal, at Default FA Journal Template and Acquisitions FA Journal Batch.
The last step, the notification and any message name the journal actually used.
After the wizard finishes
The rental items are on hand and appear on the Rental Items list straight away. The journal lines are not posted: this lets you review them (especially the acquisition cost) before they reach the ledgers.
One notification appears. It says how many rental items were made and which journals and batches to post, with two buttons:
Open item journal: opens the item journal at the batch where the negative adjustment was put. The wizard switches on Item Tracking on Lines for that batch, so the serial or lot number is on the line itself. The line takes the number the batch's number series will give next, without using it up. Post the journal to take the units out of stock.
Open FA G/L journal (or Open FA journal, whichever was used): opens that journal at the batch where the acquisition lines were put. Review the cost and accounts, then post to add the fixed assets' cost.
Until you post these journals, the conversion isn't financially complete: the stock is still on the books at the source location, and the fixed assets have no acquisition cost yet.
Posting straight away
Tick Post Stock to Fleet Straight Away on Essential Rental Setup and Finish posts everything itself: the rental items, the units leaving stock and each fixed asset's acquisition cost. No journal or journal batch is involved. Everything is posted on the work date under one document number, the number of the first new rental item, and a message confirms what was posted in place of the notification. The wizard's first and last steps say so. It is off by default.
Configuration that affects the wizard
These fields on Essential Rental Setup shape how Stock-to-Fleet behaves:
The Setup Wizard's Stock to Fleet Journals choice creates the ITEM journal and the ASSETS FA G/L and FA journals with their DEFAULT batches, and fills these fields in where they are blank. If the item journal is not set up when you run Stock to Fleet, the wizard's last step says so and points you to the Setup Wizard.
Related pages
- Rental Setup: Fixed Asset Integration FastTab + No. Series control how the wizard posts.
- Rental Items: the master-data page where the resulting Rental Item lands.
- Rental Item Types: the classification picked on the last step, with the depreciation book and FA posting group the fixed assets use.
- Fleet Acquisition: buying new fleet through a purchase order instead.