1. Business Use Case Examples

For heavy machinery, household appliances, and 3C electronic products, selling the product is not the end of the lifecycle. After-sales activities such as maintenance and service depend on the device’s serial number. Therefore, you need to use serial numbers to manage the product lifecycle.

2. Detailed Introduction to Serial Numbers

2.1 Enabling Serial Numbers

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Serial Numbers are an industry plugin for the Inventory module. They are disabled by default and must be enabled by a CRM administrator on the Inventory Management page. Navigation: CRM Management -> Business Rule Management -> Inventory Management -> Plugin Management -> Industry Plugins

• Whether you enabled the full-version Inventory (Type A) or the integration-version Inventory (Type B), you can enable Batch & Serial Number Management.
• When the plugin is enabled, the system initializes the Serial Number object.
• Enabling the plugin is irreversible.
• Enabling the plugin does not automatically enable serial number tracking for all Products. For each Product that requires serial number management, you must open the Product record and enable serial number tracking for that Product.

Note: Replace “Inventory” and “Products” according to the provided terminology standards where applicable.

2.2 Serial Number Operations

2.2.1 Create Serial Numbers

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• Manual creation entry point: Serial Numbers list view
• Import: see Import documentation (https://help.fxiaoke.com/2615/3eab/856c/5765#header-2)
• Serial Number field: The primary attribute is the serial number itself and must be unique.
• Related Product: When creating a serial number, you must associate it with a specific Product. The associated Product must be “Listed” and must have serial number management enabled.
• If you are using the Type A full Inventory, you can manually create or import serial numbers in the CRM. If you are using the Type B integration Inventory, you cannot create serial numbers directly in the CRM; serial numbers must be synchronized from ERP or other third-party systems into the CRM.

2.2.2 Serial Number Inbound (Stock In)

• For Products with serial number management enabled, you must select the corresponding serial number when performing stock-in. On save, the system checks whether that serial number already exists in Inventory. If it does not exist, the system allows stock-in; if it already exists, the system prevents stock-in.
• On the Inventory object list, you can query the inventory quantity for a Product that has serial number management enabled; that quantity represents the number of serial-numbered units of that Product linked to the selected Warehouse.
• After a serial number is successfully stocked in, fields such as Warehouse and Inventory ID are populated automatically by the system.

Note: Use terminology “Warehouse” and “Inventory” per the standard glossary.

2.2.3 Serial Number Outbound (Stock Out)

• For Products with serial number management enabled, you must select the corresponding serial number when performing stock-out. On save, the system validates that the serial number exists in the source Warehouse and is not selected by another transaction.
• After a successful stock-out, fields such as Warehouse and Inventory ID are automatically cleared by the system.

2.3 Unique Business Attributes of Serial Numbers

• Within any single tenant, serial numbers are unique. A given serial number may only have a quantity of 1 within the same tenant.
• When a transaction document selects a serial number, the serial number’s allocation status automatically changes to “Allocated” during the approval process, preventing other documents from selecting it. After the document completes, the allocation status automatically reverts to “Unallocated,” allowing other documents to select it again.
• Once a serial number leaves Inventory via stock-out, its usage status becomes “Used,” indicating that the serial number has been consumed by a specific transaction.

2.4 Special Considerations for Serial Numbers

• To enable serial number management for a Product, the Product must not have existing Inventory records. If prior stock-in operations created Inventory records for that Product, you cannot enable serial number management for that Product.
• For Products that already have Inventory records but require serial number management, contact ShareCRM Support to follow the special customer request process for Inventory data initialization, or delete the specified Product’s Inventory records before enabling serial number management.