We have added new tracking dimensions (e.g. quality grade) for some customers as a custom development. The dimension has multiple values (1-x) for the different e.g. quality grades, but only one is by definition the defined quality grade that reflects “new” material. Every other value reflects different status of “used” material (refurbished, defect, used, etc.). By business definition only new material will have a value in the inventory, everything else will have an inventory value of 0. So far so good. The definition of our processes state, that only “new” material is to be purchased. We also built our processes in a way, that other dimension values will not get an inventory value via regular processes. The issue is, that there is no technical limitation to restrict the procurement on a quality grade != new. So as long as everybody sticks to the defined process, we are fine. But this will not happen in reality.

In the past we have added additional tracking dimensions for a lot of customers, doing something quite similar, but it was some effort to restrict procurement and inventory transactions to specific values of the tracking dimension. Basically we implemented road blogs at every necessary transaction within the system.

Based on Microsoft feedback, there is no easy way to block certain transactions for tracking dimension values (Like the “stop” feature on released products > default order settings, but for specific values of a tracking dimension).

Discussing the issue with other SAs from different partners, this since seems to be a quite commen issue.