Tracking dimensions in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain

Of the inventory dimensions in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management, tracking dimensions are the ones that give individual units their distinct identity. Configuring them well — batch on food and pharma, serial on high-value items, licence plate in advanced warehousing — supports the traceability and operational requirements without imposing unnecessary overhead.

Batch tracking

A batch (or lot) groups units produced or received together — same production run, same supplier delivery, same harvest. Each batch has:

• Batch number — unique identifier.
• Manufacturing date — when produced.
• Expiry date — for perishable items.
• Best-before date — for food / pharma.
• Batch attributes — fat %, alcohol %, brix, pH, etc. for process industries.
• Inventory status — Available, Quarantined, etc.

Picking can be FEFO (first-expired-first-out) to prioritise oldest stock; reservations can target specific batches. Traceability reports show full history per batch — where it came from, what was made from it, where each unit went.

Used in: food, beverage, pharma, chemicals, cosmetics, building materials, paint, lubricants.

Serial tracking

A serial number uniquely identifies each individual unit. Each serial has:

• Serial number — unique identifier.
• Manufacturing date — when produced.
• Warranty start / end dates — for service tracking.
• Inventory status.

Every transaction touching the unit references the serial: receipt, transfer, pick, ship, return. The result is full chain-of-custody — given any serial, you can trace exactly where it's been and what's happened to it.

Serial tracking has substantial overhead — every scan, every receipt, every pick requires the serial. Reserved for items where it justifies the cost:

• High-value items (industrial equipment, vehicles, jewellery).
• Compliance-regulated items (medical devices, aerospace components, certain electronics).
• Items with warranty obligations.
• Items where authenticity matters (luxury goods).

Owner tracking (consignment)

Owner is a dimension that tracks who actually owns the inventory — useful for consignment scenarios where inventory is physically held but not yet sold:

• Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) — supplier owns the stock until you consume it.
• Consignment to customer — you ship stock to a customer's site but it remains yours until the customer uses it.
• Multi-owner shared warehousing — 3PL operations where one warehouse holds inventory for multiple owners.

Owner tracking lets the warehouse manage physical inventory while accounting recognises legal ownership correctly.

Licence plate (LP)

A licence plate is a label identifying a physical unit of multiple items — a pallet, a tote, a carton, a shipping container. Operations on the LP cascade to its contents: scan one LP, move 50 items in one action.

Licence plates are essential in advanced WMS scenarios:

• Receiving where supplier consolidates many items on one pallet.
• Cross-docking where shipments transit a warehouse without put-away.
• Bulk picking where one LP holds an entire customer order.

LPs can nest — a pallet LP contains carton LPs that contain item-level LPs. Operations at any level cascade to children.

Combining tracking dimensions

Items can have multiple tracking dimensions active simultaneously: batch + serial (medical devices in batches with each unit serialised), batch + owner (consignment of specific batches), serial + licence plate (serialised items consolidated on a pallet for shipping).

Item tracking setup

Per item, configure:

• Which tracking dimensions are active.
• Capture-required setup — must serial be entered at receipt? At pick? At shipment? At return?
• Auto-generation rules — serial / batch numbers generated automatically per pattern, or required to enter manually.

Operational implications.

• Receipt — more dimensions = slower receipt. Mobile scanners help.
• Shipping — tracked items require scan validation at pick / pack / load.
• Quality / quarantine — entire batches can be quarantined and released atomically.
• Recall — given a problem batch, the system identifies every customer who received it.
• Cost — tracked-dimension granularity affects cost accounting precision.

Operational reality

Activate tracking only where the value justifies. A consumer-goods distributor with simple SKUs doesn't need serial tracking; an industrial-equipment distributor probably does. Audit per item category.