How to Delete Inventory Items Permanently in Calem

It is possible to delete inventory items permanently from Calem. The need to delete an item permanently may arise from: a) The item is no longer used any more; b) It was created by mistake; or c) it is a temporary item for testing. Alternatively, one can set an inventory item's status to inactive so the item will not show in lookup forms when selecting items for transaction. This blog discusses steps to delete an item permanently.

• Inventory | Items - Part/Tool, or Items - All | Edit an item, set its status to Inactive or Deleted
• Inventory | Site Inventory | Edit a site inventory, set its status to Inactive or Deleted

1. Delete Site Inventory Permanently

Site inventory can be deleted from its list form. You may get an error message when deleting a site inventory. The steps to delete a site inventory.

• Go to Inventory | Site Inventory form | Find the item to delete
• Have the item checked (A)
• Click the delete button to delete the it (B)

 The error message shows the data that depends on the site inventory to delete. The dependent data needs to be deleted first in order to delete the site inventory. 

1.1 Delete Stock and Store Inventory

Go to Store Inventory tab and perform a physical count transaction for each stock line to set the quantity to 0. The stock lines should be removed. If not removed in some cases due to configuration, you may delete the stock lines with 0 quantities manually. Next, delete the Store inventory lines.

1.2 Delete Transactions (cm_in_tran)

Transactions cannot be deleted by default. Contact your Calem support to enable transaction deletion in your cloud service, or request the configuration (or see the Admin Guide) for on-premise installation. Next, perform the following steps to add deletion button to the transaction list form and delete the transaction lines.

• Select "Admin" group or a group of your choice for customization (menu: Admin | Groups)
• Go to the Site inventory form and place the "Deletion" button in the transaction list.
• Create an ACL profile to use the "Admin" group or a group of your choice. You may skip the ACL profile creation if you have already an ACL profile for this purpose.
• Assign users to the new ACL profile. These users will be able to delete inventory transactions.
• See list view customization listed below for instructions to customize a list form.
• Check all the transaction lines and click the deletion button to remove all of them.

1.3 Delete Site Inventory

You may go back to the site inventory list and delete the site item. It should allow you to delete the site inventory item.

2. Delete an Item Permanently

Go to item list to delete an item (Inventory | Items - Part/Tool; or Inventory | Open | Items - All). You may get an error message about data referencing the item. If site inventory is shown in the dialog, just apply the steps above to remove site inventory references.

 Next, open the item form and go through its tabs and remove the details in each tab. Go back to the item list to delete the item again, you should get a prompt to confirm the deletion of the item permanently. Click Ok to confirm and complete the deletion.

 3. Tips for Item Deletion

Deletion of items modifies your inventory permanently. It should be taken with caution. You may run into road blocks in following the instructions above. Here's some tips.

• A transaction may not be allowed due to its transaction type. See Admin Guide to modify Calem configuration to allow additional transaction types for deletion. Or, contact your Calem Support Team to help with configuration changes.
• Inventory Merging (this blog) may be used to simplify the deletion process if there are many items to delete. The steps are:
  • Prepare an excel file to merge all items to be merged into a single item. 
  • Perform the bulk item merge so that you will need to perform the deletion steps by only one item.
  • Perform the steps above to delete a single item.

Additional resources

• How to Merge Inventory in Calem
• How to Customize List Forms
• Calem Enterprise Customization
• User Guide and Admin Guide (customer account required)
  
• Calem Enterprise Training Site
  
• Calem Enterprise Blogs
  
• Calem Enterprise demo