Reconciliation between MB51 and MB5L

[tyrogreenhorn]

Hi,

I'm trying to conduct an analysis of inventory consumption, purchasing in relation to inventory levels at reorder points. I thought the "MB51 - Material Document List" report would be a good place to start, as it contains all inventory movements, so I should be able to identify purchases, consumption etc.

So much for the theory. In practice, the problem is, I'm already failing on the outset when I try to reconcile the total as per MB51 report to MB5L at month's end. Mnd you, the valuated amounts per MB5L reconcile to the G/L just fine.

I talked to some people in charge of inventory at my company and they told me I need to excude entries with values in Purchase Order column starting wth a specific combination of digits. Moreover, they told me to exclude all entries for which the combination of fields ("Purchase Order" & "Sales Order") or ("Purchase Order" & "Cost Center") not empty. This works for some items, but I still get a bunch of items that do not match.

So my quesiton is: Is there a simple way to reconcile the MB51 and MB5L reports. Is there a marker anywhere that tells me which entries are used to constitute the balance?

I tried searching for answers on this forum and the closes I found was a reference to the S_P00_07000139 report, that I could use instead of the MB51. I compared it for a couple of offending items. For the items tested it showed me the correct balances (in the header), as per MB5L report. Funnily enough, when I summed up by the quantities, I noticed that the balances don't match, with the total exceeding MB5L balance. I took a closer look at the header and noticed that the report lists a negative balance as per start date, which makes no sense.

Can anyone tell me how to reconcile MB51 to MB5L or suggest a different report that would help me identify purchass, consumption and allow the quantities to be easily reconciled to MB5L or GL?

Best regards,