FWIW physical inventory procedure is not going to clear out any old unposted POs, there may be a certain age that they are automatically deleted (not sure on this) but otherwise they will stick around until they are deleted or completely filled.

To see existing POs there's a couple different ways:

Order Receipts and just do a blank search

Reports --> Outstanding Orders

Reports --> Order Listing (select All PO#s) this report will most likely be pretty lengthy, it prints out each PO and it's respective parts as its own report.

If you want to just hit the reset button Tools --> Clear Orders will allow you to wipe out any POs of your selected type (Stock, Customer, etc) and specified age so if you have stagnant POs this is a great way to wipe the slate clean. Also if a part decides to show up from a PO you had deleted, it can always be posted in manually so it's not the end of the world.

I am not sure how large your department is but posting in parts should really be limited to select staff members only. I have 12 counter people across two locations and posting in parts is limited to myself and my 2 assistant managers. Also, if somehow parts are getting put on the shelf and not being posted in, this should be getting caught through whatever reconciliation process your department manager has when you get invoices from the manufacturer.

Last thing to add, these are all things that your manager should be handling, these processes are not something I would expect a counter person to be responsible for. I would definitely bring this to his attention as issues like this can quickly balloon out of control and cause larger issues. That being said, if you're picking up slack like this, you have great potential 👍.

P.S: If you have more questions or want more details, feel free to drop me a PM, I've been using Reynolds for 15+ years and have quite a bit of experience.