In this section you will learn:
On June 23rd, 2009, in an ongoing effort to meet the needs of our clients, we are pleased to announce the arrival of an Inventory Management module to PetPoint. At this time, the inventory module only affects Retail Sales in terms of keeping inventory and creating orders, but the add/edit item screen and receipt changes affect all items.
To manage inventory, you must first have an administrator set up items using the Admin Options > Add/Edit Item screen. After initial setup, users other than administrators have restricted access to these items screen through the Manage Inventory screen.
Once this is done, inventory controls can be given to users via the Add/Edit Users screen. These special permissions are given to your employees who log in and need to access the different inventory screens. Users given the Inventory - Basic or Inventory - Advanced user role are able to navigate to this page to view or make changes to inventory items.
Inventory Basic & Advanced can view this screen and make edits, only Advanced and Administrators can add new items. Remember Inventory Items are the only items you may place orders for, and inactivating or deleting inventory items requires administrator rights.
The item search now includes a Item Category drop down list to further refine your choices. You will need to click Find to display your list.
For managing of inventory items, at this time the two item types that are activated for inventory are Retail Sales & Common. For further categorizing of items, define the Item Category list via the Add/Edit Field Values page.
For those who are Inventory Advanced users, you may create new items via this page. These will be inventory items only, and the full control of deleting or inactivating this item is with the Administrators.
At the bottom of the Manage Inventory screen, you will see several fields that you will need to complete.
The first two are required fields, Item Type & Item Name. These need to be decided upon first, and you may click Add Item at any point after that.
You may also edit your item later on to include one or more of the many features for this item that will be included on receipts or tracked in the inventory program.
The options of this screen range from creating and naming a receipt or inventory item, at the least, to tracking sales & purchasing orders for items you sell. The following are new options in PetPoint added for the Inventory Module.
Reference #: If there is a reference number that you use to refer to the item, you may record it here.
Item Category: Assign a further category to the item, in regards to its type. Useful in searching for or predefining this item. Think of it as Item Sub Type. (example - item may be a Retail Sales item, but one specifically sold and fund raising events like a t-shirt or leash. Category would be Special Event. Other categories may be: Food & Treats, Grooming, Toys, Clinic.)
Multi-Site: If you have sites enabled on your database, you can check this box if the item is specific to one site. See Add/Edit Site Info for more information.
You can record a UPC number now as well, in case you need to look items up by their UPC code.
Between Item Cost & Item Price, there is a field for % markup, which is calculated for you automatically.
You can add 2 different tax codes to the item now, with tax code 1 & tax code 2.
The inventory system will allow you to print labels for your items (like a shelf tag), and the field “Print Labels” on this screen indicates how many shelf tags to print by default.
There is also a field for item notes. This is where you can indicate that the vendor prefers to ship this item with other items, or that a particular item sold well during a certain season, etc.
If you operate a multiple site operation with facilities receiving shipments of similar or identical retail items, you will want to pay special attention to the Multi-Site checkbox seen on the Manage Inventory screen. This can be incredibly helpful if the two locations charge different prices or tax.
In addition to item management, the following screens will allow Inventory Basic, Inventory Advanced and Administrator users in your group to begin tracking item purchasing.
Last updated for SMS & Lite June 22, 2009 - Melissa Wainscott