Stock Items (SKUs)

Media

Joined up, real-world model

If you keep any level of inventory you need joined-up visibility of both perspectives to manage your stock accurately and efficiently.

SKUs are represented as Stock Items in the system. These Stock items are joined-up models of the physical and accounting perspectives of an SKU. This is the optimal strategy for:

100% accurate stock tracking
a high degree of process automation

Creating a new Stock Item

To create a new Stock Item go to Products/Services > Items and click 'Create New' from the Item List.

Stock Instance tracking

Only available if you are using the WMS.

You can use the warehouse management system (WMS) to model SKUs as instances. For example, Instances with a quantity of 1 can be tracked by serial number, and instances with a quantity greater than 1 can be tracked as Lots. Instances can store detail about themselves, i.e. Location, Purchased from, Sold to, Warranty, Service history, etc.

Because instances enable you to create a real-world representation of a physical SKU, you can track stock to the level of granularity you require to achieve the best possible optimization of your inventory management.

A stock 'Instance' represents the physical SKU at a particular location in your warehouse.

An Instance has a 'quantity' which allows it to represent either a single Item (quantity = 1) or multiple Items (quantity > 1) of the same type at a location. For example an Item with a serial number.

If the quantity is greater than 1 then all Items are 'identical'. For example, 32 cans of soup, all at the same location, all received from the same PO can be represented as an Instance with quantity 32. For example, a Lot. If we remove an Item from its respective Lot it becomes an instance but retains the Lot number of the original Lot.

If however, each iPad had a unique serial number this would have to be represented by 32 distinct instances with quantity 1 (each having the respective serial number assigned).

Units of Measure (UOM)

The system (including the WMS) enables you to model and track the quantitative relationships between Stock Units and their counterparts, Purchase Units and Sales Units.

Stock Item>Stock Tab>Units of Measure

Configure the relationship between:

Stock Units - enter a description to be displayed on the Document Line Item table that describes to viewers the name of the quantitative unit. For example, Each, Case, Pack, etc.

Purchase Units - enter the number of Purchase units that constitute a single unit of the Item. This can be a fraction, for example, 0.3, or an integer, i.e. 12.

Sales Units - enter the number of Sales units that constitute a single unit of the Item. This can be a fraction, for example, 0.3, or an integer, i.e. 12.

The system automatically calculates the results of transactions. For example:

Stock in units of 1, Purchase in units of 5, Sell in units of 2 would mean the configuration would be

Stock Units = Each

Purchase Units = 0.2

Sales Units = 0.5

Accounting

The system’s accounting functions enable you to track the costs, sales, and value of your stock assets. The system uses the average cost method to track the cost of goods.

The system automatically keeps track of all stock ‘adjustments’ so it can dynamically calculate the stock's value. When you purchase stock, the system increases the stock value. When you sell the stock, the system automatically recalculates the value based on the unit costs.

See ‘Accounting’

Customizable Instances and Item Masters

You can adapt instances to fit exactly with the business needs and go further to increase the detail and value of your insight into SKU lifecycles.

You can add custom fields and functionality to Item masters to store more data and do more with it.

Categories and Attributes

You can create and assign Categories i.e. Brand, Style, Genre, Product Line, etc, and Attributes i.e. dimension, color, capacity, volume, etc to Items.

Location

You can track the entire physical journey of every instance of stock from intake to being received by a Customer.

The Stock manager tracks the Item’s journey through the Document workflows i.e. Purchase Order > Item Receipt > Purchase Invoice, > Sales Order > Shipment > Sales Invoice > Delivery note, and even transfer between Customers. See ‘Using the Stock Manager’

The WMS (warehouse management system) tracks the physical journey i.e. Goods In > Location > Pick > Pack > Staging > Skid/Pallet.

Status and availability

You can track the quantity, status, and availability, i.e. Allocated, On Hand, Free, Quarantine, Reserved, on Back Order, on Purchase Order, etc.

Lot Tracking

From the Lot List, you can view which Purchase Orders the Lots were received from and drill down on each Lot to view which Sales Orders the Items from the Lot were sold on, and therefore which customers Lots were sold to. You can also track Lot activity on RMAs.

Preferred Supplier

You can assign multiple preferred Suppliers to an Item, together with their respective minimum order quantity, lead times, and last cost.

Actions

Stock Item Fields

Use Ctrl-F and the field name to locate and review the field and description

Actions

PreviousPreferred Suppliers NextStock Assemblies

Last updated 10 months ago

Action

Description

Tab / Section / Field

Definition