Chapter 16. Inventory

Prism 1.14.7 User's Guide Chapter 16. Inventory PDF

Prism 2.4.1 User's Guide Chapter 16. Inventory PDF

About Inventory
Retail Pro Prism's Inventory area is designed to help you track, find, add, edit, and group your merchandise in a convenient and efficient manner.  Inventory can contain up to 999,999 unique items.
Instead of adding items one by one, retailers frequently group their merchandise into families of related items, referred to as styles.  Due to the fact that items may be handled individually or as groups, Retail Pro Prism's inventory area contains both an Item View and a Style View.  Item View displays a record of each individual item while Style View displays a record of each style.  Item View and Style View can be shown in both List View and Form View.

Key Features of Inventory

• Inventory can contain up to 999,999 unique items.
• Each record in Prism, including inventory items, is assigned a unique SID (System ID) that identifies the record in the database. 
• Each item is also typically assigned an identifier, either UPC or ALU.
• Inventory items can also be tracked by Serial No and Lot No. A serial number is a unique code (on the package or unit itself) that identifies otherwise identical individual units from a single manufacturer. Lot numbers do not have to be unique for each unit and are often used to trace the people and parts involved in the manufacturing of a product. 
• Each item has a price and a cost. The price is the amount the customer pays to the merchant for the item. The cost is the amount paid to the vendor for the item.
• Each item is assigned a DCS Code that identifies the department to which the item belongs (e.g., a DCS Code of "MSA" might refer to "Mens-Shoes-Athletic")
• Each item is assigned a Vendor Code that identifies the vendor from whom the merchant purchased the item.
• Each item can have up to five description fields (Description 1-4 are 30 characters each; Long Description is 2000 characters). 
• Members of a style have the same DCS Code, Vendor Code, Price and Cost but have a different combination of attribute and size.
• There are two things that define an item and make it unique: (1) the SID and (2) the combination of DCS, Vendor Code, Desc1 (and possibly Desc2), plus Attr and Size.
• Each item has 10 text fields (Text 1 - 10) available for storing other miscellaneous item information
• You can assign up to 10 item images and a style image to items. 
• Each item can have up to 14 user-defined fields (one date field and 13 text fields).
• Created Date, Modified Date, First Received Date, Last Received Date, Sellable Date, Last Sold Date and Discontinued Date help track the item's lifecycle and control when the item can be ordered and sold.
• Each item can be assigned a Min Qty and Max Qty that represent the minimum and maximum desired stock level for the item. (Prism includes an Auto Min/Max utility for calculating Min/Max values based on the item's prior sales history. Prism also includes an Auto Purchasing utility that uses the Min/Max values to auto-generate purchase orders.)
• Items can be assigned a Length, Height, and Width.
• You can view "committed" quantity information that shows quantities committed into or out from Inventory.

Pricing Tools
Prism includes the following pricing tools that give merchants greater flexibility and control over pricing:

• Price Levels: Each price level represents a complete set of inventory prices. Useful for things like separate prices for VIPs, Employees, etc.
• Price Rounding and Adjusting: Fine tune prices to always end in a certain value (e.g., .99)
• Price Manager: Adjust the prices of a group of items by a certain amount or percentage.
• Max Discount Percentage: Limit the percentage of an item's price that can be discounted.

Inventory Management Considerations
At each store, each item's OH Qty is updated by its documents. Any parent in the enterprise to which those documents are replicated will also update its quantities for the origin site based on those documents. Depending on how replication is set up this could be to a site's direct POA, or all the way to the RA. Depending again on how the enterprise is set up there may also be replication inventory down from a POA or RA to the site, and that data would overwrite the data in the store. 

Here are some questions regarding Inventory Management to consider when configuring Prism:
 

Inventory Quantity Considerations
Inventory is subsidiary specific. That is, each subsidiary's Inventory is defined and tracked separately. You can use the Assign Items feature to assign items from one subsidiary to others.
Each item in Inventory has a Store OH Qty field that stores the number of units in Inventory. The OH Qty value is updated by various documents as those documents are processed in at the POA. Sale transactions decrease OH Qty while return transactions increase OH Qty. Receiving vouchers increase OH Qty. Return vouchers decrease OH Qty. Transfer Slips decrease the OH Qty at the source store. A transfer voucher increases the OH Qty at the destination store. A quantity adjustment memo can increase or decrease OH Qty depending on whether the Adj Qty is more an less than the current OH Qty. 
In addition, updating a Physical Inventory sheet will update the OH Qty of items on the sheet.
Company Qty is the sum of the individual store quantities of all active stores.
Min Qty and Max Qty
Each item can be assigned a Min Qty that represents the minimum desired stock level and a Max Qty that represents the maximum desired stock level. 
On the Qty tab of the Item record, you can view key quantity values, including: Rcvd Qty, Sold Qty, On Ord Qty, Min Qty, Max Qty, SO Ord Qty, PO Ord Qty, PO Rcv Qty, SO Snt Qty, TO Snt Qty In, TO Sent Qty Out, TO Ord Qty Out, TO Ord Qty In, Trans. In Qty, Trans. Out Qty
Update OH Qty using Adjustment Memos
You can create a quantity adjustment memo to increase or decrease OH Qty. 

Inventory Cost Considerations
Preferences that can influence Cost
The two preferences below and their functions are important with regards to understanding how they might influence inventory cost. They are both found in Admin Console > Node Preferences > Purchasing.

Inventory Views

Users can manage inventory on a store-by-store basis. The top of the screen displays the Subsidiary, Store, Price Level and Season. Select different values from the drop-down if needed.
When you first access the Inventory area, you are in Item Lookup and will see:

• A list of inventory items
• A search area for filtering the inventory list

If you click Search without entering any filter criteria, the entire inventory list is shown. The list can be filtered by department, vendor, description, price range, or by a specific item identifier (UPC, ALU, Serial, Lot).
Sample Inventory Search screen:

When you find the record you are looking for, click the check mark on the left side of the row and then click the Item Detail button to view detailed information for the item.  
For example, if the user selects the Vendor Code element in the Search By dropdown and then selects a vendor and clicks Search, the list is filtered to show only items that have that Vendor Code. You can filter the list of items by Subsidiary, Store, Price Level, or Season using drop-downs at the top of the list.  
Form View is organized into the following tabbed pages:

Sample Inventory Item Details (Form View):

When you select a different tab, the left-hand side information (Item Details) persists. For example, if a user clicks the Price/Cost or Qty tabs, the Item Details are always present on the left.

New Item
1.    Navigate to Store Operations > Merchandise > Inventory. The Inventory Search screen is displayed.
2.    Click the New button on the bottom menu.
3.    Enter item details. The only required fields are DCS Code and Description 1; however, users typically also enter Vendor Code, Attribute, Size, Cost, Price and UPC (or ALU).
4.    Save the changes.

Adjustment memos created
When a user creates a new item and enters a Price, Cost and/or Quantity, adjustment memos will be created. This is a requirement of Prism. To make sure this requirement is fulfilled, when a user saves a new item, the last step is a prompt for selecting adjustment reasons. Whether or not you are required to select adjustment reasons will depend on how Adjustment Reason preferences are configured (Admin Console > Node Preferences > Merchandise > Adjustments).
By default, Prism is configured to require adjustment reasons on memos any time Price, Cost, or Quantity is changed. Prism's default Adjustment Reason settings have "Null" set as the default adjustment reason for Price, Cost and Quantity adjustments. This means that if Prism is left at its default settings, when saving a newly created item the user will be prompted and required to select an adjustment reason for each value changed. You can configure Prism preferences to not require a reason or assign a Default Reason to each of the adjustment memo types. Either of these configurations saves the user from having to select an adjustment reason when creating a new item. The user can simply click the Continue button. 
Price memos are generated for a specific price level. Cost memos are generated at the company level for the Subsidiary where the item was created. Quantity memos are for a specific store.

Select or create a department
When adding or editing an item, click the right-arrow in the DCS Code field and select a department from the dropdown. You can type a DCS Code in the text field to do a search. Use the scroll bar and pagination buttons to navigate among the DCS Codes.
To create a new department, click the Departments button. In the Departments area, add the new Department and then click "Return to Item" to add the department to the item record.
Select or create a vendor
When adding or editing an item, click the right-arrow in the Vendor Code field and select a vendor from the dropdown. You can type a Vendor Code in the text field to do a search. Use the scroll bar and pagination buttons to navigate among the Vendor Codes. To create a new vendor, click the Vendors button. In the Vendors area, add the new vendor and then click "Return to Item" to add the vendor to the item record.

Copy Item
A fast way to create a new item is to copy an existing item that offers the closest match. The Copy Item feature was not available in previous versions of Prism.
1.    Navigate to Store Operations > Merchandise > Inventory. 
2.    Search for the item and select it in the Results pane.
3.    Click Copy. 
4.    A new item (with a system-generated SID) is created. A new item (with a system-generated SID) is created. 

• You must edit Description 1 and UPC/ALU to save the item. You can edit other values (DCS, Vendor Code, Attr, Size) as needed. 
• If you edit Attr or Size, Prism will ask if you want to join the item to an existing style.
• If the preference Enable ALU Sequence or UPC Sequence is enabled, you can leave ALU/UPC blank and the system will assign the value.

Assign Items to other Subsidiaries
When transferring items between stores that belong to different subsidiaries (multi subsidiary transfers), for the target store to receive the items, the items must exist in the target store's inventory. If the items do not exist in the To Subsidiary, Prism will automatically assign the items so the items can be received on vouchers at stores in that subsidiary. 
Manually Assign items (or styles) to other subsidiaries
You can also manually assign items to other subsidiaries.
Use Inventory Lookup to find and select the items you want to assign.
Click Options > Assign Items.
 
In the displayed modal, select individual subsidiaries and click Save. (If the item is part of a style, the modal will include an "Apply to Style" checkbox for assigning all items in the style.)
 
The item is now available at the selected subsidiaries.
To verify, use Inventory Lookup to search for and display the item. 
Sample Subsidiary 2 Inventory Lookup showing item assigned from Sub 1:
 
Currency Conversion of Prices when assigning Items
Prices are replicated upon assignment for each price level defined at the source subsidiary. The TAKE conversion rate defined in Global Preferences at the target subsidiary is used for base currency conversion. If the destination subsidiary does not have a price level, that price level is propagated (with PL settings). 
Replicated Item Data when assigning Items
When you assign an item, the following item data is replicated to the destination subsidiaries.