RP Prism User Guide - Chapter 16. Inventory
16.1 About Inventory

Prism's Inventory area is designed to help you track, find, add, edit, and group your merchandise in a convenient and efficient manner.  Each Inventory record represents a unique item and includes all relevant information like UPC, Price, Cost, and Quantity.
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, you can view Item Details or Style Details for each item.

Item Definition Fields
There are two things that define an item: (1) the Item SID and (2) the combination of DCS, Vendor Code, Description 1 (and possibly Description 2), plus Attribute and Size. 

16.1.1    Key Features of Inventory

• 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 dimension values: Length, Height, and Width.
• You can view "committed" quantity information that shows quantities committed into or out from Inventory.
• If using the Customer Loyalty feature, items can be assigned Price in Points and Points Earned values.

16.1.2 Inventory Management Considerations

Does Merchandise Arrive at Store Pre-Tagged, or Does Store Print Tags?
If merchandise tags need to be printed at individual stores, you can create the tag designs using Document Designer. You can then assign a default tag design to individual items. Note: You can also assign a tag design to an entire department. This is useful for items such as jewelry, which have smaller tags than other items.
Does All Merchandise Have a UPC?
UPC is the standard method for tracking inventory items in Prism. You can enter the UPC for individual items.
How is Merchandise Tracked? By Item? By Style? By Serial/Lot Number?
Items can be tracked by UPC or ALU and individual units or groups can be tracked by Serial Number and Lot Number. 
What type of Style Descriptions Are Used?
Prism provides four description fields for each item (Description 1-4). When using styles, you can select which description field to use for the style description: Description 1, Description 2, or Both.
Are Alternate Lookups Used?
Some retailers use a different tracking system than UPC. These alternative identifiers can be entered in each item's ALU (Alternate Lookup) field. You can optionally copy the description information in an item's Description 2 field to the ALU field.
User-Defined (Custom) Fields Needed?
Prism provides up to 16 user-defined fields in which you can store custom information. Two of the fields are date fields, the rest are text fields.
What Tax Codes Are Assigned to Items?
You define each of the tax codes that are required by your tax jurisdiction in Admin Console > Preferences & Settings > Node Preferences > Taxes. You can then assign any of these tax codes to items.  

 16.1.3 How Prism Documents Update Inventory
Prism tracks all movements of merchandise into or out of Inventory via documents. Some documents, like purchase orders (POs) and transfer orders (TOs) are planning documents that do not update inventory. Transactions, vouchers, slips and memos are documents that update inventory quantities and in some cases cost and price, too.

16.1.4    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.
• Item Max Discount Percentage: Limit the percentage of an item's price that can be discounted.

16.1.5 Inventory Cost Considerations

Preferences that can influence Cost
The 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.

• "Cost to use for POs and Voucher": This is simply the pre-populated cost in the Cost field on a new voucher. Possibly settings are: a) Inventory cost. For any Voucher or PO, the ‘Cost' field will display the Inventory cost. b) Order cost: For any Voucher or PO, the ‘Cost' field will display the Order cost. c) Order Cost: The ‘order cost' value is initially populated from Inventory cost (when an item is new). After that, it displays the ‘cost' value of the last PO/Voucher
• "Inventory costing method": The mechanism used to value the company inventory. The ‘Cost' field on POs/Vouchers can affect cost of an inventory item if that cost is different than the current inventory cost. Options are: a) ‘Leave' - Do not let a different cost on a PO or Voucher affect the inventory cost. b) ‘Overwrite' - Overwrite the Inventory Cost with the Cost on the PO/Voucher. c) ‘Average' - Modify the inventory cost to be an average between the current inventory cost and the PO/Voucher cost.

16.1.6 View Inventory
To view Inventory:
Navigate to Store Operations > Merchandise Inventory.

When you first access the Inventory area, you will see a Search area for filtering the inventory list.
1. Select the desired "Search By" field from the dropdown. You can filter the list by department, vendor, description, or by a specific item identifier (UPC, ALU, Serial, Lot).
2. Enter filter criteria.
3. Select an operator (default='CONTAINS').
4. Click Search.
5. When you find the record, click the check mark on the left side of the row and then click the Item Details button to view detailed information for the item.

The item record shows key information for the item. The item details are grouped into a set of tabbed pages: