Maximizing Your Biggest Investment: How to Maintain an Accurate Inventory. Session Q&A

Transcription

1 Maximizing Your Biggest Investment: How to Maintain an Accurate Inventory Session Q&A

2 1. Can you tell us how to make sure how to get the reports to spool instead of print? I have included a document from Online Help that walks you through spooling reports. 2. We use dump SKUs for nuts and bolts. How are we able to adjust that from dump SKUs to correct SKUs? The best way to adjust is to have bar codes for each item at the front counter in a binder, allowing the cashier to scan the specific nut or bolt without having to place a UPC code on each piece. 3. You can't scan individual nuts, bolts and screws. No, but you can scan a UPC in a binder at the front counter. 4. So don't even use dump SKUs for nuts & bolts? It seems to me that the labor required might not be worth the benefits. We have a LARGE Hillman section and we don't even do the ordering for it. If you feel you cannot manage the SKUs in your nuts and bolts department, then set a specific inventor value for that department and adjust accordingly when managing inventory. Also know that your RIV will not balance to the General Ledger. 5. What is the average GMROI for hardware and lumber stores? Below is a chart provided by the NRHA this should give you a good idea. Keep in mind that this is calculated based on data provided by other retailers, so it doesn t take all retailers into consideration, but would be a good guideline.

3 6. For those that are using Mango vs. Cycle Counts, what are the benefits or problems, one over the other? Mango finds the things that seem to react differently which is good. But you re only touching a small number of items throughout the year. Cycle counting ensures you touch everything because you stock a LOT of D and X items, with minimal sales that are hard to track to determine a pattern and Mango may not catch those. There s nothing wrong with blending the two programs. 7. When you are doing a location count, how do you handle the variances? Specifically how do you know the sale happened before or after counting? If using the RF gun, changes are made instantaneously, so the system is updated immediately. If you re using count sheets, Eagle recognizes that those count sheets are outstanding and tracks the product that sells in between the time the count sheet is printed and the time it s finalized, accounting for any sales that happened and adjusting accordingly. 8. Is it practical to SKU every item in a hardware store? Including nuts and bolts? It s not easy but it is practical. There are stores that do it. 9. We see a lot of part numbers change to a new part number. Does the Epicor system record supersede and automatically change an old part number to the new part number for us? It doesn t happen automatically, but you can use RCIN to combine SKUs 10. Does it keep the history of both of them without combining their history? When using RCIN, the sales history of the old SKU will merge into the new SKU. 11. Which is the best method to receive an order? You mentioned both "Blind Receive" and scanning order. It depends on the accuracy of the vendor shipments. If they re often inaccurate, and you re having to call the vendor to make adjustments, then definitely receive by scanning the order. This is normally a good idea for smaller vendors. If you re receiving items from a Co-Op vendor, I suggest blind receiving. There is a lot of product, and often their order accuracy is very high. 12. How do you run a Negative Quantity On Hand report? I suggest building a viewer that looks at item number, description, QOH (filter to is less than 0 ) and location code. You can then print that viewer. Or, if you have Compass Analytics, you would build a query with the same columns and filters. 13. How do we deal with True Value? We electronically receive those and are finding that when receiving through True Value sometimes we get inventory in the wrong SKU. Comes in to TV SKU and sells under national SKU. What do we do with that scan True Value in? I suggest contacting True Value and make them aware of the issue.

4 14. Is there an area in Eagle that allows you to set inventory targets? And how do you recommend setting them? There is not an area in Eagle where you can set Inventory targets. Performance Manager does allow you to set benchmarks, but not on inventory value targets. 15. What is the percentage of Eagle users that can get their RIV report balance to their G/L account? (Material amount) I really couldn t provide a number simply because I haven t worked with every customer. I would say that customers that scan every item are able to get them to balance with little issue. 16. Where is the best place to learn how to properly execute RIS, RIV and RPA? We have had Epicor since It really depends on what type of business you have. Some co-ops provide retail best practice documentation that defines how they think you should set those reports to run. I have included the some help content on the three reports to provide a little more information. 17. How do you compensate for paper inventory counting, when product is maybe being sold before the PIP is completed? If you re printing the count sheets properly, Eagle should be adjusting for product sold during that time. 18. Are there substitute items that will work instead of RF guns? Ex: Tablet? Not at this time. 19. What is MANGO? Mango is an inventory management program offered to Ace Retailers. 20. Your nut & bolt example, for instance: Is there a Best Practice for receiving as a casequantity, etc.? However, most-all our stuff gets sold individually. You could order by the case, dump the case into the bin, sell the case and adjust the individual SKU by the amount you dumped just to have a better tracking method. 21. What percentage of inventory should be "X" items? It really varies based on your product mix and your industry. 22. Our RIV is always substantially off compared to the GL. Couldn't the issue be Options setup related to transactions, such as Transfers? It could be several things, but the largest outlier is dump SKUs. If you find that you are constantly fighting the battle and cannot determine the source, it may be in your best interest to have an Eagle Accounting Consultant come in and see what they can find.

5 23. More of a PCR, but might it become possible soon via RBS security bits to have control over folks removing/deleting info. At times this undermines efforts to get needed information added to mupc / IMU. I would suggest entering a Product Change Request (PCR). 24. How do you print count sheets? I ve included a job aid that walks you through this process. The job aid can also be accessed in Eagle help. 25. I've used the RF gun to scan outs and add things into PIP and the beginning QOH does not seem to change no matter if we sell them or not. Is there a time limit on how long this information in PIP is accurate? If you set the gun to have the counts update immediately, you won t run into that issue. 26. Is there an easy way to delete a lot of items out of inventory at once if they are showing a negative QOH? Yes I have included the help content on how to delete items from an Inventory Viewer. Proceed with caution! 27. What is the best way to run through services (screen repairs, sharpening, delivery) where its mostly labor, but it still needs to run through POS? You should set up non-stock SKUs for those items/services. You can sell the service, but when set as non-stock, the system knows there is no inventory, and does not affect your inventory numbers. 28. If you use the RF gun for counting inventory, run the RPI report for your location but do not print the report and it will keep track of what sells while you are doing your inventory. That is correct or you could use the RF gun for counting and have it update directly to IMU, which eliminates the need to run the RPI report to finalize counts. 29. How do you reconcile committed quantities, ordered, built in yard but not shipped or shipped and in transit? I m not sure if this question is regarding counting or receiving? I would need a little more elaboration in order to properly answer the question. 30. Is there a way to change the default view in Inventory viewer by terminal? No, not by terminal.

6 31. Blind receiving does not work for us as just this week I am missing a whole tote. How would you catch that if you blind receive? Have always been told for the most accurate inventory, scan everything coming in and going out. This is true blind receiving definitely depends on the accuracy of the vendor from which you re receiving. When discussing blind receiving, we are generally talking about retailers who receive very large shipments from Co-Op vendors, and those vendors are highly accurate with their shipments. For smaller vendors, or vendors with low accuracy, I would always encourage receiving the product item by item. 32. RCIN- combines SKUs Correct! 33. Could you elaborate on blind receiving and co-op usage? In many cases, co-op shipments are highly accurate to the point that it often costs more to spend the labor time checking each item in, rather than blind receiving and dealing with the small chance of inaccuracies. In order to make the appropriate decision for your business, I would suggest you evaluate your vendor(s) and determine how often you have to make corrections. If it s not often, is it worth the time you re spending checking the order in item by item? Again, this is focusing on very large shipments. 34. How do you keep track of inventory that has no UPC? I would suggest assigning it a UPC. 35. Can you put the step by step process to make all reports spool? I have some that are printing that I can't figure out how to get to spool. The Job Aid is attached, and it can also be accessed in Eagle help. 36. If you are not running a true cycle count program (yes, I know that is not a great scenario), would you still recommend a blind receipt. You are intentionally inserting inventory variances from the trucks. That depends on how accurate you feel your inventory is. In my mind, if I do not trust my inventory, I would implement a cycle counting process as a higher priority than whether or not I blind receive. So, continue receiving as is today, get your store inventoried, and then move towards blind receiving (if you feel that your vendor shipments are extremely accurate).

7 Appendix Deleting Items from the Inventory Viewer You can delete multiple items at a time by using the Inventory Viewer. Read the three sections below in the order presented. The first and second sections explain what you should do before attempting to delete items. The third section is the actual procedure for deleting items. Before You Delete Items Deleting an item can affect sales history and other information. You should not delete an item until after running year-end reports. If you delete an item prior to year-end, the sales history information reported by other inventory reports (such as Reports RIV, RIS, RSH, RPH, RIH, and RPA) will be inaccurate. Prior to deleting an item, you must check other functions to see if that item exists. If the item does exist, you must first delete thesku from that function before you delete the SKU from Inventory Maintenance. Check the following functions (from Network Access or from the Inventory Maintenance window): IAD Inventory Adjustment FIL Flexible Inventory Load MPO Modify Purchase Order PIP Physical Inventory Posting QPIP Quick Physical Inventory Posting MPH Modify Physical Inventory Shrinkage History POS Transactions (any saved POS transactions, such as orders, estimates, bids, special orders, and transfers) Item Price Changes (Go To menu) Alternate Part Number (Vendor tab) Modify Item Promotions (Go To menu) Modify Kits (Go To menu) Modify Tally Cross Reference (Go To menu)

8 Required Options and Security The options and security bits listed below affect your ability to delete items from the Inventory Viewer. After reading the information below, you may want to review these settings in Options Configuration and Security Maintenance before attempting to delete items in the Inventory Viewer. The new option 8617 "Allow Delete in Inventory Viewer?" must be set to Yes to enable the Delete feature in the Inventory Viewer. The new security bit 777 "Ability to Delete in Inventory Viewer?" must be set to Yes for the signed-on user to see the delete button in the Inventory Viewer, even if option 8617 is set to Yes. The existing security bit 224 "Delete inventory items" must be set to Yes for the signedon user to be able to delete in the Inventory Viewer. The existing option 3037 "Allow deleting items in Inventory Maintenance if QOH is not zero" is checked during the delete; if this bit is set to No, you cannot delete items that have a quantity on hand. The existing option 3038 "Give warning if deleting an item that has any quantity > 0" is also checked during a delete, and if set to Yes, the system may deliver a warning depending on the item s quantity on hand. If you have a multi-store system, and you want to delete items across stores, you must have the following existing security bits set to Yes: o o Security Bit 6 "View data in all stores" Security Bit 12 "Add/Change/Delete data in all stores"

9 Deleting Items from the Inventory Viewer 1. From the Eagle Browser, click Inventory Menu, then click Inventory Maintenance. From Inventory Maintenance, click Viewer. The Delete button only displays in the Inventory Viewer if you have launched the viewer from Inventory Maintenance. 2. Look up the desired range of items from which you will be deleting. 3. Multistore: In the Store field above the grid, indicate the store(s) from which you want to delete items, or select All Stores. 4. If checkboxes aren't already displayed in the far left column of the grid, right click on any column heading and select Checkboxes. 5. Click the checkbox next to the items you want to delete. (Note: you can also use the downarrow key and spacebar to place or remove checkmarks) 6. Click Delete. 7. Multistore: If prompted, select Yes to delete records in all stores, or select No to delete records in just the store specified in the Store field of the Inventory Viewer. (Note: the prompt does not display if you selected All Stores or a Store Group in step 3, or if you don't have security bits 6 and 12 to delete items from all stores.)

10 8. To proceed with the deletion, click Yes in the warning box. 9. To proceed with the deletion, click Yes in the second warning box.

11 Item Status Report (RIS) Use the Item Status Report (RIS) to print the customized reports (called "flex reports") that you create in Report Format Definition (Function DEF). Also use RIS to print the following pre-defined flex reports: Zero Sales report Overstock report Zero Quantity report On Order report Stock Status report Note: Do not delete the pre-defined reports in Function DEF. Printing the Item Status Report (RIS) 1. From the Eagle Browser, click Reports Menu, Inventory Reports, Item Status Report (RIS). The Item Status Report window displays. 2. If you have set up a Default Report Profile for this report, you can simply click Run to use the defaults. Or, you can retrieve a saved report, make any necessary changes, and click Run. Otherwise, continue with the next step. 3. From the page, review the default entries in the fields and make changes if needed. For a definition of each field, click here. 4. Click. A page of fields displays. Click in the box to the left of the options you want. For a definition of each option, click here. 5. Click. A page of fields displays. Fill in the fields above the line as desired. In the lower portion of the window, fill in the desired fields to limit the items that are included on the report. For a definition of each field, click here. 6. (Optional) Click. A page of fields displays. Fill in the desired fields to include or exclude groups of items. For a definition of each field, click here. 7. If you chose Printing Sequence 5 (User Defined) on the From/To page, click. If you did not choose Printing Sequence 5, skip this step.

12 Fill in the fields to define the sequence in which you want the report to print. For a definition of each field, click here. If you chose Report Type A (Zero Sales) on the Options page, click you did not choose Report Type A, skip this step.. If 8. Type an X in the box next to the period(s) you want the system to check for zero sales. For a definition of each field, click here. 9. (Optional) Click. A page of fields displays. Fill in the fields if you want to fax the report. For a definition of each field, click here. 10. Click Run if you are running this report now, or click Queue if you are adding this report to a queue. For more information about creating queues, click here. RPA: Ranking Calculations The Product Analysis Report (RPA) evaluates and ranks inventory items based on sales history. This topic provides an example RPA report and explains how the system calculates ranking codes. For more information about running the RPA report, refer to the RPA help topic or the job aid. Product ranking is a way to rank (prioritize) like items based on some predetermined constants, such as grouping, criteria, or time frames. For example, like items can be all the items within a specific department code or class code, or all items from a specific vendor, or a combination of these groupings (such as department code and vendor code). The RPA offers a variety of ranking criteria, including units sold, dollars sold, margin, GP%, on hand value, and YTD transaction. Select from a variety of ranking timeframes, including to-date, current period, YTD, last year, and last 12 months.

13 How Items Are Ranked Regardless of which analysis sequence you choose, the system does the following to determine the popularity code for items. 1. First, the system identifies all items to be included on the report, and then determines the total for the ranking criteria selected. On the example report, the ranking criteria is units sold over the last 12 periods (Analysis Sequence 1 and Sales Period 5 were the options selected when running the report). The total units sold for all items on the report is Next, the system ranks the items so that the first item that prints is the item with the highest number of the ranking criteria you selected when running the report. On the example report, the first item that prints is the item with the highest units sold over the last 12 periods. On the report, this is SKU with 320 units sold. 3. Finally, the system assigns a popularity code to each item. The figure in the %Cum (cumulative) column determines when the popularity code will change from A to B, B to C, and so on. The report keeps a running total of the criteria used for ranking and compares the running total to the grand total. On the example report, for the first item, SKU , 320 units is % of 1071 (total units sold). The percent displays in both the %Tot column (to the right of the Units Sold column) and the %Cum column (to the left of the QOH column). The next item, SKU , sold 156 units, which is % of That percent prints in the %Tot column. The system then adds to , for a total of % and prints that percent in the %Cum column. The report continues in this fashion, adding the %Tot for the item to the %Cum from the previous item, increasing the %Cum each time. When the %Cum is greater than the % Breakpoint you specified when running the report, the popularity code changes. To set the ranking codes (A, B, C, D, X), the system uses 70/30 percent breakpoints. This is the default, but you can change it when you run the report. Using the 70/30 breakpoints, the rankings are A=70%, B=85%, C=95%, D=100%, X=none (0%). Only the A, B, C percents can be modified when you run the report.

14 On the example report, the %Cum exceeded the % Breakpoint between SKU and SKU Since the % Breakpoint for A ranked items is 70% and the %Cum for SKU is %, this is the first item to receive a popularity code of B. It is possible for two items to have exactly the same amount in the ranking criteria. If this occurs when the %Cum exceeds the % Breakpoint, the popularity code will not change. This prevents items with the exact same amount in the field used for ranking from having different popularity codes. For example, if SKU had sold 20 units (instead of 17), SKU would also have a popularity rank of B, even though the %Cum of exceeds the % Breakpoint of 85. Example Report The following is an example of the RPA report, run to rank items based on units sold over the last 12 periods. If the Units Sold prints with an asterisk after the number, this means RPA found all the items it needed for a given ranking, but there were additional items on file that had just as many units sold as the previous item that was ranked (in other words, there was a "tie" for the given ranking). This means that the given ranking actually has a higher percentage of units sold than it should.

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16 Inventory Valuation Report (RIV) About the Inventory Valuation Report The Inventory Valuation report (RIV) prints the extended value of each inventory item at cost and retail price. It also includes item level information for year-to-date sales and cost of sales, as well as store totals for year-to-date sales, cost of sales, and gross profit. Run the Inventory Valuation Report (RIV) monthly to monitor the following: dollar amount invested in inventory annualized sales, cost, and gross profit dollars year-to-date sales dollars inventory turns GMROI (gross margin return on investment) Sales to Inventory ratio to verify that the total sales on the RIV equal the total sales on the Department Report (RDE). (Note: If you deleted any SKUs, these reports may not match) The following types of items do not appear on RIV: SKUs with a Y in the Kit Record field (Inventory Maintenance, the Codes tab) SKUs with a 2 in the Tally field (Inventory Maintenance, the Codes tab) Note: POS, purchasing and receiving, and transfer operations (multistore users) immediately update many of the fields on the Inventory Valuation Report (RIV). To get the most accurate information possible, you should only run this report while your store is closed.

17 Printing the Inventory Valuation Report 1. From the Eagle Browser, click Reports Menu, Inventory Reports, Inventory Valuation Report (RIV). The Inventory Valuation Report window displays. 2. If you have set up a Default Report Profile for this report, you can simply click Run to use the defaults. Or, you can retrieve a saved report, make any necessary changes, and click Run. Otherwise, continue with the next step. 3. From the page, review the default entries in the fields and make changes if needed. For a definition of each field, click here. 4. Click. A page of fields displays. Click in the box to the left of the options you want. For a definition of each option, click here. 5. Click. A page of fields displays. Fill in the fields above the line as desired. In the lower portion of the window, fill in the desired fields to limit the items that are included on the report. For a definition of each field, click here. 6. (Optional) Click. A page of fields displays. Fill in the desired fields to include or exclude groups of items. For a definition of each field, click here. 7. If you chose Printing Sequence 5 (User Defined) on the From/To page, click. If you did not choose Printing Sequence 5, skip this step. Fill in the fields to define the sequence in which you want the report to print. For a definition of each field, click here. 8. (Optional) Click. A page of fields displays. Fill in the fields if you want to fax the report. For a definition of each field, click here. 9. Click Run if you are running this report now, or click Queue if you are adding this report to a queue. For more information about creating queues, click here.

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25 The contents of this document are for informational purposes only and are subject to change without notice. Epicor Software Corporation makes no guarantee, representations or warranties with regard to the enclosed information and specifically disclaims, to the full extent of the law, any applicable implied warranties, such as fitness for a particular purpose, merchantability, satisfactory quality or reasonable skill and care. This document and its contents, including the viewpoints, dates and functional content expressed herein are believed to be accurate as of its date of publication March 31, The usage of any Epicor products or services is subject to Epicor s standard terms and conditions then in effect. Usage of the solution(s) described in this document with other Epicor software or third party products may require the purchase of licenses for such other products. Epicor, the EPICOR logo, Eagle N Series and Compass are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epicor Software Corporation in the United States, and in certain other countries and/or the EU. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Copyright 2016 Epicor Software Corporation. All rights reserved. About Epicor Epicor Software Corporation drives business growth. We provide flexible, industry-specific software that is designed around the needs of our manufacturing, distribution, retail, and service industry customers. More than 40 years of experience with our customers unique business processes and operational requirements is built into every solution in the cloud, hosted, or on premises. With a deep understanding of your industry, Epicor solutions spur growth while managing complexity. The result is powerful solutions that free your resources so you can grow your business. For more information, connect with Epicor or visit