NEW ITEM MANAGEMENT ACTIVANT EAGLE FOR WINDOWS

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1 NEW ITEM MANAGEMENT ACTIVANT EAGLE FOR WINDOWS Overview Keeping your store exciting and your product mix profitable are crucial to your business. Key to achieving these initiatives is introducing new items into your store regularly. By establishing a plan for new item setup, merchandising and replenishment, you ll achieve the results you need for sound inventory management. Among the advantages of adding new items to your store and managing them correctly in your system: The regular appearance of new items attracts new customers, and keeps existing customers coming back. You can easily track the item s purchases and sales performance, increase the speed and accuracy of register transactions, print and affix bin labels and replenish your stock when quantities run low. There are many ways to find new items for your store. A few recommendations are below. New Item Listing View the New Item Listing on the ACENET homepage monthly, looking at items added to the RSC in the past 7, 30, 60, or 90 days. For each item you ll see the Ace number, item description, each cost, retail cost, vendor name, date the item was added to the RSC and order multiple information. Ace Conventions and Exhibits Ace conventions offer an array of new items including seasonal products, core products, traditional and non-traditional hardware goods. Visit the vendor booths, New Arrivals, Beyond Basics, Pallet Alley and Drop Ship show specials to discover the latest new items. Customer Requests Listen to your customers requests. Have your sales staff document items that customers have asked for but you currently do not carry. Retailer Groups Talk to your fellow Ace retailers during group meetings to find out what s new and successful in their stores. Periodicals Stores participating in the Helpful Hardware Club program receive the Ace Homeplace magazine twice a year. This magazine contains project ideas, Last Update December

2 informative articles and item information that can help you learn about the latest products. Other sources for new item include Ace Insight articles, the Ace Impulse program and End Cap programs, visits to other hardware stores and industry conventions and events. Frequency Managing new items is an ongoing process. You ll want to add new items to your inventory regularly. Prerequisites Before you begin working with new items: If you have not already done so, select a store team member to be your Inventory Coordinator the person who approves and oversees the process of managing new items. If you do not already have a radio frequency (RF) unit, consider obtaining one. It is a hand-held device that you can use anywhere in your store for a number of tasks relating to new items. You should have a default location code of NEW assigned for each merchandise class. Setting up your computer to assign this location code to all new items lets you easily differentiate between new items that are created from the Electronic Invoice and SKUs in the computer system that you no longer stock. For more information see the Ace Way of Retailing document titled Location Codes. Task Summary Task 1 Task 2 Task 3 Task 4 Task 5 Task 6 Implement the Location Codes best practice Build and queue a ROP report to calculate order points for new items Set a default order point of 1 in Network Access Add new items to your system Implement additional computer settings for new items Merchandise new items Last Update December

3 Task Detail Detailed below are the tasks you must complete to set up new items in an Activant Eagle for Windows system. Task 1 Implement the Location Codes best practice For detailed directions see the Ace Way of Retailing document titled Location Codes. Tasks 6, 7, and 8 in this document specifically discuss new items. Note: The System Audit and Reporting Tools (SART) is ideal for discovering new items on your system. When SART is active on your system, any newly created item would have a complete record logged for it. This allows for research which will reveal those items, who created them and which method was used to add the item. Task 2 Build and queue a ROP report to calculate order points for new items If your store is using computer-suggested orders, it is the Ace best practice to build an Order Point Report to use for all new items added to your computer. An item is considered new if it was added to the system within the last 365 days. It is difficult to replenish new items using computer-suggested orders because there is not enough sales history for the computer s usual calculations. However, you can create an Order Point Report that ensures new items are replenished using a constant three-weeks supply and an average weekly sales based only on the item s sales history. For instructions on setting up this report, see the Ace Way of Retailing document titled Order Points. Task 3 Set a default order point of 1 in Network Access Through Maintain Activant Catalog Constants (MTCC) in Network Access, set-up a default order point of 1. This temporary order point is assigned to any new item added to your computer system through the catalog. It serves as a safety net to maintain a minimum of one unit on the shelf until the next Order Point Report is run. Once the Order Point Report runs, the computer will begin to base order points off of true sales history. To assign a default order point of 1 to new items added through catalog, do the following: 1. On the Eagle Browser, click Network Access 2. On the function line in Network Access, type MTCC and click Enter 3. Click Nxt Scr on the menu bar at the bottom of the screen 4. Click Enter to move the cursor down to the Default Order Point field and type a 1 in the field Last Update December

4 5. Click Change 6. A message appears at the bottom of the screen indicating that the record has changed 7. Click File then Exit to exit out of Network Access Task 4 Add new items to your system New item requests should be reviewed and approved by the Inventory Coordinator before the item is added to the system with a unique SKU. Assigning a SKU to the item ensures you can track it within your store and increases speed and accuracy at the point-of-sale. There are three different types of SKUs that you can add to your inventory file: 1. Ace RSC items - An Ace RSC item is any regularly stocked product in your warehouse, including stocked bulletin items. These items have a five-digit or seven-digit SKU number. Although there are several ways you can add an Ace RSC item or stocked bulletin to your inventory, including purchase order, ACENET and buyer s lists, it is the Ace best practice is to use the catalog feature within the ordering system. The catalog feature lets you automatically add the new item to your inventory along with its stocking information such as UPC, item description, commodity group, and department. 2. Non-stock bulletin items - These are SKUs that are not regularly stocked in your warehouse but are offered through Ace. They include opportunity buy items and show specials. It is the Ace best practice to add non-stock bulletin items to your inventory via electronic receipt postings (ERP). This way you can add an item on the invoice directly to the inventory file along with its stocking information such as UPC, item description, commodity group, and department. To do this, set Add new items = Y in ERP. If you do not carry a new or substitute SKU, this tells ERP to add the item to your system and update its quantity onhand. The SKU is added based on catalog information. Note: Using ERP lets the computer assign an auto-generated SKU. This SKU is based on ACESKU setup rules in Network Access. It is an Ace best practice to set up ACESKU to use eight digits for non-stock bulletin items. The first two digits represent the commodity group and the next six digits are sequentially assigned by the computer. For example, a SKU in commodity group 10 (cleaning supplies) can be given a SKU number of Drop ship items - This is any SKU purchased directly from a vendor and not stocked in your warehouse. It is an Ace best practice to add drop ship items to Last Update December

5 your inventory using the Load tab on the Inventory Maintenance (IMU) screen in Eagle Browser. It is the Ace best practice to use the vendor s manufacturer number as the item s SKU (omitting dashes, spaces, etc.). Prefixing this number with an alphabetic character prevents duplication of an Ace SKU. For example, your SKU for a Danco item might be D12345 or D To enable tracking and reporting for the new SKU, add the following information during new SKU setup. Typically, most of this information is found in the vendor s catalog. Description Mfg # Location code Quantity on-hand Retail and replacement cost Discountable Order multiple Stocking U/M Print labels Tax status Primary vendor and Mfg vendor Dept, class, and fineline Task 5 Implement additional computer settings for new items After you order the new item, you must prepare and make additional settings in your computer to ensure you can effectively manage it. Some of the settings described below, such as seasonality codes, do not apply to every item. However, all of these settings and recommendations apply equally to both Ace and non-ace items. 1. Print and affix bin labels Set the bin label quantity for this SKU in the codes tab in IMU, and print a bin label. For items that will be kept in multiple locations, be sure to print as many bin labels as you need. Put the bin labels in place on the sales floor. 2. Set a minimum order point for project SKUs Project SKUs are items that are typically purchased in large or specific quantities. For example, casters are considered project SKUs because customers almost always purchase four at a time. For these items, establish a minimum order point in your system to ensure that your on-hand supply does not fall too low. For more information, see the Ace Way of Retailing document titled Minimum Order Points. 3. Assign a PO season code You may sell some items, such as Christmas decorations and swimming pool chemicals, only at certain times of the year. It is important to identify and carefully manage these seasonal items to ensure they are ordered at the right Last Update December

6 times and in the right amounts. For more information see the Ace Way of Retailing document titled Seasonal Products. Task 6 Merchandise new items When a new item arrives at your store: 1. Scan the UPC symbol to ensure this item rings up correctly at point-of-sale. 2. Separate the new items from the rest of your order, so the store manager can educate the staff on its purpose and features before it is merchandised. 3. When you put the item in place on the sales floor, verify that the item s bin label has been printed and affixed as described in Task Consider printing and hanging a sign to promote the new item. It is particularly important to print and hang a sign if the new item is being displayed on an end cap. Ace Training Opportunities Listed below are Ace Hardware seminars, classes, videos and other resources that will help you learn more or train your staff on this subject. Click an underlined phrase to access this information on the Web. Ace Way of Retailing document titled Location Codes : Assign an address to every item in your store based on where the SKU is stocked. Ace Way of Retailing document titled Order Points: Optimally establish settings for order point (the minimum quantity to have on hand) in your in-store computer system. Ace Way of Retailing document titled Special Orders : Develop an automated procedure for effectively handling special orders in your system. Ace Way of Retailing document titled Minimum Order Points : Many items need a certain quantity in stock in order to sell. Setting minimum order points prevents your shelf quantity from falling below a desired level. Ace Way of Retailing document titled Seasonal Products : Establish a formalized plan for setting seasonality dates in your system to effectively replenish seasonal items. Last Update December

7 Additional Resources Within this document there is a reference to Activant s System Audit and Reporting Tools software. This is an optional software package for the Eagle for Windows system and is helpful in researching new items as described. If your system does not have System Audit and Reporting Tools, click here for more information Team Type of Assistance Phone Technology Value Team Activant Advice Line Information on the theories and practices described in this document valueteam@acehardware.com Computer Support Last Update December