XpertMart Quick Start Guide: Receiving & Adding Stock

XpertMart^™ Quick Start Guide

Lesson 10:
Receiving & Adding Stock

User Manual Chapters to Read
Topic: How Transactions Affect Inventory
Topic: Transactions
Topic: Receipts

Other Resources

Lesson
The way you add stock quantities to your inventory is through a transaction. There is no way to just change the stock quantity of an item. The reason you have to do a transaction is so that it leaves an audit trail behind. There are several ways to add stock to your store, includig adjustments, but the fastest way to do is to make Receipts. In other words, you are going to pretend you are receiving the merchandise from your vendors even though it is already sitting in your store.

Once again it really pays to have a plan. Much like you would if you were going to do a physical inventory, you should divide your store into sections and come up with a map you can work with to chart your progress and see which areas still need to be added to the inventory. Use the Notes field in the Receiving screen to indicate which area you just covered (e.g. "Section 12: shelves under check-out area".)

Making a Receipt is very straightforward. Go to Transactions>Vendors>Receipts. Later you will learn to link the Receipt to a Purchase Order you have made. For now, we will just make simple receipts. In the Vendors field, select a vendor from the drop-down menu. Note that you do not need to be a stickler for detail here: if the shelf or stand you are counting and adding to inventory has merchandise from lots of different vendors, don't worry. Just pick the main vendor. Ultimately the vendor reports in XpertMart™ look at the vendor you assigned a style to in the Styles Catalog, not which vendor is on the Receipt you made. The important thing here is get your inventory in...and that's going to be enough work as it is.

Next, go to the Items Area of the Receipt. The easiest way to enter items at this point, since you probably still don't have barcodes for them, is to being typing the Style name of the item you want to enter. This works the same way the Queries you learned how to do work. You can start typing the name of the style ("Ver") and hit <Enter> or you can use the wild card ("%Verona%"). Remember it is case sensitive. Once you hit enter a drop-down menu of possible matches appears. Pick the style you are looking for and press <OK>.

A matrix of sizes/colors will open up. Each cell in the matrix is an item. Here you can enter quantities: 2 Small/Blue, 4 Medium/Blue and so on. Move from cell to cell using the arrow keys on your keyboard. Notice the cell in dark pink in the lower right corner. This is a running total of the Items you've entered. When you've entered a quantity into the last cell of the matrix you still have to arrow key over to a different cell for the quantity to register. Press <OK> when you are done and you will see the items appear in your Receipt.

If you need to delete an Item, click on the correct row in the Receipt and press the <Delete> key on your keyboard. If you need to change the quantities you can either do this in the Qty column or by highlighting the row you want to edit and pressing <F4> to open the matrix again.

When you are done adding all of your items, press <F12>. This will save a copy of your Receipt in Documents>Vendors which you can lookup later. It will also at this point add the quantities to your stock. If you've configured it to do so, it will also print a paper copy of the Receipt you just made.

When you've finished your first Receipt, go to the Styles Catalog and lookup one of the Styles you just entered into the Receipt. If you click on the Matrix button in the toolbar you will now see the quantities you entered show up instead of the usual 0s you are used to seeing. Voila! These items are now in stock.

Now go to the Items Catalog and lookup an item that you just received. Click on the Audit button on the toolbar which is the yellow file cabinet. You should see an entry in the Audit Log for the Receipt you just made. Every time you make a transaction that adds or subtracts from inventory an entry will be written into the Audit Log. The matrix tells you how much you have in stock and the audit log tells you why you have what you have in stock.

The next 2-3 Receipts you make practice going to the Styles Catalog to look at the Matrix and then to the Items Catalog to look at the Audit Log. Once you've got these two functions under your belt, try the following shortcuts:

- When you are making a Receipt (or any Transaction) you can check how much you have in stock for a particular item without having to exit the Receiving screen. Enter an item into the Receipt and then highlight that particular row. If you press <Ctrl> <F4> you will see how much you have in stock in your store and if you press <Alt> <F4> you will see how much you have in stock across the chain of stores.

- Go to Documents>Vendors>Receipts and do a Query to find a Receipt you just made. Click on any row that has an item in it and press the Audit button on the toolbar. The Audit Log for the item you've highlighted will open up.

Now that you know how to make Receipts you can add all of your stock to inventory. It is easiest to do this while your store is closed since it becomes tricky to sell merchandise as you are trying to count it. Also, keep your Receipts small. It is better to break-up a large section of the store into 2 or 3 Receipts than to try to do it all in one monster Receipt. The margin of error will be less this way.

OK, now get to work!

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