Inventory

Overview

An inventory item represents something that you can buy or sell (or both). An inventory item can be a product or a service, and the attributes that will be assigned will differ depending on this distinction. Product is a physical item stored in a warehouse, while service is an activity that results in an essentially intangible benefit.
Inventory items can be in multiple locations, have more than one unit of measurement, and can be part of another assembled inventory item.
Service inventory items are used in the time-tracking module and can be added as hours, minutes or as a flat rate. For a school, this would be school fees that students are invoiced.

Creating Units of Measurement

To create UoMs:
  1. Click Warehouse and then click UoM sets. This will open the list view of all your units of measurement created.
  2. Click Create to create a new one.
  3. Enter the unit Set name. For example, Per Day.
  4. Enter the Base unit. For example, Per Day.
  5. Click Save and close to complete.
You are now able to create an inventory item using the set you have created.

Creating Inventory Items Manually

To create a Product:
  1. Navigate to Quick menu or Warehouse and click Inventory.
  2. Click Create.
  3. In the Type field, select Product.
  4. Enter a Code. Note that your code must be unique.
  5. Give a Description to tell you a little bit about the inventory item.
  6. Specify the Category your product belongs to.
  7. Set a Price for your item and add its Cost, if needed. The price is a sales price of this Inventory item prefilled in Tax invoices, and the cost is the purchases price of an item specified by default in Supplier Invoices.
  8. If you want your discount for this inventory to include taxes, select the Discount is taxable checkbox.
  9. If your inventory item is a textbook, select the Textbook checkbox.
  10. To add a photo of your product:
  • Click Click to Add Picture.
  • Select an image from the file or just drag it to the opened window.
  • Click OK.
11. On the Setup tab, specify a Costing method. Costing method is a method of calculating the cost of the product in stock. There can be 2 options:
  • Weighted Average. The average cost is assigned to each inventory item.
  • FIFO (First In First Out), the cost of each inventory item is the value of this item in the most recent document that confirms the item receipt.
12. The Inventory, Sales and COGS accounts are default accounts created when setting up the system, therefore, they will automatically appear. You can change them if necessary.
13. Specify the Reorder point which is a value indicating that your stock requires replenishment, UPC (Universal Product Code), Purchase and Sales VAT codes (if applicable), and Type of activities.
14. If you purchase this inventory from the supplier, go to the Supplier tab and specify a Preferred supplier from the Counterparties catalog, their Code and Description. This information will appear in the POS created for this inventory item.
15. On the UoM tab, set a unit of measurement for the item.
16. If the Textbook checkbox is selected, go to the Textbook tab and enter the Title, Subject, Grade, ISBN, Initial price, Supplier, Author, Publisher, Year published, Language, and whether the book is Audited or not.
17. Click Save and close.
Please note: the fields that have red lines are mandatory, and you will not be able to proceed without filling them. Other fields are optional.
To create a Service:
  1. Navigate to Quick menu > Inventory.
  2. Click Create.
  3. In the Type field, select Service.
  4. Enter a Code. Note that your code must be unique.
  5. Give a Description to tell you a little bit about the inventory item. For example, School Fees for Grade R 2019.
  6. Specify the Category your product belongs to.
  7. Set a Price for your item and add its Cost, if needed. The price is a sales price of this Inventory item prefilled in Tax invoices, and the cost is the purchases price of an item specified by default in Supplier Invoices.
  8. If you want your discount for this inventory to include taxes, select the Discount is taxable checkbox.
  9. On the Setup tab, the Expense, Sales and COGS accounts are default accounts created when setting up the system, therefore, they will automatically appear. You can change them if necessary.
  10. Specify the UPC (Universal Product Code), Purchase and Sales VAT codes (if applicable), and Type of activities.
  11. If you purchase this service from the supplier, go to the Supplier tab and specify a Preferred supplier from the Counterparties catalog, their Code and Description. This information will appear in POS created for this inventory item.
  12. On the UoM tab, set a unit of measurement for the item. For example, how many times you are going to invoice a student for this item during the year: Per Year, Per Month, Per Term.
  13. Click Save and close.
Please note: the fields that have red lines are mandatory, and you will not be able to proceed without filling them. Other fields are optional.

Importing Inventory Items

Accessing Importing Tool

To access the importing tool:
  1. Go to Quick menu.
  2. Select Getting started under Tools.
  3. Click the button with two arrows next to Import lists and documents.

Preparing Excel Spreadsheet

In order to import the inventory information, it should all be recorded in an Excel spreadsheet. Prepare the Excel spreadsheet, bearing in mind the specific rules:
  • This spreadsheet should be saved in a CSV format.
  • Some laptops save a CSV with a semicolon (;) as a separator but for importing purposes please make sure that it is saved with a comma (,) as a separator. To change the separator simply open the CSV file using notepad, highlight the semicolon, go to edit and select replace, enter the semicolon in the FIND section, then enter the comma in the REPLACE section. You can save it normally and this will automatically fix the CSV file as well.
  • The Excel spreadsheet should have different columns for each attribute that is part of an inventory card in the system.
  • Each inventory item should occupy 1 row of the spreadsheet.
  • There are certain fields that can be identified in the importing tool screen. These include: GL accounts, preferred supplier, costing method, and inventory category.
  • If an item is taxable or the discount is taxable, True/False should be used in the Excel spreadsheet to identify.
Once it is ready, make sure it is saved as a CSV format and closed before importing.

Importing Inventory Items

Important Buttons:
  • Prepare Data – once the file has been selected and mapped to the system attributes of an inventory card, this button will check if there are any errors.
  • Load Field Mapping – there are 2 options for this button:
  • Load Default – this will allow you to save your current mapping as a default.
  • Load from File – will allow the Rise SA team to create the mapping and send it to the clients. Then the client can import the mapping.
  • Save Field Mapping – there are 2 options for this button:
  • Save to Default – this is to save your settings in tabular section that are already mapped. This will help you in not having to map every time you upload data, but your file should follow the same structure.
  • Save to File – this will download the current mapping and save it in your laptop’s download folder as an XML type file.
  • Reset Field Mapping – this will clear all the mapping that has been done.
  • Show CSV and Mapping – this will open the window where you are able to see the Excel spreadsheet and map it to certain attributes.
Important Indications:
After selecting the inventory option in the getting started tool, a pop-up window will appear showing all the attributes and details of the importing tool.
  1. In the What do you want to import? field, select Inventory.
  2. If the file has a header, select the The first row of my source file contains headers checkbox.
  3. You can ignore the date format as the object to be imported does not relate to dates.
  4. Indicate how the system should treat rows that already exist. There are 2 options: Ignore record or Update existing record.
  5. To indicate that the system should ignore blank records, select the Ignore blank fields checkbox.
  6. To indicate that the system should generate its own code for the inventory, select the Generate unique Inventory codes checkbox.
  7. Click Choose File for Import > Select from disk, select your file and click OK. Make sure the file you select is in a CSV format.

Mapping Spreadsheets to Inventory Card Attributes

After selecting the file to be imported, a pop-up window will appear, giving you the opportunity to map the spreadsheet to the attributes in the inventory card. This window will look like your Excel spreadsheet file.
1. Double-click the first row for each column to map it. This row will initially say Choose field, and after it is mapped it will have the attribute name.
2. When you are done mapping all the spreadsheet to the attributes, click Save and close.
3. There are some attributes that cannot be mapped to the spreadsheet column and must be indicated manually in the importing tool screen. For example, GL accounts. To map these fields, go to the importing screen and in the highlighted line for each field, double-click the Default value to select a value. This will open up the Chart of accounts list, and you can select the account that you wish.
4. There are specific attributes like preferred supplier, costing method, and inventory category. These can be mapped as well as indicated manually in the importing tool screen.
5. If the file has the same of the above attributes for all items, it can be selected manually in the importing tool screen. If the file has different attributes above for each item, then these need to be written in the file in the exact same way they are recorded in the system. To map these fields, go to the importing screen and in the highlighted line for each field, double-click the Default value to select a value.
  • Costing method – Weighted Average or FIFO.
  • Inventory categories – this depends on the categories created by the user.
  • Preferred supplier – this will look at the supplier list in the system.
  • Inventory type – product or service.

Checking and Importing the Data

1. When you are done linking all attributes, click Prepare Data to check if there are any errors in the mapping. Any errors will have a message at the bottom and will be indicated in red. Only the header should be in red as it will not be imported. If you have selected the file has a header option, the system will automatically untick it from the importing selection. If everything is okay, it will be automatically ticked. If you would like to untick any, you can do it.
2. Once you have selected the inventory items that you would like to import, click Check Data. If there are any errors, it will also be shown here in the failed section.
3. If there are no errors, click Back to Data Preview. This will take you back to the checking page, where you will now see the Import data button in yellow.
4. Click Import data. The system will give you statistics of how many have been imported and how many failed.

Checking Imported Information

Once the importing is done, you can click You can check the results here to open up the inventory items list. Alternatively, you can go to Warehouse and select Inventory to open up the inventory list.
You can search for the inventory items that you have imported and open their data card to have a look at the imported information.

Records of Opening Balances Inventory Document

Inventory Journal

The Opening balances inventory document will automatically affect the inventory journal to show an increase in the inventory balance.
To see the effects of the importing document, open the document and click Inventory journal at the top.
The user will be able to see how the document recorded the items and value in the inventory journal.

Accounting Records

The user can choose whether to record the Opening balances inventory document in the accounting records.
To generate journal records:
  1. Open the Opening balances inventory document and click the Generate general journal records checkbox. If this checkbox is not selected, it will not affect the accounting record. It will only affect the inventory journal.
  2. Select the box to record in the general journal.
  3. Click Post to record it.
  4. Click General journal at the top to see the effects.

Trial Balance

To see the effect of the importing document in the general journal, pull a Trial Balance.
The bottom section will have all the balance sheet accounts and the user will be able to see the amounts recorded under the Inventory Control Account and Opening Balance Account.
If the Generate general journal record checkbox is not selected, the amounts will not be recorded here and in other records.

Inventory Characteristics

Creating Inventory Characteristics

For each inventory item in the system, you can create characteristics. Inventory characteristics represent additional dimensions of your product. These can be color, size, volume and so on.
To create a new characteristic:
  1. Navigate to Quick menu > Inventory.
  2. Double-click an inventory item for which you want to create a characteristic.
  3. Click Characteristics at the top.
  4. Click Create.
The Characteristic value (create) window appears. In the opened window, the Object is already specified.
  1. Specify a Characteristic type (required) and Value.
  2. Click Save to save the changes or Save and close to finish.

Characteristic types

In the Characteristic types catalog, the information about various types of characteristics of the enterprise's products is kept. For example, color, fabric, size, etc.
You can create a new Characteristic type right from the Characteristic value (create) window.
To create a characteristic type:
  1. Navigate to Quick menu > Inventory.
  2. Double-click an inventory item for which you want to create a characteristic.
  3. Click Characteristics at the top.
  4. Click Create. The Characteristic value (create) window appears.
  5. Click the arrow on the Characteristic type field > Show all > Create.
  6. Specify the Description (required). The Value type will be Characteristic value by default. A Code will be automatically generated by the system.
  7. Click Save to save the changes or Save and close to finish.
For each Characteristic type, you can create Characteristic values.
To create a characteristic value:
  1. In the Characteristic type window, click Characteristic values.
  2. Click Create.
  3. Specify a Description and a Characteristic type. A Code will be automatically generated by the system.

Barcodes

You can create an unlimited number of barcodes for your items.
To create a barcode:
  1. Go to School and click Barcodes.
  2. Click Create.
  3. Enter the Barcode or click Generate barcode to fill it automatically.
  4. Specify the Product from the Inventory catalog.
  5. Select the product condition: New, Used, Tatty, or For Repair.
  6. Enter a Serial number if applicable.
  7. Click Save and close.