Inventory Management

PRONTO Xi Inventory is a highly flexible module capable of meeting the requirements of a broad range of industries. It is the platform for PRONTO Xi Sales Orders and Purchase Orders, and is fully integrated with General Ledger. You have complete visibility and can track your inventory by warehouse for recording of quantity, movement and other relevant information. Most changes to inventory levels are the result of processing in other modules, such as Sales Orders, Purchase Orders or Manufacturing.

PRONTO Xi Inventory functionalities include:

• Multiple warehouses, suppliers and prices per item;
• Multiple Units of Measure (UOM) and full First-In-First-Out (FIFO);
• Support for GS1, SKU and PLU bar codes;
• Standard, Average, FIFO, Actual and Replacement costing;
• Serial number and lot tracking;
• Item licences;
• Full stocktake/cycle counting;
• Interactive image display for products;
• Automated reordering and replenishment.

Inventory Master

Inventory records all the information and transaction history of an item. To create or maintain an item, you can use the main inventory maintenance screen or industry-specific screens. Chemical, paper, retail, wholesale distribution, timber and mining are some of the industries with specialised maintenance screens.

PRONTO Xi Inventory handles different types of items:

Stocked or standard – This is a normal, saleable item. It is typically purchased, but can also be manufactured;

Manufactured – These items are manufactured. They typically have components, a Bill of

Material (BOM) and routings;

Raw materials – These items are not saleable and they do not have a BOM. They can be transferred using a transfer sales order;

Indent – These items are not normally held in stock, but purchased subject to a sale;

Kit – This is a combination of various types of items;

Labour – These items can have a cost and a selling price but there is no necessity to control quantity on hand. For example, they can be used as components to cost labour in BOM or kits;

Specials – These items can have a cost and a selling price but there is no necessity to control quantity on hand. They are generally used to control cost overhead recovery or consumables (expense items such as stationery, electricity and water). Inventory Master records can also include additional information or notes such as hazardous or dangerous goods documentation.

Inventory Maintenance

The main Inventory Maintenance screen provides detailed information about an item. Its menu options give you access to additional screens for warehouse, suppliers, pricing, alternatives, notes, BOM and more.

Warehouse

In Inventory, you can maintain pick and bulk locations against each warehouse. Additional tracking of inventory is available in PRONTO Xi Warehouse Management System. Inventory records and tracks movements, costs and commitments for each item in each warehouse. You can use this information for reordering requirements. Warehouses within Inventory allow you to:

• Record inventory levels and movement details;
• Determine inventory postings to the General Ledger;
• Record sales history;
• Manage taxes (cost-inclusive or exclusive of tax);
• Automatically receive items from other warehouses via internal transfer orders.

PRONTO Xi offers various types of warehouses. They include standard and advanced warehouses, factory, service van (inventory stored in fleet vehicles) and consignment warehouse.

Detailed inventory-level information is kept for each warehouse where an item is held. This includes stock on hand, commitments to various kinds of orders, and what is on order from suppliers.

PRONTO Xi records and displays a summary of the inventory movements in each warehouse by transaction type (for example, sales, purchases, transfers, adjustments).

Suppliers

You can specify any number of suppliers from whom you may purchase an item. This provides you with the opportunity to set up suppliers for the item per region and record each supplier’s price for the item as well as quantity breaks, purchasing rules and information about purchasing the product from that particular supplier. Additionally it allows you to track each supplier’s performance levels.

The supplier attributes include:

• Supplier preference;
• Supplier item code, description and conversion factor;
• Minimum order quantity;
• Supplier item group;
• Pack quantity and volume for cost apportionment of the freight charges;
• Supplier estimated and last lead time;
• Multiple quantity price breaks by supplier;
• Foreign currency pricing.

Pricing

The pricing structures may be set within the Inventory Master record. PRONTO Xi allows you to maintain multiple pricing levels for each item as well as promotional prices for specified periods. You may set up price algorithms as well as discount matrices. Tax rules are appropriately handled either at the item level or globally. The basic pricing record of an item consists of a base price, multiple prices for different categories or quantity breaks, and the recommended retail price. Each item may have additional pricing structures defined by customer group.

Prices can be recalculated for items based on a mark-up value or by applying a percentage increase over current prices. Your current price list can be copied into a price maintenance environment where price changes can be manipulated before updating the current price lists.

Inventory also allows you to keep track of your competitors’ prices.

Inventory Master Fields

Item Code

The item code is an alphanumeric field used to identify items throughout PRONTO Xi.

Description

Each item has a three-line product description.

Extended note facilities provide unlimited text to be stored for internal and external purposes.

Two additional fields identify the supplier’s item code and description. The supplier’s item code and description can be printed on purchase orders, alongside your item code.

Search by item code, Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) and product description is available.

Product Hierarchy

The product hierarchy is a multi-level classification system that allows a business to clearly define its product taxonomy. The five-level structure provides many benefits including greatly enhanced inventory management and reporting capability (for example, via Business Intelligence).

Flexible maintenance allows the hierarchy to be maintained from the top down, or bottom up, making it suitable for various business needs and industries.

Up to five levels are allowed for detailed and structured inventory classification:

• Division;
• Department;
• Category;
• Class;
• Group.

The system administrator can select how many ‘levels‘ of the hierarchy are turned on. Associated functions such as price maintenance, reordering and bulk item maintenance are able to leverage active levels of the hierarchy. Data integrity is maintained by enforcing the hierarchical relationships between each ‘child‘ and ‘parent‘.

Product Group

You can categorise items by item groups. The item group serves a number of purposes:

• Recording sales history;
• Posting to the general ledger for sales, cost of goods sold and more;
• Reporting;
• Dissection of prices, discounts and promotions;
• Calculation of sales representative commissions;
• Inventory valuation.

Posting of inventory transactions to the General Ledger is fully automated and can be based on the item group and warehouse if required.

Product Groups are also used to record sales history information. Sales history by sales representative, item and customer can be produced showing totals for each item group.

Prices, discounts and promotions can be established based on item group – for example, contract price by customer/item group, and promotional discount by customer type/item group. Special commission rates for sales representatives by item group can be established.

APN

The APN reflects an Alternative Part Number for a specific item. For example, it can be used to contain the code of another item, which is cross-referenced when the item is superseded.

GTIN

The universally recognised GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) is more commonly known as the industry-accepted bar code for a specific item. A single item can have multiple GTINs that reflect the various units of measure such as consumer unit, traded unit or pallet.

Both APN and GTIN can be used for enquiry, reporting and scanning directly into PRONTO Xi.

Units, Packs, Sizes and Weights PRONTO Xi allows multiple units of measure for the sale, the warehouse storage and the procurement of each inventory item.

The pack weight and cubic dimensions can also be stored for each item.

Traceability

PRONTO Xi Inventory allows for various means of traceability:

• Serial-tracked – There are three levels of traceability. Serial traceability can be used when the goods are received, at despatch, or both;
• Lot-tracked (for batch tracking) – This allows for full traceability from purchase to product recall if required;
• Purchase-tracked – This is tracking by purchase order number;
• Coil-tracked (for paper and metal coils) – This uses a combination of serial and lot tracking.

Import Tariffs/Excise Tax

The tariff charged when an item is imported from a foreign supplier is dependent upon the country of the supplier and the nature of the item.

PRONTO Xi uses a ‘country code’ to identify the country of origin, and a ‘tariff code’ to identify the class of the item for tariff purposes.

Tariff codes are held at the item level, and the country code is stored against the supplier.

Inventory Transactions

Comprehensive transactional details are held for each item and warehouse; these include control numbers (for example, serial number, lot number), source document and financial information.

PRONTO Xi maintains many historical data files with a user-definable retention period.

Issue/Adjust Inventory

Most inventory issues occur within other modules such as PRONTO Xi Shopfloor Manufacturing and Sales Orders. However, in some instances, there may be a need to record inventory issues manually.

Inventory can be issued against:

• Manufacturing (Factory/WIP or Work Order);
• Project Costing Management (General Ledger or Service Call);
• General Ledger;
• Maintenance Management;
• Inventory Adjustment.

Receipts from Purchase Order or Work Order

This function is normally performed within the Purchase Orders module, but PRONTO Xi provides a fast and simple option to receive goods from a supplier. It is used when the goods are purchased without processing a formal purchase order.

Goods that have been allocated to a work order are sometimes returned unused. This option

can be used to return the components back into inventory.

Manufactured Goods Receipt is a simple method of recording the receipt into inventory of

manufactured items. It can be used to receive manufactured items without using the BOM to

create and process a work order.

Quality Analysis

The Quality Analysis options allow you to hold goods until they have passed through your quality checks. These goods cannot be released for issue until they have been approved. If the items do not pass the inspection, PRONTO Xi allows you to reject, scrap or return the items to the supplier.

Reorder Processing

PRONTO Xi Inventory provides reordering functions to automatically create purchase orders and work orders according to selected criteria. It allows for a review process to occur prior to the creation of the actual orders.

A Reorder Report can be generated. It calculates the suggested reorder quantities to satisfy commitments, minimum inventory levels, maximum inventory levels, or a combination thereof.

Average sales history, average warehouse demand or forecast can also be used to create planned requirements.

The Reorder Processing calculation considers a number of factors including:

• Minimum and maximum days cover;
• Minimum and maximum inventory levels;
• Economic order quantity;
• Lead time;
• Current inventory level including current commitments;
• Items on order from supplier;
• In transit;
• Internal requisitions.

Budgets

PRONTO Xi holds both budget and forecast information at the item level. It can also be done at the planning group level, or by item group.

Budgets can be manually entered for each period of the year. You may use spread factors to apportion the total annual amount based on the relative weighting/ratio as specified for each period. Spread factors make allowances for equal period activities, seasonal fluctuations and other known factors that affect company sales. There are numerous reports available to compare budgets against actual sales as well as budget listings.

Costing

Inventory maintains various costs, depending on your inventory valuation methodology, for posting purposes, inventory valuation and sales margin reporting. The costing methods include:

• Standard Cost;
• Average Cost;
• Replacement Cost;
• FIFO Cost;
• Last Cost;
• Warehouse Cost;
• Actual Cost.

Inventory valuation reports can be produced at any time using the costing method of your choice, and if necessary costs can be recalculated based on a range of factors.

Landed costs are calculated as part of the shipment costing process. For more information, refer to PRONTO Xi Purchase Orders.

Kits

Kits are a list of components made up from saleable items that can be optionally selected during the sales order process. For example, a personal computer, keyboard, monitor and mouse may be sold individually or sold as a kit. Inventory provides for various categories of kit component lines including:

• Mandatory;
• Optional;
• Variable quantity;
• Grouped options.

The pricing of the kit can either be generated from the components, or can be simply selected from the item price record.

Stocktake

The stocktake functionality provides a snapshot view of your inventory holding, allowing you to measure your inventory accuracy, and automatically reflects any adjustments to the general ledger.

It supports wall-to-wall and cycle counting techniques to comply with company policies. Stocktake handles data capturing techniques such as tickets, bar coding, radio frequency (RF) and cards.

The stocktake process can include:

Initial pre-stocktake check – This reports any outstanding inventory-related transactions that may need to be completed prior to the final snapshot of the book inventory (outstanding sales orders, purchase orders and transfer orders including inventory awaiting putaway);

Prepare stocktake – This creates a snapshot file of your inventory holding and can produce a Stocktake Report. A unique stocktake control code is generated as part of this process which allows easy identification and parameters;

Stocktake refreeze – This option is available for resetting the snapshot file if further reprocessing has taken place that will affect the book inventory of the original snapshot;

Enter counts – Multiple data entry techniques can be employed, including manual or auto entry of the data;

Produce reports – Various reports are available to assist with the reconciliation process. These include the Differences, Variation, Uncounted Items, and Valuation Reports;

Update stocktake – Once the stocktake is finalised the update is performed to make all necessary adjustments to the stock ledger and general ledger for the appropriate accounting period.

Inventory Enquiry

PRONTO Xi Inventory has numerous enquiry options. The Inventory Enquiry Console shown below demonstrates an easy-to-use, full enquiry window of an inventory item. Utilising a navigation pane, it provides comprehensive enquiry options based on a variety of attributes including warehouse, purchasing, sales, transactions and manufacturing. In addition you have the ability to set up userdefinable favourites or industry-specific enquiries.

Reports

PRONTO Xi offers report writing tools and an extensive range of standard reports. These reports have additional selection criteria to deliver the most appropriate information for your organisation.

Some of the reports available in PRONTO Xi Inventory include:

• MTD-YTD Status and History;
• Warehouse Details;
• Inventory Valuation;
• FIFO Status;
• ABC Analysis;
• Dangerous Goods Manifest;
• Reorder;
• Max and Min Warehouse Inventory Levels;
• Slow Moving Items;
• Inventory Coverage;
• Transactions;
• Price List;
• Various supplier reports.