Items and Item Availability¶

Each shop has a certain amount of products tha are being sold and kept on stock. The original idea is that the item cards are mastered centrally and the shops only put existing products on stock and sell it to the customers, therefore a simplified item card has been created for POS solution only containing the necessary information.

Simplified Item Card¶

The item card for POS purposes only serves for looking at the basic item information. So you can only find following information about the item on the item card:

• Item Number
• Item Description
• Base Unit of Measure
• Sales Unit of Measure
• Item Category Code
• Item Picture

From the simplified item card following actions can be performed:

• a new item variant can be created
• new atrributes can be assigned to the item
• adding an item Cross Refference for an item/item variants

All those actions can be accomplished by selecting a relevant action in the function list accessible by clicking the assist button on the item card.

As a standard functionality extension, we have also added a possibility to define Item Attributes to a certain variant. This function can be accessed from the Item Variant List using the assist button.

Item Availability¶

One of the most important information a shop needs to know about the item is it´s availability. The availability can be viewed on the simplified item card. Two types of item availability will be shown:

• item availability in current shop
• item availability in other shop

Item Availability in Current Shop¶

For each item following information about item availability is checked and are displayed on the simplified item card:

If the item doesn´t have variant, all of those informations are listed in the Availability tab on the item card.

If the item has variants, all those informations are listed on the Item Variants subpage, which shows all of above mentioned data for each variant separately.

Item Availabiity in Other Shops¶

As you can have several shops, it´s useful to know if the item is available in any of those. The same information about availability that are tracked for the current shop are also tracked for other shops and you can view them on the Item Avaibility by Shop subpage. The list that is available directly on the item card shows availability for all item variants (total available amount).

If the item has variant and you want to display availability in a certain shop for certain variant, you can do that by clicking on the number displayed in the Inventory column. A list displaying the Item Variants will appear including the information for current Inventory, available inventory, expected inventory and earlier availability date.

Shop Replenishment Planning¶

A special interface was created for managing replenishment for your shops. This interface is supposed to offer a simplified view on the demands for certain products on you shops and plan the quantities that should be ordered from the vendor.

You can find the new environment in BC menu under "Replenishment Planning". If you want your shop assistants to be directly able to do the replenishment for the shop, you can add this tool to the POS Role Center by bookmarking it.

After using this action in the menu, a new worksheet page opens. In the beggining the worksheet page will be empty.

You can select:

• Batch (for each shop you can have several batches e.g. a separate batch for items from specific vendors)
• Date filter (this field limits the range for the calculated fields for the availability)

Each shop can be entering the lines of the replenisment planning worksheet manually (e.g. noting items that an order should be placed for). Alternatively you can use an action to prepare lines for you. To fill in the lines of the replenishment planning interface you can use the "Load Items" function.

This function will open a dialogue to enter parameters for the items that should be included in the calculation, e.g. items for a specific vendor. Typically you would at least select the location.

If an item has subistitutes, you can use the "Explode Substitutes" function to show available substitutes in the replenisment planning worksheet.

For each item you will see

• Sales Quantity: quantity of the item that was sold in the time frame specified by the date filter in the replenisment planning header
• Qty. on Purchase Order: quantity of the item that is currently ordered from all possible vendors from the location on the line
• Qty. on Planning Wrksht.: quantity of the item that is already inserted in requisition worksheet lines
• Qty. on Transfer Order: quantity of the item that is already inserted on transfer orders that are supposed to be delivered to the stock location on the planning line

The user also sees follow-up information about the Replenishment system of the item - for shop items typically Purchase (the item will be ordered directly on the shop) or Transfer (the item will be transferred from the central stock).

The shop employe goes through the replenishment planning worksheet and checks what items and in what quantities should be ordered. This quantity should be noted to the "Quantity to Order" column in the replenishment planning worksheet. If all the requests have been completed, the user should use the "Create Requisition Worksheet" function.

After the function has been run, a dialogue will appear for the user to specify parameters of the requisition worksheet to which the lines should be transferred. The user needs to select the Template and Batch of the desired requisition worksheet. He also selects the planning date - this planning date will be used for lines that don´t have requested delivery date filled in (e.g. for the lines that should be delivered as soon as possible).

The user has two options:

• Carry-out Action Messages: if this field is ticked then the requisition worksheet lines are created and action messages are carried out (leading to purchase and transfer orders being created directly), if it is not tikced, the lines are only transferred to the worksheet waiting for a review and further processing by the user
• Open Req. Worksheet: if this field is ticked then the requisition worksheet should be opened after the line creation has been finished

The lines of the replenishment planning worksheet that have "Quantity To Order" filled in will be then transferred to the requisition worksheet that you have selected. These lines are afterwards deleted from the replenishment planning worksheet.

Searching For an Item¶

If you are looking for a certaion item, the POS rolecenter offers several different ways:

• searching an item by entering it´s number or scanning it´s barcode
• searching an item by its attributes
• searching an item from item list

Searching an Item By Number/Barcode¶

If you know the number of the item you´re looking for or it´s cross reference (e.g. by scanning it´s barcode), you can use the "Find Item" action available in the POS role center.

After using this action a dialogue will appear asking the user to enter or scan the code

If the item is found, the item card will be displayed.

Searching an Item By Attributes¶

This fuction can be used in case you want to find an item by entering one or more of it´s parameters. To achieve that you can use the "Find Item By Paramenters" action.

A dialogue will appear asking the user to fill in parameters, which should be reflected. The user can select following parameters:

• Item Category Filter
• Item Description Filter
• Only Available
• Item Attributes (user has to enter the atribute and it´s requested value)

After entering the parameters and submitiing the dialogue a list of corresponding items will appear.

Searching an Item in the Item List¶

If you want to view the list of all items in your database, you can use the "Items" action.

This will display the list of all item cards from which you can the open the simplified item card.

Viewing Item Placement on Bins¶

If you´re using application version 22 and above, you´re able to use our new feature that enables you to view item bin location on your shop location.

First you need to enable the checkbox "Show Item Whre-Is Tile" on your shop card in the General tab.

After you do so, you will be able to see the a new tile in your POS RoleCenter called Item - Where Is.

After using this action you will be asked to enter the identifier of the item for which you want to view the bin location. You can either enter the item number, item serial number, item lot number or item referrence to identify the item.

Afterwards if the item is identified and is available on your shop location, the list of bin contents for the location will be displayed. If you only identified the item number (either by scanning the cross reference or the item number), bin content for all variants will be displayed.

Adding Items to Bills¶

If you found an item with either of the above mentioned ways, you might want to:

• create a bill for that item (action called Create Bill)
• add that item to an existing bill (action called Insert to Existing Bill)

Both of those functions are available:

• from the item list using the assist button above selected item card

• fron the item card using assist button and selecting the action

• from the item card from the variant list using the assist button and selecting the action

Creating a New Bill for Selected Item¶

You can accomplish that by running the "Create Bill" function from above mentioned places. If you run the funcion for an item with variants, then as the first step you are asked to pick the variant that the receipt should be prepared for.

A new bill will be created for select item and it´s variant for the default customer.

If you want to, you may change the default customer to your actual customer, you can add other items or discount and then proceed to processing the Payment and posting the bill. For more detail about the bill processing see Bill Processing

Adding Selected Item to Existing Bill¶

If you already have a bill and you just want to add the selected item to the bill, you can do this by using "Insert to Existing Bill" function. If you run the function for an item with variants, as the first step you are asked to pick the variant that the receipt should be prepared for.

As the next step you are asked to pick the bill that you want to add the item to. A list of all opened bills will be displayed.

The item will be added to the selected bill and the bill will be opened.

Adding Selected Item to Existing Bill¶

If you already have a bill and you just want to add the selected item to the bill, you can do this by using "Insert to Existing Bill" function. If you run the function for an item with variants, as the first step you are asked to pick the variant that should be added to the bill.

As the next step you are asked to pick the bill that you want to add the item to. A list of all opened bills will be displayed.

The item will be added to the selected bill and the bill will be opened.

Using advanced barcode utilization¶

This functionality is available from application version 1.4 and above and it enables the users to define what information the barcodes contain and how to utilize them when creating POS documents.

The barcode can contain:

• item identifier
• item unit price
• quantity to be sold

One of the possible ways of using this functionality is for selling loose tea where you divide one big package into smaller packages each marked with its own barcode label that contains the item identification and its weight or price.

When such barcode is scanned into the bill the product identifier and its quantity or price will be transfered to the bill line for given article, sales unit of measure, quantiy and price.

To use this functionality you first need to set up the structure of the barcode. You can do this by searching the "Barcode Formats" in the Business Central menu. After opening the relevant link following setup page will be dislayed.

You can use regular expresions to set up the barcode structures and define in which parts of the barcode relevant product informations are stored. You can find the list of the most important expression bellow.

The setup in the example above is based on the RCN prefixes in Czech Republic:

Meaning of the shortcuts in the table above:

Currently the barcode supports two key values and for each one of them the user can specify its type from the options:

• Item ID
• Quantity
• Price

If you then read the barcode into the bill using the scanning bar, eg. for type 21 you could input the string "2911100180111" which would stand for item : 1110 and quantity: 180, a bill line will be created for the respective item and quantity.