11 Apr 2024 | Windward Software
Everything You Don't Know About The Stock Management Tool
This Windward Webinar demonstrates the functions and benefits of the Stock Management Tool, within Windward System 5. The tool can help businesses manage their inventory levels, streamline their ordering process, and manage obsolete products.
- Scott Robbins did a walkthrough of the Stock Management Tool in Woodward System 5.
- The tool is part of the series of webinars and workshops focused on the fulfillment of orders.
- The tool helps businesses focus on ensuring they have enough products on hand for when customers visit.
- The tool also manages other ordering situations such as special orders, back orders, deliveries, installations, and time tracking.
- The Stock Management Tool has a focus on re-order points, a key aspect of inventory management.
- The tool allows for the setting of re-order points and reviewing sales history. It can also manage obsolete products.
- The tool links to the required orders report, allowing businesses to automate their ordering based on highs and lows.
- Scott demonstrated how to use the tool to mark items for deletion, a useful feature for managing obsolete or slow-moving products.
- The tool also allows for a review of sales data to determine what products need more orders.
- There was a discussion about the upcoming workshops that will delve deeper into inventory management topics like reducing out-of-stock situations, efficient ordering, and budgeting.
- A shout out was given to the Mobile App Sidekick, which allows for mobile inventory management and has recently undergone enhancements.
- Questions from participants were addressed throughout the call, providing further clarification on the tool's functions.
0:54
Check Check.
0:56
We're coming through, OK, sorry that everybody, welcome to the webinar, This, uh, this is part of our following through series.
1:05
This is Utilizing Stock Management Tool, Woodward System five presented by Scott Robbins.
1:16
Hi everybody.
1:17
Thanks, Kyle, and thanks everyone for coming today.
1:22
So I'll just do a quick review here of what our plans are for webinars and workshops.
1:29
For this upcoming quarter we're gonna focus on fulfillment of orders basically.
1:35
The first quarter of the year we were focused a lot on how to get your prices right. How to increase your basket size or the frequency of visits to your store.
1:48
And how do you use tools like barcoding to speed up your sales process?
1:53
Now we're gonna kind of take that to a logical next step and we're gonna focus on how to make sure you have enough of that product on hand to fulfill those orders when people stop by.
2:04
How to ensure that that stays that way.
2:07
Which is a lot of what we'll talk about today and how to manage other ordering situations, like special orders backwaters, how to deal with deliveries, how to deal with installations, service, salespeople, time tracking all of that stuff we'll be doing this quarter in the following webinars and workshops so we're hopeful that you'll join us for some of those.
2:28
Our first workshop will be next week and it's a really good segue. From today's topic, the stock management tool has a lot to do with re-order points.
2:37
And that's one of the main focuses of our workshop next Thursday morning at eight specific.
2:45
We're going to talk about just ordering best practices, re-order points, how to deal with special orders versus backwaters, and sort of the different intricacies of those two features of the software and sort of how to automate your no ordering.
3:00
We'll touch about talk about budgeting.
3:02
For ordering, if you're a business that thinks more dollars than quantities, it's larger ticket items, for example.
3:10
So that should be a very useful for our workshop next Thursday. We hope to see you there.
3:20
Today, we're gonna go through some basics of a tool that isn't actually brand-new, but it often is overlooked, for one reason or another. When I talk to clients on the phone, I often find that they don't know about this tool. So I thought, make a good webinar.
3:36
It's going to help you do certain things, like set re-order points, use your required orders report in just a slightly different way.
3:44
Perhaps look at things a little differently, like by season, or by location.
3:51
And it can also help you with managing obsolete products.
3:58
So we'll talk about all those things a little bit today, and we should have some time for questions and answers as well.
4:07
So first, I'm just going to show you where this tool is, and then there's a few settings that can affect how the tool works that we'll talk about briefly.
4:16
So the Stock Management tool you'll find in your purchasing section.
4:22
So here's one under Inventory and purchases.
4:26
Under purchases.
4:29
Pop that open a bit, right down the bottoms.
4:32
I think for this reason, just because of it, it was added later in the when we're development cycle, it's down way down here and people just don't notice it.
4:40
We'll fire that up.
4:44
And this tool is a very helpful tool.
4:48
If I choose a vendor, for example, then I'm going to tightened my search so it loads faster So I'll look at the love seats from Alpine distributors.
4:56
Can see I can filter by vendor or by category.
5:02
And it's going to display a whole bunch of sales data by quarter costing data price data as well as your mins and maxes or your re-order points on the right. And it, even, can tell you what your transfer points are between locations, if you have multiple locations.
5:25
Now, if you don't have multiple locations, this would look different.
5:28
You can see here I've got these different locations set up, and so that's going to be a different interface for everyone. You might just have one, or you might have a different number.
5:38
You'll also see this season's right here.
5:43
And this will depend whether you have your re-order points setting, your settings to be seasonal, or the same all year.
5:51
So before we dive into using this tool, I'm just gonna point you in the direction of these settings.
6:01
So I'm going to pop open the setup wizard here.
6:11
Now, that, the first setting, where you have multiple locations, the departments feature, if you're unaware of departments, this is a powerful feature of our software that is typically used when you have multiple locations for your business. But as you can see, my departments have been configured for different reasons.
6:26
one of my department is a truck, one of them is, represents my website, and one represents my warehouse, so they're not retail locations, there are sort of stockholding locations, or a way that I segment my sales.
6:39
So, if you have departments and you're in this webinar, that I'm specifically pointing out to you, that this use departmentalized highs and lows effects.
6:52
Whether or not the highs and lows are available no by department, or you just have one stock level for all departments, so that can affect how the report functions a little bit.
7:08
Secondly, under inventory, number two under inventory options too.
7:15
With your highs and lows or your re-order points your mins and maxes. They call them different things.
7:20
You can have them set, so they're the same all year round, which is the most common setting, where you can have them set to be seasonal.
7:27
And if you come here to options do your inventory and turn this on, that's all you have to do except you do also have to tell the system what seasons you would like. So, which months belong to which season? And you can even just make it monthly if you want to set up that table. That way, I think that's as details you can get as monthly.
7:51
So this allows you to have different stock levels at different retail outlets or locations or warehouses at different times a year on different products.
8:02
And managing this, of course, would be quite a lot of work, but it's a very powerful tool if you want to use this, if you can think of a way that it fits your business.
8:10
Also, the stock management tool would help you keep on top of some of these things, So a few settings.
8:25
So let's go back to our Stock Management tool. I still have open here, and we'll just start, we'll start playing around a little bit.
8:31
I want to show you some of the key features and and how you might use this.
8:35
Although I think every business might use it slightly differently.
8:38
So first, when you open this up, you need to pick some product that you want to, set re-order points for, or Review's sales history for, and I'm going to pick some product here that I think may have a little bit more sales history.
8:54
I think my computer systems do.
9:02
So I have a little sales history.
9:04
Probably a lot of you would have far more sales history than I do.
9:07
So, I can pick to filter by supplier and category, or either.
9:14
And if I want multiple categories, I can click this and choose them from the list as well.
9:23
I'm just going to stick with the computers for the moment.
9:29
I can also, using my menu bar at the top. I can also choose the season.
9:35
So I'm going to say the current season, which is.
9:39
It's the spring season for me And what you'll see here is it lists my locations, and I can set re-order points fourth at different locations right here.
9:49
After reviewing the sales history, the total sales over time, what I might have on an order or even when the last time I received this product was.
10:00
You can also set transfer highs and lows between physical stock locations or departments.
10:11
So this should give you most of the data you would need to set re-order points, at least that's the idea and it gives you a fast way to set them right here.
10:22
one, I guess one more thing on the interface on the top here is, if I click show all seasons, because I have the seasons turned on, then I have to choose one of my locations to work on.
10:36
Then you have to kinda refresh it by hitting view.
10:39
And now, instead of having five lines for your different locations, this is all head office, but for it, these different seasons of the year.
10:49
Of course, all of this is a lot more straightforward if you just have one location and don't have seasonal highs and lows. There's a lot less going on, but it works in a very similar way.
11:02
OK, so, assume that I'm looking at these computer systems and I can see these top two have some sales. So I'm going to want to set some re-order points for them.
11:11
It's as simple as entering those here.
11:17
So, perhaps I want to make sure that whenever I run out, so, whenever I go below one, I order enough, so I have three. So, you'll typically have around two and stock.
11:28
There's my suggested order there.
11:32
Think on my screen.
11:35
Doesn't quite all fit, so I have to scroll back and forth just a little bit on the bottom.
11:41
Now, if I want to set these, and then just forget about it, I can do that.
11:45
I can come up here and hit commit, and that locks those highs and lows in. It places them in the inventory item record, basically.
11:56
I can also use a couple of other tools on this screen.
12:00
For example, under the Options button up top, I can clear the highs and lows for items that have no sales and last year, or I can just clear them all to zero and all the lows to zero.
12:22
So, you can, if you're looking at a group of products that are fairly similar, say, a category, or a particular product from a vendor, then you can mass Change them very quickly here, which is something you could only previously do using a data Load.
12:39
It's kinda just, kind of came to this conclusion. Just hearing everything you just said, This, is, this is a great way of getting rid of that inventory, out of one of your stores, if it's not selling right.
12:49
You could just change your transfer amount, get it out of there, go to another store that is selling it.
12:55
Yeah.
12:56
Yeah, you could set your transfer. I guess, what would you want to do. It gets out your transfer.
13:03
It really, it's a good way of reviewing the sales of all the locations.
13:06
Yeah, that's great, I guess so the you use it for a lot of things, but in the end when you set these points, let's, uh, Get some points in here.
13:28
Commit those.
13:31
Something, like in the past, you'd have to go item by item, or use a spreadsheet load.
13:36
So this is a lot faster.
13:37
And what you typically would do after you set these, well, maybe not always, is you'd want to order, and so there's a link right up here on the top to the required orders report.
13:49
The required or test report, is like, it sounds, it'll trigger you to order things in a sort of automated way, when you run it based on highs and lows and some other factors as well, like special orders or backwaters.
14:03
So if I just hit required orders, it's going to open up the required orders report, and it'll select that vendor for me that I had selected already.
14:14
There's quite a few settings on this report that can make it behave differently, But if I just hit View.
14:24
It should trigger my orders based on my highs and lows.
14:30
And based on which department I'm in, and which season I'm in, in my case, because I've got all these different settings turned on.
14:37
Then from here, you're able to create POs, if you're not familiar with the required or is the report, and how you automate your ordering with this tool and the Highs and Lows. That's a lot of what we're going to talk about next week, and we'll get into quite a lot of detail.
14:51
For today, I think probably a lot of our customers do use this required orders report, it's the segue between the reports that adds the feature for you.
15:01
In my opinion, you you set your highs and lows here.
15:04
Or if you're using transfer lows, then you're looking at department transfers and the Suggested Transferees report, instead, which would be right there.
15:20
So it links you to What do I need to transfer to other storage? Like Carl saying, it links you to, What do I need on my next Peale?
15:27
And you can set it all right here, which is one really great tool.
15:33
this adds to your sort of wit system, five repertoire, if you want.
15:38
The other thing that it's really handy for is obsolete products.
15:43
Now, these del 84, 46 is these are top of the line. So we're gonna, we're not gonna delete those.
15:49
But say if we look back and see if we can find something we're not likely to sell much more of, I think there's some stuff in here, let's say.
16:03
Fax machines.
16:09
So I don't think I'm going to sell these anymore. If I had highs and lows, I might do something like get rid of the highs and lows. But I think, more than anything, I'm going to want to mark these items as deleted.
16:19
Which is something in our software that you could always do one item at a time.
16:23
What this empowers you to do, it, just mark them off like that.
16:29
I'll just do one here, and then hit this commit button.
16:34
And that item is marked for deletion.
16:36
So it's a fast way to look at a lot of product, See what's moving, See what's not, and discontinue some product.
16:47
So those are really the key features of it, although I know that you'd use it quite differently, depending on whether you're going to set up seasonal highs and lows, or, and whether you have multiple locations, and you're managing transfers.
17:04
Just trying to think if there's any other key things to mention here.
17:09
You can also do this, Mark all items for deletion with no sales last year.
17:15
So, aleve, I have no sales last year here.
17:21
I'm going to take my season's off.
17:26
Refresh.
17:35
So that would automatically mark those deleted.
17:40
Yeah, Scott, just just because you're on this screen, this is one of the ways where you can expose all the items that were deleted. Just in case maybe a few years ago, you had something that was pretty popular. You can click that show deleted on there. You should be able to show all of the deleted items as well. Right.
17:59
Yeah, that's true. So here let's, let's takeoff.
18:03
The category filter that should give me fact, let's take off.
18:12
I think we want to do, maybe multiple.
18:16
For me, that's a good idea.
18:32
Pawl.
18:35
Probably work a little better in that large dataset, though, to write, and I only build so much data in here.
18:43
So.
18:45
It's hard to say how many will find that I've got deleted.
18:52
This would show everything. What I've gotta go in here is show the deleted as well as other products.
18:57
That can run for for a limited time, but a great way to check in on what you have marked as deleted and really just a great way to check on your sales data and see what you should be placing more orders for.
19:13
I see, we've got a question there from Carol. Thanks, Carol.
19:15
So, can you clarify Last year?
19:22
And just making sure I'm gonna look at the right field for your hair, Carol.
19:30
Total sales and last year is what you met.
19:33
I think Carol, when I was here.
19:38
Let's stop it, OK, does that mean fast year or does it mean the last 365 days? I think that's what she's getting there.
19:45
Yeah, I believe it would be your last financial year.
19:52
Which could which is going to depend on your financial, your settings, I don't know if I have a good way to totally validate that right here, but I believe that's how it works. It's your last financial year.
20:07
A few questions coming in now, and that's good. It's good, Alright. Debra, is asking if you have a quantity on items that you want to mark deleted. Will this not mess up your stock Counted? It still shows up, as long as there's no quantity. Isn't that correct?
20:25
That's right. I mean, in your stock count.
20:28
Uh, Let's see if I can get out of this thing. I think I've given it too big a job to search my inventory there.
20:34
In your stock count, there's also settings as to whether you include items marked as deleted or not, when you build your batch, that. So you have to be careful of that part either way, Whether you use this or not, you'd need to be careful of that, but.
20:49
Other than that, yeah, Well, when you're doing your stock out, you would want to current you deleted and make sure that it's there. Yeah, I guess it depends if you actually managing those inventory levels.
21:00
Or if your market is deleted, and it had any incorrect stock level, no, It's yeah. Depends how you want to count them? Yeah.
21:10
Yeah.
21:11
Uh?
21:14
So I noticed the mass.
21:17
Notice when you mass mark for deletion through the options menu, you do not need to commit those changes.
21:23
Ah, no, I, I do think.
21:28
And assessing.
21:42
There we go.
21:45
Let it finish it.
21:48
I do think you need to hit the Commit button. Here. Let's go check.
21:52
That's a good question.
21:54
So, we were dealing with these.
22:00
Yeah.
22:02
Oh, yeah, fax machines, fax machines.
22:06
Yeah.
22:08
Oh, yeah, I think you are correct, when I did this, and that.
22:16
It deleted it right away.
22:20
Or marked it as deleted, I should say, it's still unbelievable, just in case anyone's not familiar with that, if I drill into the item here, if you have a product, it's just continued.
22:32
You want to flag it, like we've done, and this is, Yeah, so I think that commit, Colin, uh, is what can meet your highs and lows, and if you're doing the mark is deleted one at a time, you would still hit commit, I think, here, you can see I'm able to unm market right there.
22:57
So.
23:02
You can also completely delete items if they have absolutely no history. So if they were made by mistake.
23:09
Yeah.
23:13
Oh shirt. So Lori is just asking, how do we get to this tool? That's quick, what Lori?
23:16
So hold on Yeah, to find this tool again, in case you missed the beginning, you go down in inventory and purchases two purchases and it's right down here.
23:29
Yeah, and then you kind of talk your settings Also, there's the recording of the webinar so there's some settings I went through about how to set your seasons just a little discussion about whether you have multiple locations or not.
23:49
Good question. So Todd's asking Does Windward allow you to add additional columns to the stock management tool?
23:54
I don't think so, but there are.
23:59
Or rather, I think I've got them all added already, as what might be going on.
24:03
So, you're seeing, well, used to say, Whizzy, Wavelike sees what you get, I've got them all on, is, I think, the case.
24:12
Whereas, the old approach to this sort of reporting was the design inventory Report, which allows you to have a lot more control of the columns.
24:25
Yeah, this one's just a little bit more dynamic in usable rate. Yeah. Ready to go, right? Where does that design inventory report? You have to know how to design it, in order to get all these columns on there.
24:36
Um, can you change the pricing from this screen, Patricia's asking, good question, Patricia, I don't know the answer, let's try it.
24:47
So, we'll do.
24:55
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, No.
24:58
I didn't think so.
24:59
It's not really what it's designed for, however you can drill in.
25:12
Good question, Gerard. Surcharge asking: What exactly does total sales and lifetime sales include? Is it estimates work, orders, or invoices? So it would be any invoices, sole, accounts receivable, invoices, or cash sales?
25:31
So it would it wouldn't count anything that's in progress, like a work order or anything. That's just a quote.
25:42
And your total sales, I believe, is actually your annual sales of the one, it's just totaling it up for you.
25:50
Where's the lifetime sales this year over, Like, past years, all yours.
26:02
It's a good tool, and I encourage you to play with it.
26:07
If you didn't know about it, I think that it's it's likely to help you streamline things so that you're not running out as often. Or you're not Overstock and things as well, or you need to move things to a better location that moved them out the door, like Kyle was suggesting?
26:21
All good ideas.
26:35
So, there's, uh, a lot of content around things like this, like the Required Orders, Suggested Transfers, Departments, that you might find in your learning academy.
26:49
Most of what we're talking about purchasing.
26:51
Again, we're going to be having this workshop coming up next Thursday, We're going to go over a lot of these things and related topics to this and in more depth than we did today.
27:01
If you're interested in purchasing this, you can purchase it through our website, which, let me bring it up for ya.
27:22
So here at the sales dot one bit software dot com, you can purchase all the events and bundles of them. So we also offer a queue to bundle, which is all three of the workshops.
27:34
And you can see when they are and what they're all about.
27:41
And bundling, the workshop's does give you a bit of a deal. We're going to talk about reducing your out of stocks, being more efficient with your ordering.
27:49
And budgeting, if some of you are not really using re-order points but it's more about how much you spend on a certain product category per year, for example, we're going to talk a bit about the open to buy reporting in Windward.
28:03
Then in May, we're going to talk about deliveries and installation and service.
28:09
And in June we're going to talk about all sorts of employee tracking, whether it's time tracking their time, or just reporting on them their time or reporting on commissions, reporting on sales. All sorts of things like that.
28:26
Also, I just want to give a shout out to our Mobile App Sidekick which has had some recent enhancements or that are undergoing on it.
28:38
So, psychic was already a great tool for looking up inventory in a mobile fashion, like, you can use it on any mobile device, or in a browser.
28:47
And you can write estimates in it, and import them into system five.
28:50
So, you can, basically, you could help customers on the move, whether that's anywhere, or do you have Internet access, on pretty much any device that has Internet access.
29:02
You can look at prices, bright quotes, but what what's being added in is accounting tool, but you can do inventory batches on the mobile device.
29:12
Which, if your mobile device has a scanner built-in, or a Bluetooth connected to it, will allow you to use barcode scanning moberly with a phone or tablet to perform inventory accounts.
29:26
So it's a great, a great replacement for a data collector because it already knows all your system five skews, so when you scan it using your phone, it can tell you if it knows that product or not. Which is really handy.
29:38
Yeah, So that's another great tool that we've got to offer.
29:45
Any last questions before we let you guys go today?
29:53
Doesn't, doesn't look like it. There's Scott Flip.
29:56
If you stick around after after we, we end this thing there should be a short little video of Scott explaining what the next workshop is, so That does it?
30:14
Yeah, All right.
30:14
Well, thank you, everyone for your time and I do see one last question.
30:20
There actually are columns sortable.
30:27
That's a good question Tots, let's just look at that before I go.
30:30
OK!
30:32
So what Todd's asking is if I open up the tool.
30:49
Are the columns sortable?
30:51
And I think that might be less.
30:56
That might work if I didn't have the departments and the seasons turned on Todd for feelings, but with them turned on, I think it might be difficult.
31:10
So taught at a great idea, it's like, Well, maybe I could sort buy the items that are deleted.
31:17
I don't think this one's sortable.
31:19
But you can sort here, by part number, supplier pack number, or category.
31:33
Shane, thanks for the feedback there.
31:34
Those are questions that you could take up with someone outside of the webinar, but I appreciate your feedback.
31:42
So thanks, everyone, for coming today, and we're hopeful to see somebody at the workshop or at next month's webinar. Have a great day.
31:50
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