Introduction To  Inventory Control

Inventory Control can be simple or complex depending on the volume and kind of information your company needs to record regarding your inventory. If you assign product numbers, descriptions, inventory levels, and pricing, it will not take much time to enter each item. If, on the on the other hand you are interested in recording your costs at several levels, optional pricing conditions, price overrides, etc., it will take you longer to set-up the appropriate files. You may start out entering your inventory in its simplest format since you can always add to the information in the future.

For example, Inventory Control doesn't only want to know how many products you have in stock and in what branch, and in what location (bin) in that branch the products are kept. Inventory Control also needs to know what vendor they came from, how much they cost, and if you sold tomorrow how much would it cost to replace them.

We recommend completing the Inventory File Maintenance selections prior to entering Inventory product data since many of  the file maintenance codes will apply to your product structure.  

When you first install the Profi'C Inventory Control system, you may have Inventory Stock that must be entered before you can begin processing. There are several options depending on how you do business and if  you track Inventory with regards to General Ledger. One option is through data conversion. If  not handled by data conversion, it is recommended that you take a physical inventory of  your products  then enter the Inventory stock level through Profi'C Inventory Adjustments where Inventory Stock level is adjusted from zero to actual quantities on hand,  and on order (committed). An additional option is to enter products with no stock level and utilize the Profi'C Physical Inventory selector.

If you use Profi'C Purchase Order processing,  purchases will update Inventory levels automatically, first by displaying the quantity ON PO in the product master file, then once received by purchasing  displaying the quantity ON HAND in the product master file.

As with most of the Profi'C modules, many of the fields in the Inventory Control Files are optional and not completely necessary for your system to work properly. However, if you wish to take advantage of all the reports and analysis available from the Profi'C System, you should take the time to complete all the files you can.