[CourtneyNHS]

Hello,

Does RE have the capability somewhere to set a Case Quantity for ordering? When our buyers use the auto generation for ordering, depending on what our stock level is, the min/max feature doesn't necessarily suggest the case quantity that we should be ordering. Ideally when the minimum quantity is reached I would like the system to order a whole case from the vendor. As it goes now, the auto gen seems to suggest ordering the difference between the quantity on hand and the maximum set quantity. Is there anything we are missing within RE that we could be using to only order in preset case quantities?

CK

[CourtneyNHS]

...Without having to add cases to the inventory

[RetailEdge Moderator]

The quick answer is no not without creating a case item. We have seen some programs do it differently and each method has its advantages and disadvantages. These other methods essentially have a case quantity associated with the individual item.

RetailEdge's method has the following advantages and will allow you to:

1. Sell the case items as well as the individual items. If you don't have a case item as in the above scenario, then you can't sell it.

2. Split multi-level cases (bottle, 6 pack, case). Typical for liquor store applications.

3. Reorder Cases when the case amount falls below a certain value. To order case quantities you should set the min/max of the individual item to 0/0 and the Case Min/Max to whatever you want for reordering. For instance if you order cases of items and the cases contain 6 of the individual item and you want to have 24 of the item in stock and reorder when your supply falls below 6 items, then you would simply set your case min and max to 1/4. When selling the individual items, RetailEdge will automatically split the cases in your inventory when you sell through the individual items.

4. Minimize mistakes when ordering from many vendors. Before we had case items, we did see a number of people ordering case quantities of items, say 6 items, but the vendor sending them 6 cases.


I understand the value of keeping his inventory low, but the difference between 5 and 3 does not seem to be that much and it might be a little optimistic and really depend on how quickly he can get things in the store.

The method we use has the disadvantages that

1. It requires you to create a case items.
2. It does not allow you to reorder when when the "individual" items fall below some value. So you want to order a case of 6 when his individual item falls to 2, you won't be able to.

I think that the second item is really what you are getting at. So If I want to order individual item and have them automatically reorder in case quantities, you end up having to adjust the individual items on the Purchase Orders so that they come out to a round (case) quantity. We would refer to this as a master pack quantity. The RetailEdge datastructures will support this but we have not implemented it because it is a feature that not many people have asked for.

Hello,

Does RE have the capability somewhere to set a Case Quantity for ordering? When our buyers use the auto generation for ordering, depending on what our stock level is, the min/max feature doesn't necessarily suggest the case quantity that we should be ordering. Ideally when the minimum quantity is reached I would like the system to order a whole case from the vendor. As it goes now, the auto gen seems to suggest ordering the difference between the quantity on hand and the maximum set quantity. Is there anything we are missing within RE that we could be using to only order in preset case quantities?

CK

[CourtneyNHS]

Thanks Bill,

This makes sense. the "Master Pack" would be a nice feature to have. The reason I don't want to add cases to the inventory is because of the higher potential for cashier error. Also when I go to do price updates it doubles the amount of items I have to update. it also creates a lot more work having to set up each item to pull from cases. That's my input.

Thanks,
Courtney

[RetailEdge Moderator]

Thanks for your input. Striking a balance between the data you have to put in and the information you are going to get out of RetailEdge is always an issue.

For the businesses that never sell case quantities of items, the Masterpack quantity and cost would be a good thing. But you would still need to update the masterpack Cost because the cost of case amounts is typically different from the individual item. It would just be on the one item though.

This type of feature leads people unfamiliar with the program to feature fatigue. That is that they start getting overwhelmed with the features that are displayed and information that can be entered for each item. We see this already with the features that inventory supports (Add Ons, Aliases, UPC1, UPC2, etc. Users start thinking the program is too complex or complicated. So this is the balance we are always trying to strike. Feature rich but easy to use and support and affordable.

We also see this type of balance for apparel stores and businesses that use the matrix features. It can be hard to understand how much depth you want to go with your inventory. But if you don't put the information in, you can't report on it. We have seen users not use matrixes when they should because they end up keeping too much inventory for the wrong size or colors of items. And we have seen some users using matrixes with 50 x 50 matrixes (2500 items) because they were tracking size and color for each year and the colors change from year to year. This is probably too much information.

In addition we have seen users tagging items with the matrix parent tags because they did not want to take the time to tag each style and color (in this case gloves). You can just print out tags for the matrix and RetailEdge will when the item is scanned will display a list of available matrix colors. What happened in this case is that the clerk was required to select the size/color they were selling at the time of sale. This led to inventory quantity issues because the clerks would invariably select the wrong size/color.

Anyway balance is not always easy to achieve. But Masterpack is in there and I will make a note of your request.

Thanks Bill,

This makes sense. the "Master Pack" would be a nice feature to have. The reason I don't want to add cases to the inventory is because of the higher potential for cashier error. Also when I go to do price updates it doubles the amount of items I have to update. it also creates a lot more work having to set up each item to pull from cases. That's my input.

Thanks,
Courtney