Warehouse document flow is a system for creating, transferring, receiving, processing and storing the documents connected with economic activity of an organization. This is a fundamental part of the inventory management process.
Entering primary documents regularly and correctly ensures transparent control of a company’s economic activity. No organization can run normally without it. There will be confusion, unmatched stock balance in real life and in the system. Inventory count will give wrong numbers.
Any document can be entered in a personal account or via a cashier’s or production room tablet. How to enter Purchase invoice, how to make goods movement and other operations on a tablet is described in the section Staff work.
All operations can be entered, viewed or corrected in the Journal tab in the personal account.
The documents can be sorted by creation date, location address, item name, user who entered the document and a document type. Also all the deleted documents can be viewed.
Press Create new button to create a new document and choose the necessary option from the drop-down list.
Main documents reflecting the movement of materials, semi-products and finished items at the warehouse are the following:
1). Purchase invoice.
2). Transfer to another warehouse.
3). Shipment to a third party.
4). Losses – write-off, rejected goods, sorting.
5). Release of finished items and semi-products.
6). Inventory count.
Purchase invoice
This is a document for recording goods and raw materials received from Suppliers. Purchase invoice is the first document of the warehouse. Based on it raw materials are reflected in the system as Leftover Stock.
The cost of products is calculated based on this document. To monitor and analyze the purchase prices dynamics we recommend entering purchase invoices at the date of receipt of goods and materials.
Timely recording of documents in the system allows to:
– control the Stock balance of raw materials;
– monitor purchase prices fluctuations, avoid purchasing at inflated prices;
– manage the current markup on finished items and dishes;
– identify and correct accounting errors and discrepancies immediately.
When filling in the document one should indicate the date, incoming number, Supplier, choose a warehouse for recognition.
How to enter purchase invoice on a table.
How to enter purchase invoice in the personal account.
Transfer to another warehouse
In retail it is often the case that one needs to transfer raw materials between the warehouses, or move finished products from the warehouse to the sales point. To avoid confusion and loss of transferred items this operation needs to be documented. It is particularly true when a business has many divisions.
Transfer of goods between the warehouses is not the only case of goods and raw materials movement. It can be necessary to transfer products from point A to point B in the following cases:
– When the goods were delivered to the wrong warehouse. For example, a Supplier delivered milk products to the production shop closest to his/her office, and the personnel recorded the whole shipment forgetting to sent the part of it to another warehouse;
– movement of finished items from the outlet to the location with higher demand, to avoid spoilage;
– sending finished items to the shops for sale;
– sending unsold items back to the warehouse;
– large order is assembled for delivery or online shop from different outlets. For example, a client has paid for a big order, but some positions are missing and need to be delivered from adjacent outlets.
All these operations need to be recorded, reflected and documented correctly. Transfer can be performed in a personal account or on a tablet.
Shipment to a third party
With a big production facility there is always a possibility to sell at one’s own outlets and supply products for wholesale.
For such cases shipment document is required, based on which production staff will collect ordered products, ingredients will be written-off from stock, and income will appear in the budget.
Shipment to a third party is also necessary when production shops and sales outlets are registered to different legal entities. To avoid confusion in goods/money relationships one should timely document shipments.
How to make shipment to the legal entity in a personal account.
Staff members can create shipment document on a tablet.
Losses – write-off, rejected goods, sorting
Losses at the warehouse can be divided into two big groups: process losses and unnormalized loss.
Process losses of primary materials include boiling down, shrinkage, baking loss, milling loss and other kinds of losses in the process of food and semi-products cooking. Such losses are indicated in specifications and automatically recorded during production or sales of finished items and food.
Unnormalized loss may include the following:
– Sorting, which means taking finished items for tasting and quality control;
– Rejected goods, when the products do not meet quality standards;
– Raw materials, semi-products, finished items and goods write-off due to spoilage, expiry or other reasons.
Unnormalized losses should be documented so that write-off of items, goods and raw materials will be written-off.
Losses can be entered in a personal account and on a tablet.
Release of finished items and semi-products
If your company produces goods and food beforehand and not at the moment of client’s order, their production should be reflected in the system. It ensures timely monitoring of raw materials movement, as well as analyzing how full the shelves are.
After creating Release document the systems will write-off all the ingredients based on specifications and transfer finished products and food to Stock.
Not only finished products can be released. If the kitchen staff mix the filling and prepare semi-products beforehand, they need to be included into production, in order to monitor amount of remaining ingredients correctly. The same applies to frozen goods which are prepared by a cook or a baker in advance and put into a freezer – the whole batch by names and quantity must be entered into the system.
Firstly, all releases are entered in production shop tablet. If some changes have to be done to the completed document this could be done from the personal account.
Inventory count
Inventory count is a procedure of counting the current balance of goods available at the warehouse. It is an internal control instrument which gives an idea of the current stock balance. And knowing the valid figures it is easy to forecast raw materials consumption for future periods, control the cost of products and reduce expenses.
The system compares the planned balance with the data entered into inventory count and calculates all the discrepancies, both of raw materials cost and sale price for goods and finished products.
Inventory count can be full and spot. Full inventory is conducted if you want to recount available items in the entire warehouse or a shopping area. ATTENTION! All positions not included into inventory will be set to zero.
Spot inventory can be conducted:
– By categories – changes will apply within the chosen categories. E.g., if the Drinks category was chosen you need to count and include ALL the drinks available. Positions not indicated will be set to zero.
– By individual items – all changes will apply only for chosen positions not affecting the remaining assortment.
How to make Inventory in a personal account.
How to make Inventory on a table.
How to start making sliding inventory.