Inventory - Receiving & Sending Product

Stock levels in FieldStack are maintained through a number of transactional occurrences not limited to selling items to customers. The on hand inventory is never manually overwritten directly and items being added to stock must be “received” in Receive Mode and items being taken out of stock must be “sent” in Send Mode. These processes record the transaction date, time, and user as well as keep cost of goods in balance as things are brought in or sent out.

Receiving Product

When a vendor order or product from another store arrives, if inventory that was lost is located, or if stock levels were incorrect and should be increased, go to Receive mode on the POS.

After you have entered Receive Mode, the screen will change to green.

General Receiving Controls

Upon entering Receive Mode you will see a number of things:

• Total Quantity New (and Used if you handle conditional items) – Total quantity of items scanned
• New/Used radio button toggles  (if you handle conditional items)
• Print Labels checkbox – this controls if the default price label for each item scanned will print after processing the receive screen
• Allow Transfer checkbox – this controls if items are eligible to transfer to other locations. This only functions if other configurations have been put in place.

The controls noted above activate once checked, and will apply to all items scanned after. One exception to this is if New and Used labels exist on items.

New/Used Labels (when item condition is active) - Scanning the labels will recognize the condition of the scanned item. If you scan an item's label the "New" and "Used" button will automatically select the condition contained in the sticker's barcode. If you do not handle Used items in your location, the system will always default to New.  If you scan the physical barcode of an item instead of the price label, the item will scan as the condition selected, so be careful to have the appropriate condition selected if scanning items without using the price label.

Configuration Variations

Before scanning items into Receive Mode, a PO number or reason should be added. There is a setting that controls whether items can be received loosely (user entered numbers and reasons) or tightly (exact purchase order must be selected.) There is also a setting that controls if items received must be assigned a number of some kind. If this is activated, even loosely receiving orders will require some kind of number or reason to be added.

Assigning a Purchase Order number – “Loose” Configuration

If your location allows for loose receiving (based on a configuration setting), clicking the Assign Tracking Number box will bring up a textbox into which the PO Number, Vendor, or reason can be added. This field will show in the PO Number column in item history under each Receive line.

Text box:

Text box with user entered PO number:

Text box with user entered reason:

If your location is set up this way you can still Receive directly to an existing Purchase Order or Receive Reason by clicking the Current Orders button in the lower right.

This will bring up a list of open purchase orders to which items can be received. Receiving directly to the order will update that order's “Quantity Left” on the item(s) being received.

Click Receive Items for Order [x] to receive to your order.

Assigning a Purchase Order number – “Tightly Bound” Configuration

If your location is set to tightly bound receiving, a vendor Purchase Order or open Reason must be assigned before scanning any items.

If an items is searched or scanned before selecting a PO or Reason, an alert will pop up:

With tightly bound receiving in place, both Assign Tracking Number and Current Orders buttons will bring up the list of active Purchase Orders or reasons. The reasons are defined by FieldStack based on your needs and regenerate each month as open purchase order reasons. Active vendor orders are shown here with the Quantity Ordered and Quantity Left visible.

Select a Purchase Order or Reason from the list.

If enabled, you may also click the Stage All button. This will bring up all items in quantity that are remaining on the order to be received. Once on screen the items and quantities can be edited before processing.

Also on this screen: 

Missing and extra will open a new tab showing items and quantities that have not yet been received, or any items received to the order that were not on the original PO.

Close Order will add a past expiration date to all items left to be received.

Scanning items/Stage All

To receive the items, begin scanning each item or select Stage All (if enabled) to bring items up on screen.

On each item line, the quantity can be updated using the Change Qty button.

If enabled, Change Cost will allow you to enter the cost associated with this PO which will carry through to the receive transaction and update cost of goods based on the user-entered cost.

Change Price will allow a user to also affect the price of the item if labels are set to print for the selected item.

Change Cost and Change Price do not alter the item in item list.

Special Orders – If set up to print Special order labels during this process, labels will print out when an item is scanned that is to be put aside for a customer.

Transfers – If set up to print labels, and store transfers are turned on or consolidated orders are in place, labels will print showing the store number that an item should be sent to.

Once all items are scanned at the qty and cost desired, click Receive [x] Items to process the receiving.

Send mode 

Send Mode functions similarly to Receive Mode, but processes inventory in the opposite way. Send mode is most commonly used for the following:

• Moving items to another location
• Items are lost, damaged, expired, or stolen
• Inventory is incorrect and needs to be reduced using Inventory Adjustment or Missing/Found Inventory