A typical clothing store does not process backorders, and often orders products directly from suppliers before creating a purchase order in OnSite. Stores will also often order an item only once. Depending on how much information a business needs to track for profit and inventory control, these workflow considerations can be useful for clothing stores when deciding on their OnSite workflow.
Selling
If you order products through a catalog or at tradeshows, before you enter the orders in OnSite, it is important that you transcribe the orders onto POs before they arrive and you put them on your sales floor. Receiving the products onto a Purchase Order as they arrive makes it easier to keep track of your inventory and its value. In cases when you receive and sell a product before you can enter it into OnSite, you can create a generic product with an editable selling price and description. This enables you to create an invoice for a customer that you can later edit by replacing the generic product with the correct information. This enables you to generate more accurate sales and inventory reports.
Receiving
We recommend that you create product cards with accurate costs for the products you're receiving, and that you use the product on the purchase order when you receive stock into inventory. Although you can modify the costs of a generic product on purchase orders and invoices, creating individual product cards for the products you receive and sell gives you greater flexibility and accuracy for sales reports.
Inventory Control
Lightspeed has useful tools that help you adjust, track and organize your inventory. Both the Browser and the Point of Sale screens use color coded inventory statuses so that you can see at a glance where your inventory is, and whether a Product is expected for Stock or a Customer Order. Available stock can be transferred to one of ten virtual warehouses to represent stockpiles that are in your possession but you do not want displayed as available. The Reporting module gives you access to overviews of inventory valuations and inventory counts. The Product card enables you to scan a Product's purchase history and set reorder points to insure you are not caught short without key items.
Adding Inventory
- Count Inventory: enables you to move through your store with a barcode scanner and take a physical count of your inventory.
- Purchase orders: Add products to one or more purchase orders, and then receive the quantities into your inventory. By receiving inventory on POs, you have an easily accessible record of your inventory count, the location of each product, and a simple way of recording the serialized products.
- Inventory adjustments: This method is time-consuming method but you can enter notes for each product for later reference. It is important to remember, however, that you cannot modify the costs of inventory adjustments (done individually or by a batch import) after they have been completed. This is not recommended for setting your initial inventory levels, and should be used only for modifying individual or small batches of products that have little or no origin information. For example, if you find an extra three items that were forgotten behind a shelf, an individual adjustment can be made, with an appropriate note. A Count Inventory event or a received PO gives you a bigger picture later on if a large number of products must have their quantities modified.
- Importing inventory: import information using the OnSite Import Tool.
Warehouses
Lightspeed can have up to ten virtual warehouses, where you can track stock that exists in your store but that you do not want to display as part of your available inventory. To set up your warehouses, go to Tools > Setup > Products > Warehouses. You can set up Warehouses for your RMA inventory, store demos, damaged products, or a locked stockroom that is inaccessible by sales staff.
Transfers to a Warehouse
After you set up a warehouse you can transfer stock from your inventory to it. In the profile of a Product, go to the Inventory tab and click the Transfer button. The Transfer Inventory window lists the current status of inventory and Orders for the Product. Under the status section, there are menus for the origin and destination of the Product. Available stock is known as Inventory, and any Warehouses you’ve set up appear here. Choose the origin of the stock in From, and the destination of the stock with To. If the Product is non-serialized, enter the quantity of stock you want to transfer in the Qty field, and click Transfer. You are notified that the transfer was successful. The available inventory decreases, and the quantity appears in the Warehouses status, which is the total of the stock in all Warehouses.
If the Product is serialized, all available serial numbers in the Product origin you’ve chosen appear below. Choose the serial numbers you wish to transfer, and click Transfer.
To view the transfer history of a Product, go to the History (With Transfers) tab in the Product profile. To have an overview of the stock in any Warehouse, go to the Inventory Valuation section of Reporting, choose the Warehouse report you want to check and click Preview or Print.