Inventory - overview

The Inventory workspace provides real-time access to stock item availability data configured in accordance with your company policies. By using the Inventory workspace, you can maintain a perpetual inventory system while also performing physical inventories as full inventories and by cycles. In Visma Net, you can track items by either lot or serial numbers, as well as by expiration dates. By using flexible valuation methods, you can accurately maintain item costs and trace cost flows. Advanced functionality of the workspace includes flexible posting settings and automatic initiation of stock replenishment.

Stock and non-stock items

Items are the goods, products, services, or component parts recorded to and tracked in your system database. Items can be divided into two major categories, stock and non-stock items, based on how they are handled and accounted for. For more information, see the following articles:

Flexible item identifiers and support of alternative IDs

By using configurable item IDs, you can uniquely identify stock and non-stock items. You can easily gather additional business-specific data about items by configuring custom fields, called attributes. Also, on purchase and sales orders, you can use bar codes, or supplier, or customer alternative IDs to find items or record the item information. For more information, see the following articles:

Global and item-specific UoMs

You can use an unlimited number of units of measure (UoMs) in your system. Commonly used units of measure (UoMs), such as litres, gallons, pounds, kilograms, and conversion rules between UoMS (such as pounds and kilograms) can be defined globally and then used as base units of measure, UoMs, for specific item classes or particular products. You can also define units of measure and conversion rules at the item-class and item level or cases or boxes intended for different products can be of different capacity. Once you have defined conversion rules, the system automatically makes conversions to the correct unit of measure when necessary. For more information, see About units of measure and conversions.

Multiple units of measure

If the Multiple units of measure functionality is enabled in the Enable/disable functionalities (CS100000) window, for each item you can define, in addition to the base unit, the purchase UoM to be used to measure item quantity on purchase orders and receipts and the sales unit to measure the item quantities on sales orders and invoices. Prices for base UoMs and for sales UoMs can be set as independent prices if needed. For details, see About units of measure and conversions.

Multiple warehouses and locations

In Visma Net, you can maintain a complex warehouse structure, defining multiple warehouses with multiple locations within each warehouse. This functionality is enabled by the Warehouses and Warehouse locations functionalities. By configuring segmentation for location identifiers, you maintain a hierarchy of rooms, rows, levels, shelves, bins, and other divisions. For each location, you can define which inventory operations can be performed there. You can also specify a primary stock item or primary item class, and set up validation so that if a preferred item is specified and the validation is turned on, only it can be received at the location. By using security features, you can restrict access to warehouse information to groups of authorised users. For more information, see the following articles:

Flexible system of defaults and overrides

For processing inventory transactions, the item settings specified for a particular warehouse are used. To ease data entry for all possible combinations of item and warehouse, default values can be specified at the item class level and at the item level. The default values help users to save time and reduce the number of input errors. Default settings can be overridden if necessary.

Flexible posting settings

You can choose whether to automatically update the general ledger on release of inventory documents. Posting classes assigned to items define the rules for selecting particular general ledger accounts and subaccounts to be updated when transactions with the items are performed. Reason codes for inventory transactions provide the offset accounts to be updated, depending on the type of inventory transactions. For more information, see the following articles:

Inventory transactions

The Inventory workspace supports the following types of documents, recording the same-name inventory transactions: receipt, issue, adjustment, transfer, and kit assembly. Inventory documents facilitate accounting for transactions that result in changing inventory quantities. For more information about these inventory transactions, see About inventory transactions

Availability calculation

Visma Net provides real-time visibility into the available inventory levels. The way availability data is calculated can be configured in accordance with the policies set in your company. Calculation options are specified for item classes and may differ for items assigned to different item classes. The availability data of items is shown on sales orders, purchase orders, and kit assemblies. For more information, see About availability calculation.

Lot and serial number tracking

With the Inventory workspace, you can track stock items by lot or serial numbers and by expiration dates if the Lot and serial tracking functionality is enabled in the Enable/disable functionalities (CS100000) window. Visma Net provides flexible numbering schemes for lot and serial numbers and the ability to track different products differently. For more information about the use of lot and serial numbers, see the following articles:

Kit assembling

Some stock or non-stock items may be kits made up of other items. Non-stock kits may include only stock components; stock kits require assembly and may include non-stock components of the labour and expense types. A kit specification contains the list of kit components and can have revisions. If a stock kit will require disassembling, it can be done in accordance with the appropriate revision or the same one that was used to assemble the kit. For more information about kits, see About accounting for kits.

Inventory valuation

By using a perpetual inventory system, which Visma Net enables, your company can estimate the total cost of its inventory at any moment, because on-hand quantities and inventory account balances are updated with every transaction, purchase, or sale. Periodic revision of standard costs for items with standard cost valuation methods results in the revaluation of the cost of inventory. Periodic updates of base prices can be performed automatically. For more information on inventory valuation, see the following articles:

Stocktaking counts

By using Visma Net, your company can maintain a perpetual inventory system with the combination of full stocktaking counts and cycle counting that best fits the company policies and goals. Count data can be entered simultaneously from multiple computers. The information from these counts provides company managers with exact values of stock levels at any time. For more information, see the following articles:

Automated replenishment

In Visma Net, you can configure automated replenishment of stock items. Flexible, automated replenishment ensures that for items requiring replenishment the right quantities will be calculated and listed on automatically generated purchase orders. Moreover, you can use the predicted average daily demand, calculated with the help of demand forecasting methods, to periodically update the values of replenishment parametres (such as maximum quantity, reorder point, and safety stock) to more precisely calculate the quantities required for replenishment. For more information, see the following articles:

Other features and options

The Inventory workspace also provides the following features:

  • The ability to quickly add product images to the item record.
  • Tracking of items by product work group or product manager.
  • Item availability data displayed when you create a sales or a purchase order.
  • The ability to print count sheets, tags, and item and location labels to facilitate the counting process.
  • For perishable items, tracking of expiration dates, with alerts displayed about expired items.
  • The ability to set up the automatic issue of items by expiration date.
  • Segmented identifiers for locations, to make it easier to locate stock. By using segments, you can define further detail levels of locations, such as rooms, shelves, and bins.

Related concepts

Configuration overview