Inventory Management

Inventory Management 

• Multiple Warehouses
• Warehouse Bins
• Traceability and Batch Control
• Inventory Costing Controls
• Reorder Processes
• Vendor Catalogues
• Consignment and Loan Stock
• Customer Owned Stock
• Stocktakes and Revaluations
• Inbound Receipt and Shipping
• Supplier Pricing
• Demand Recognition

Multiple Warehouses

Abel provides multiple warehouse support through stock separation at branch level and/or by content types such as raw materials, finished goods, consumables, quarantine etc. Detailed inventory stock information is provided for each warehouse including on hand quantities, reserved, allocated, back orders, supplier on order and manufacturing and production requirements and supply. Each warehouse records all inventory movements by transaction type such as purchases, sales, transfers and adjustments. Stocking below zero can be prohibited by user choice, but when allowed, Abel provides a unique process of stock valuation checking each time a stocked item goes through zero.

Inventory re-order from supplier or manufacture and inter-branch replenish information is tailored for each warehouse and provides variants such as min/max, average usage over time and min/max adjustments to enhance the reorder and replenish processes. Definable usage periods and average supply delivery times are also provided by warehouse and used when calculating reorder quantities. Reorders can be generated at company, warehouse, branch or individual supplier levels.

Warehouse Bins

Each warehouse can optionally contain its own identified bin structure. Bins can contain multiple or single products with each including its UOM, quantity on hand and reserved information. Serial, batch or unique identifiers are also tracked at bin level. Bins can be included or excluded from reorder requirements and can be categorized as to their type such as Default, Dispatch, Manufacture, Consumable etc.

Traceability and Batch Control

Inventory items may be tracked by Serial Number, Batch Number or Unique Lot Identifier, including product use by / expiry date, from purchase or manufacture, to customer dispatch and sale. This enables the tracking and management of items across all processes, including customer consignment and loan stocks, repairs and modifications.

Abel’s “First Expiry – First Out” picking (FEFO) helps you consume oldest inventory first. For inventory that has a use by / expiry date, Abel’s dispatch, pick and requisition processes offer batch controlled inventory with the earliest “use by” dates first. Items that expire first are used first, making it easy to manage your perishable inventory.

You can elect to consume selected Batch or Unique tracked stock at the actual cost of the Batch or Unique item being consumed (rather than the average stock price across all Batches or Uniques for the inventory item). For stock you have elected to track costs for, Abel captures the actual cost of each Batch or Unique item whenever a “stock in” transaction occurs e.g. a supplier delivery or manufacturing completion. All subsequent stock transactions (including stock takes) use the actual cost of the Batch or Unique.

Units of Measure

Multiple units of measure and unit conversion factors can be used for stock storage, stock counts, supplier procurement or customer sales. Alternative Units of Measure can be held against a particular inventory item for multiple supplier and customer variations.

Inventory Costing Controls

Each individual inventory item can be assigned a “control” determining the method by which it is managed at both warehouse and financial levels. These controls include:

• Standard Cost
• Average Cost
• No Value
• No Control – Items which are not controlled at either Warehouse or Balance Sheet level and are expensed on purchase and recovered via COGS.
• No Stock – Items which are held at balance sheet level, but no record is maintained at Warehouse level. No Stock items are purchased to the balance sheet, recovered to the balance sheet via COGS and are valued by manual count adjustment.

Reorder Processes

This incorporates Supplier Reorder, Manufacture Reorder, Manual Reorder and Branch Replenish where suggested reorder quantities are calculated to satisfy commitments and minimum inventory levels. This process considers determining factors such as:

• Minimum and maximum inventory levels
• Minimum and maximum days coverage
• Existing cover
• Lead times
• Economic and multiple order quantities
• Current allocations
• Supplier on order
• Goods in transit
• Manufacturing contract commitments
• Estimated stock shortage date

Definable usage periods (at inventory item level) can be used to calculate the reorder quantities which may be amended prior to the auto generation of the Branch Replenishment Orders, Manufacturing Orders or Purchase Orders. Reorders can be generated at company, warehouse, branch or individual supplier level.

Vendor Catalogues

Supplier and manufacture catalogues are supported and can be imported and linked to inventory items. Searches will display the relationships between catalogue and inventory items. Catalogue items can also be traded with back-to-back purchase orders showing normal delivery or direct to customer.

Consignment and Loan Stock

Movement of Customer Consignment and Customer Loan stock is performed through a standard dispatch and return process, with those items being held in a separate ledger whist held at the customer location. You can set consignment stock Sales Pricing (for general use) and also customer-specific prices for consignment stock if required. Standard stock-take and revalue processes can be performed on these ledgers. Supplier indent stock is also available.

Customer Owned Stock 

Customer Owned Stock is normally made to order (or purchased to order), invoiced, then held in your warehouse until the customer requests it. Customer Owned Stock enables your customers to pre-order items for dispatch at short notice. It means you can give your customers certainty of supply and prompt delivery when they need it. For items that are stocked as separate components (e.g. modular shelving), an optional Packing document lists the components. Customer Owned Stock is held at zero value because the Customer already owns it. The stock is held in your warehouse until a second customer order initiates dispatch of the requested quantity.

Item level Umbrella

Parent items can be defined as a level above inventory items that provide the coding and naming rules for the creation of the inventory information.

The item umbrella can restrict inventory creation, by providing up to five extension categories. These categories are used for such things as, but not restricted to, style, size and color. Pricing and reorder information can also be set at the item umbrella level.

Stocktakes and Revaluations

Full, partial and cycle counting are supported. Stocktakes can be built and controlled by Bin selection, Group, or Row, to enable separate stock-take teams to count and complete each section of the warehouse. Both blind and expected count options are provided. As each stocktake is finalized, the necessary adjustments to the stock ledger and general ledger are posted to the appropriate accounting period. An option is available that restricts pre-stocktake transactions from being altered.

Warehouse inventory can be revalued by defined selection(s) between Average Cost, Standard Cost and No Value. In addition, manual adjustments to the value of an individual inventory item may also be made. Resulting adjustments to the stock ledger and general ledger are posted to the appropriate accounting period.

Inbound Receipt and Shipping

It is essential that stock receipts are accurately costed and any price variances between the delivery and invoice are correctly accounted for. To achieve this, Abel uses a two step process for local deliveries and an inwards shipping process for overseas deliveries.

Local deliveries are normally receipted into the warehouse via a priced supplier delivery which can include additional costs such as freight. When the suppliers invoice is processed, stock values of items still in stock are adjusted where necessary and any remaining variances are posted to user defined accounts in the General Ledger, usually Cost of Goods Sold.

Overseas shipping receipts begin with the supplier’s invoices that have already been provided for customs clearance and government tax collection. Invoice details are loaded onto a nominated shipping document including freight, duty, demurrage and fees etc. Additional costs such as local freight can also be included. Costs are then apportioned across the inventory items being receipted according to user defined loadings, and adjusted manually if required prior to the stock being receipted into the warehouse.

Supplier Pricing

Inventory items may have multiple suppliers which may include the supplier’s product details (code and description). Each inventory item can be loaded with a preferred supplier.

Inventory supplier information may be recorded, including trading currency and pricing, UOM and conversion factors, multiple quantity price breaks and supplier lead days.

Demand Recognition

Abel provides a group of inventory demands and supplying information across warehouses to control various stock functions and provide the user with an accurate view of quantities on hand and the commitments into the future.

Inventory demands include:

• Unsatisfied customer on order quantities including reserved, back order and free stock
• Requirements for manufacture and production consumption which can either be reserved or on order
• Customer forecast, contracted and quoted quantities
• Buffer stock of raw materials for contracted manufacture

Inventory supply information includes:

• Unsatisfied supplier on order quantities
• Finished goods currently being manufactured in the plant
• Supplier forecast, contracted and quoted quantities

Abel Email Interface

Abel’s Email Interface for Microsoft Outlook® enables you to import emails from Microsoft Outlook and store them in Abel. You can also reply to imported emails from within Abel, so that your email replies are automatically captured within Abel and automatically sent via Outlook.

Using Abel’s Email Interface, you can easily manage all those important email conversations that you need to track as part of doing business and providing good service. Because the emails and replies are stored within Abel, all staff (with appropriate security settings) have access to them for better management of your business relationships and processes such as purchasing and credit control.

You can use Abel’s Email Interface throughout Abel to record email exchanges that are important to your business including those with Customers, Suppliers, Prospects etc. You can also link the email to other things in Abel e.g. a particular Invoice, or a particular Inventory item. Each email can have multiple links within Abel. That way, an email can be viewed from all the places in Abel that it is relevant.

When you import an email, you can select the objects within Abel to link the email to e.g. a Customer, a Supplier, an Inventory Item, an Invoice etc. The object types available for linking are configured for each user in Abel’s User Preferences, so you can configure a set of email interface object types that is relevant to each user’s work.

The Abel Email Interface requires an Add-On license. Refer Licensing for more information.