Stores and items

Who this is for: Storekeeper, Manager, Owner — reading the catalog requires inventory.catalog.read; adding or archiving a store or an item requires inventory.catalog.write. Where: Inventory → Stores & Items

This is the reference data the rest of Inventory is built on. A store is a place stock sits. An item is a thing the house buys. Nothing else in the section works until both exist: a purchase order needs a store to deliver into and an item to order.

The screen is two panels — stores on the left, stock items on the right — and each has its own form at the top of it.

Add a store#

1. Type the store's Name.
2. Type a short Code, if you use one.
3. Select Add.

The store appears in the list underneath, immediately available to every other screen in the section.

Stores are places, not departments. A dry store, a bar cellar and a linen room are three stores; the kitchen that draws from them is a department, and departments are typed in when you issue stock, not defined here.

Tips

Split stores where you would count separately. Stock is valued per store × item, so two stores holding the same item hold it at their own cost and count independently. If you would never walk the two rooms with a clipboard on separate evenings, make them one store.

Add a stock item#

An item carries two units and the conversion between them. Get this right on the first day; it is the number every quantity in the section is expressed in.

1. Type a SKU — your own code for the item. It must be unique in this property.
2. Type the item's Name.
3. Set the Base unit — the unit you use it in: g, ml, each.
4. Set the Purchase unit — the unit you buy it in: bag, carton, case.
5. Set Base units / purchase — how many base units are in one purchase unit.
6. Select Add item.

The item lists under its name with the conversion spelled out beneath it: COF-001 · 1 bag = 1000 g.

Two panels, two kinds of reference data. The grey line under each item is the conversion every later quantity is expressed in — one case is twelve towels from here on.

Penting

Everything after this screen is in base units. You order in purchase units — 10 bags — and receiving multiplies by the conversion, so 10,000 g arrive. Recipes, issues, counts and the valuation report are all in grams. An item whose conversion is wrong is not a labelling mistake; it is a costing mistake, and it compounds with every delivery.

Pick base units small enough to measure with. A recipe that needs 18 g of coffee cannot be written against an item whose base unit is bag.

Archive a store or an item#

1. Find the row.
2. Select Archive.

The name goes struck through, and an item also picks up an archived badge. Nothing is deleted: past orders, receipts, issues and counts keep pointing at it, and its stock keeps its value.

What archiving does is keep it out of new documents. Restore puts it back.

There is no delete, deliberately. A stock item is referenced by every movement it was ever part of, and a catalog you can delete from is a valuation you cannot explain.

What you cannot do here#

The screen is deliberately thin, and two absences are worth knowing before you plan around them:

• An item cannot be edited after it is created. There is no rename, no unit change and no category field on the form. If a conversion is wrong, archive the item and add a corrected one — which is why the SKU and the units deserve a minute's thought each.
• Stock is not entered here. There is no opening-balance field. Stock arrives by receiving a purchase order, or by posting a count that finds more than the books expected — and stock found by a count on an item with no history is valued at zero, so receiving is the honest way to open a store.

What's next#

• Suppliers and price lists — who sells you these items, and at what price
• Raise a purchase order — the first document that uses both panels
• Stock valuation — where the items you just defined turn into money