CAPITAL Office Business Software

I need to rethink the way my stock works. At the moment I have most items duplicated because, for example

1. I have an item called - coffee cups carton

and another item called

2. coffee cups sleeve

where a carton will contain 20 sleeves.

I have hundreds of items, so this is becoming inefficient and mistakes are being made through incorrect selection.

how can I make this more efficient (and more staff proof)?

thanks in advance

This depends what you goal is. This could be better stock control but you want to continue to have the convenience of separate codes, especially if your products are already barcoded with carton and individual item codes. Or if that is not the case or you wish to reduce the total number of codes you want to work with, then you could try working with multiple units of measure.

For retaining separate codes but better managing your stock control, create a "physical" stock item for the smallest unit of measure you hold in stock and sell, and then create stock kits based on this code. So you have code ABC which is your individual sale unit and ABCCARTON (which is a kit) which is set to deduct 10 ABC units for each ABCCARTON unit sold. Simply create a kit called ABCCARTON and specify it consists of 10 units of ABC.

Another approach is to start working in multiple units of measure, so you then only have one ABC code in the system but you must then specify the unit of measure if the default unit is not sold. I.e., 2CARTON, 3BOX, 2DOZ and so on. This is more complex to set-up but is a good way to manage your stock and reduce the total number of individual codes in the system. For more information on this, read up on the topics that reference "Box Dimensions"

I have been playing with multiple unit of measure and all is good. So when I enter a Box Qty, the unit qty dims, the box pricing formulas calculate all ok and all is good for the first time the sales order is created.

However, let's say we made a mistake and didn't mean to enter a Box Qty, so we zero the Box Qty and enter a new unit qty.

The pricing does not pick up the unit pricing, but is instead actually calculating a discount off the original unit price and the screen does not refresh with the correct pricing.

the customer has no discount formulas and the there are no discount rules to apply. So I am not sure how a discount is being calculated or why the unit pricing is not be refreshed.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: I worked out that when entering the unit qty for the second time, that the unit sell price has been calculated as the un-refreshed box price divided by the dimension, therefore accounting for what i thought was a discount of some form.

so my question is now: How do I get the system to do a refresh of values without actually having to remove the line item and re-entering?

Thanks

Have you gone into Customer Special Pricing and set-up pricing for your different units of measure?

If not, make sure your price rule specifies the unit of measure. For example, if price E is your carton price then your price rule would specify the discount formula as E and the Measure would be CARTON.

This makes sense. I have set up the dimension table with:
Code = CTN
Measure Name = ctn
Conversion = Stock->Boxcon
Price Formula = Stock->G
Cost Formula = (blank)
Sales is ticked
Purchases is unticked

From stock control
Box Measure = ctn
Unit Measure = pkt
Box conversion = 8

Now when I enter a sales order and enter 1 CTN in the Box column (and all versions of ctn, Ctn etc, I get

Attention
Sorry, no dimension quantity could be calculated.
The conversion formula for this measure has returned a result of zero or one.

Where have I gone wrong?

I have been trawling all over the help files and tried various combinations of codes and just don't seem to get this right.

Thanks in advance

Your conversion calculation is STOCK->BOXCON which is the database field name for the Box Dimension. Probably one or more product items you have specified have a zero value in there. Double check that the item you are trying to sell in a different unit of measure is 8 and not zero.

Also, using STOCK->BOXCON as your calculation is problematical because that field is used by purchasing to convert units of purchase into units of stock. Hence you may have trouble receiving goods this way. (The system does have a rule by default that uses BOXCON but that is for legacy reasons with very old sites/databases.)

Suggestion here is to use STOCK->DIMCON instead as your formula and put a dimension conversion value in "Dimension" or whatever the STOCK->DIMCON field is called on your screen.

Also make sure each of your dimensions has a valid formula assigned to it, that is not pointing ultimately to zero.

Thanks for that.
I have followed your recommendations above, followed step by step the examples in the Dimension Based Pricing and Box Dimensions Table help files and it is just not working.
If I put a value other than 1 in the Dimension Field, which I had to import because even as a master login, this field is not editable from the stock control screen, and now then the unit sell price is being calculated as sell price x dimension value

It is like I missing some information on how the background formulas work.

I added a field called CartonQty to the stock control, put a value in there and changed the conversion formula to refer to Staux000->cartonqty

I still get the error of zero or one as described above and yet none of my formulas or values have a one or zero being referred to in them, so there must be a back ground formula being referred to that is not document in the help files.

Can I get more detailed information to point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance

Update: I sorted the Dimension Field access, was only a security level.
I removed the Default Box Sell Exclusive of Tax and Inclusive of Tax in case that was cause the drama, but to no avail.

There is no secret or missing information. You most likely have made a mistake in your set-up somewhere. Create a formula using STOCK->DIMCON and fill in your Dimension quantity. Compare this to what you have done using your user created field, STAUX000->CARTONQTY. We've tried both here and they both work fine. Perhaps the user field is not allowed in older versions of the software, although we wouldn't expect that to be the case. Another test to do, is when you get the warning message, close it and press Zoom key and check the dimension values on your stock record. Possibly you are not invoicing the item you think you are invoicing.

Thanks for that.
I appreciate what you are saying and agree something is not right with my setup.
Here is an image of the box rule.

http://www.sydneygelatosupplies.com.au/BoxRule.html

From Stock Control

carton qty has a value 10
dimensions has a value of 10

Box List has a value of 28

I did the zoom as suggested, definitely got the right product.

so where in the set up of this rule is it not correct?

thanks

Your set-up looks fine and should work fine. In case this issue is related to something to do with your version, you could rule that out by downloading and installing the demo version on a computer not connected to your network, and test your set-up in that. If it works in a later version, it could be an issue related to the version you are running. While this may be unlikely there are only less likely things to check for now. You can download an evaluation version from the front page of our web site.