Cleaning Up a Site Inventory Database (Part 2)
Tip: Use Edit Items from Criteria to locate items that
need to be corrected or deleted.
Last month we described one way to "clean up" your inventory by taking a physical inventory and using CDBWin's Item
Adjustment feature.
This
month we'll look at another feature within Item Adjustment—Edit Items from
Criteria—that provides another way to clean up your inventory, either by
correcting records with bad information or deleting invalid items. Along the way we'll provide some
tips for identifying such items.
To clean up inventory using Edit Items from Criteria:
On the Setup menu, click Inventory >
Item Adjustment to display the Item Adjustment window.
- If you wish to narrow the inventory sample to be cleaned up, type selection
criteria. In the illustration below, the
criteria limits the item sample to Department Range 12.00 to 12.99:
- Click Edit Items from Criteria. CDBWin displays a new window with
spreadsheet-type features. You can expand this window by clicking the maximize
icon (
 ) in the
Windows title bar:
-
If you want to use this window to help identify invalid items, here are some
things you might look for, arranged by column:
- INV Id — Look for odd-length numbers, for example those with 10 digits. When
you locate one, check the other database cells like Unit List, Vendor and Unit
Cost. If these are blank, it is a good indication the item is a bad item and
should be deleted.
- Size — Sort in descending order (right-click on the column and select
Descending) to help identify pack sizes—such as pack sizes greater than
99—that strike you as strange or
non-standard.
- ID Description — This column is useful to find erroneous item
descriptions that you can either correct if they are for valid items or
delete if they are invalid items. Sort in ascending order to identify and
delete items that don't have descriptions or have description prefixes with
"SKU".
- Unit List — Sort in either ascending or descending order to help identify items with abnormally high
or low retail prices, perhaps resulting from data entry errors.
- Dept — Check for product names or IDs that may have been
incorrectly assigned, like a cigarette pack in the soda department. Sort in
descending order to see all unassigned EDI items so you can assign them to a
specific department.
- Vendor — Sort in ascending order (right-click
on the column and select
Ascending) to identify products without a vendor assigned to them. These will
appear at the top of the list. The existence of a product without a vendor usually indicates that you never purchased
the item and don’t carry it in inventory—a common occurrence after initial setup if SSCS supplied a starter inventory file to help you initially scan your store.
You can also use this column as you scroll through the inventory display looking for odd vendors in a sequence. For example, if you find an item with your Pepsi vendor in the middle of group of products from your Frito Lay vendor, the Pepsi product may be incorrectly assigned.
- Unit Cost — Sort in ascending order to identify items with a negative or zero cost. Correct the cost or delete the item.
If you find many items with a zero cost, especially if it is early in your installation, you can automatically set a cost based on the list price. This is done on the Item Adjustment window using the Cost by Margin feature.
- Margin — Sort in ascending order to look for items with a low or negative margin
that may or may not need to be corrected. Sort in descending order to find items with a missing cost.
- If you determine an item is not a valid item, highlight it and press DELETE. You must have
Setup-level user permission to do so. To select multiple
items, hold down the CTRL key while clicking. To select a continuous range of
items click the first item in the sequence, hold down the SHIFT key and click
the last item in the sequence. This action does not delete the items from the
site inventory database, merely marks them as "inactive" and will be sent as
such to your POS during the next import session. Though not truly deleted from
CDBWin, they will be deleted from your POS at that time.
- When you have finished reviewing items and setting them to inactive, click
Close to return to the
Item Adjustment window.
For Past Tips of the Month.....
Consult the Tip of
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