Introduction
Welcome to your guide on using the Inventory Management features of Empress Finance. These features are designed to help you comprehensively track and manage your business inventory, optimizing your processes and providing clear insights into your stock management.
Understanding Empress’ Inventory Features
Empress offers a suite of inventory features:
- Stock Movement: This feature records the movement of your items between different locations.
- Shipment: This feature records the dispatch of items to your customers following a successful sale.
- Purchase Receipt: This feature records the receipt of items from your suppliers after a purchase.
- Stock Ledger: This report feature captures all stock transactions, providing a clear record of your inventory movements.
- Stock Balance: This reporting feature displays your available stock balance quantities.
How to Enable Inventory Feature
To activate the inventory feature, navigate to Setup > Settings > General Tab and check the ‘Enable Inventory’ option. Once this is done, restart Empress to see the Inventory feature on your sidebar.
Important: Once activated, the inventory feature cannot be deactivated.
Tracking Your Items
You can opt to track certain items in your inventory by ticking the ‘Track Item’ checkbox when creating an item.
Remember: The ‘Track Item’ option can only be enabled during the item creation process.
After you’ve set an item to be tracked, you can oversee its movements through your inventory transactions.
Defining Your Locations
In Empress, items move to and from defined Locations. There are two types of movements:
- Inward movement: This increases the quantity of an item at a specific location.
- Outward movement: This reduces the quantity of an item at a specific location.
The source or destination of these movements are selected during your transactions.
Empress defaults to a location called ‘Stores’, but you can change this in the Inventory tab under Settings.
Adding New Locations: You can create additional locations during an inventory transaction by selecting the ‘Create’ option in the Location dropdown.
Maintaining Stock Quantity
Outward movements decrease the stock quantity at a location. If a location doesn’t have enough stock, the transaction will be blocked. This ensures that you never have negative stock, even with backdated entries.
To proceed with the outward movement, you can:
- Change to a location with sufficient stock.
- Perform an inward movement of the selected item to the chosen location before the blocked transaction.
To find which location has enough of an item, refer to the ‘Stock Balance’ report.
With this understanding of how to enable and use Empress’ inventory features, you can start to streamline your inventory transactions. Empress is designed to empower your business operations, making inventory management an efficient and insightful process. Enjoy exploring these features and harnessing their benefits for your business.