CounterPoint Retail POS Inventory Management Features


Inventory is the backbone of CounterPoint. It is the means by which all items are identified, priced, and tracked. Inventory is designed to help you maintain optimum inventory levels, control inventory costs, and track merchandise movement. It provides the tools necessary to track and adjust inventory turns and increase overall profit percent and gross margin.

Setting up inventory items is quick and easy. Item numbers and barcodes may be manually entered, scanned or imported in, or assigned automatically. When a new item is added, much of the basic information may be copied from another item to help reduce errors and speed up the entry process, or a template item may be defined.

Each item number can be setup to identify a unique inventory item with an associated descriptions, categories and attributes, price levels, barcodes, and other information or as a "gridded" item having one item number represent hundreds of size, style color combinations of that item.  

  

CounterPoint supports normal inventory items, gridded (apparel color/size/style) items, and serialized inventory.

An item may be defined as an Inventory, Non-Inventory, Service, or a Discount item. CounterPoint tracks on-hand quantities for Inventory-type items.

Easily remove inactive items from CounterPoint. Inactive items are those that have no quantity on-hand, no quantity committed, and no sales activity after the specified cutoff date. CounterPoint will still retains sales history for removed items.

Item Information

Categories, subcategories, and up to six user-defined classification methods may be established for grouping items. These classifications are validated to ensure correct setup of information.

An item may also have:

  • Unlimited barcodes, a stocking unit, and up to five alternate selling units (e.g., EACH, BOX, CARTON).
  • Up to 20 user-defined profile fields for collecting and displaying additional item information.
  • Images, sounds, or video clips that can be displayed during item Zooms, or auto-displayed in Regular and Touchscreen Ticket Entry.
  • A weight assigned.
  • Unlimited substitute items that can be viewed during Item Zooms.
  • A primary vendor and an unlimited number of alternate vendors. For each vendor/item combination, CounterPoint tracks the purchasing costs, the vendor's item number and preferred ordering unit, and other valuable information.
  • A note associated containing unlimited text


LookUps
Easily select an item by entering the item number, scanning a barcode, or by using LookUps. With LookUps, you find the item using a keyword search by entering any portion of the item number, description, category, subcategory, or any other field designated as a keyword search field.

Zooms

You can easily view details of an item whenever you look up or view an item. Item Zooms display information about the item (price, category, extended description, etc.), the inventory (location, cost, quantity available, etc.), recent sales history, vendors for the item, open purchase orders, monthly history, substitute items, serial numbers, open transfers, images, and item notes. You can customize the format and the fields that display in the Zoom.

Barcodes

Barcodes of up to 20 characters are supported (field length can be expanded), and an item may have an unlimited number of barcodes. Barcodes may be associated with a specific selling unit-for example, one barcode may indicate BOX, while another barcode indicates EACH. A unique barcode is supported for each individual color/size/style combination for a gridded (apparel) item.

Barcodes may be manually entered or automatically generated by CounterPoint. Both manufacturer and in-house barcodes are supported. Barcodes may be printed on labels and used for automated scanning during Point of Sale checkout, when taking a physical count, and in other functions.

Random-weight barcodes allow for variable weight items, such as meat or produce Ticket Entry recognizes random-weight barcodes and automatically calculates the correct quantity (weight). Weight scales and tare weights (container weights) are also supported.

Commissions

Each sales rep can be assigned a commission code, and commissions can be calculated on selling price or on gross profit. Different commission rates may be used for different sales reps. Commissions are described more fully under Sales History.

Kits

Capabilities are included for defining and processing Sales Kits (tag-a-long kit), miscellaneous, and prebuilt kits (Bill of Materials). A tag-a-long kit allows you to associate one or more "tag-along" items with a single "parent" item. When a user sells the parent item in Ticket Entry or Touchscreen Ticket Entry, the associated tag-along items are added to the ticket automatically. This feature provides a simple method of ensuring that associated items are always sold together.

A Miscellaneous kit allows you to define any number of component items with a single, "miscellaneous" (i.e., Non-inventory or Service) parent item. When a user sells the parent item in Ticket Entry or Touchscreen Ticket Entry, the associated components are added to the ticket automatically. Unlike tag-along kits, each component of a miscellaneous kit is not treated as an individual line item. Instead, all of a miscellaneous kit's components are grouped together below the parent item, which means that the component lines cannot be separately edited, moved, or deleted. Further, the total price of a miscellaneous kit is always based on the parent item's price, which is allocated among the component items in proportion to each one's individual Price-1 value.

Prebuilt Kits or Bill of Materials allows you to define a bill of material that lists the component items, or parts, that are required to produce a single "parent" item. Once you have defined a bill of material, you can create quick assembly transactions to record the actual production of a specific quantity of the finished good.

Notes

An item may have unlimited pages of notes. These notes may be viewed, printed on forms when the item is sold, and even be set to automatically display when the clerk sells the item (valuable for power-selling related items). Notes use rich text format (RTF) for bolding, underlining, etc.

Inventory Detail Window

This allows you to review the Status, Price-1, Qty available, Qty committed, Qty on hand, and other relevant quantity values for a single item or a range of items for a single location or across all of your locations. This window is designed to help you make purchasing, pricing, and stocking decisions by providing a snapshot of your inventory throughout your company.

Pricing and Units

Item prices can be set up by simply assigning a selling price to each item. Or you can take advantage of CounterPoint's flexible and powerful pricing rules.

An item may be priced by its stocking unit or by alternate units (up to five alternate units per item). For example, you may stock golf balls by the EACH, and sell them at one price by the BOX and at another price by the SLEEVE.

Each item may have up to three price levels for the item's stocking unit and for each of its five alternate units (or six levels with the Advanced Pricing Option).

Margin driven Pricing

CounterPoint allows you to define Minimum margin and Target margin values for each item category and sub-category, and then set Price-1 values for your items based on these margins. In addition, every Price-1 field throughout CounterPoint now includes an easy-to-read, visual indicator of whether its current value is above, between, or below the minimum and target margin values for the corresponding category or sub-category.

This allows you to monitor and dynamically adjust your item prices to ensure that you are meeting your store's profit margin goals.

Pricing Rules

Pricing rules determine the basic pricing structure of an item-whether the item's price is selected from one of the price levels or whether it is based on the quantity purchased, item or customer information, or a combination of those factors.

The calculated price can be based on a price level, a discount percentage/amount off of a price level, a markup percentage/amount from cost, or a fixed price determined by user-defined pricing rules. We also support BOGO (buy one get one free) and mix and match pricing.

Pricing rules provide flexible pricing options, including Promotional, Contract, and Special pricing:

  • Promotional-Sale prices typically have starting and ending dates (and times). Discounts may be defined for specific items or entire categories or subcategories. Multiple sales may be defined in advance using Planned Promotions.
  • Contract-Customer-specific prices may be defined for specific items or entire categories/subcategories of merchandise and have optional starting and ending dates (and times).
  • Special-Special prices may be defined for general pricing policies or for particular groups of customers and typically don't have starting or ending dates.

You can also customize price calculations using SQL stored procedures.

Markdown Tracking
Whenever Price-1 is changed, CounterPoint automatically tracks that change as a markdown. For example, if you reduce a shirt’s price from $10 to $9 and you have two shirts on hand, the change is recorded as a $2 markdown. CounterPoint retains a detailed history of all markdowns.

Merchandise Analysis

Merchandise Analysis is a powerful tool for analyzing inventory. You can classify and rank merchandise using criteria you choose, including units sold, sales dollars, profitability, quantity-on-hand, turn-rate, GMROI (Gross Margin Return on Investment), weeks-on-hand, discounts, etc.-there are over 180 different measurements to choose from.

Analyze merchandise at the item level, or get the bigger picture by grouping inventory by vendor, category, subcategory, etc.

With hot/cold reporting, you can show, for example, the "hottest 40 items based on quantity sold" or "the coldest 20 items based on turn rate."

Merchandise Analysis includes pre-defined reports:

  • Sales is a high-level view of your performance.
  • Inventory Performance measures the performance of a particular item, category, or subcategory.
  • Sales/Returns evaluates returns in relation to sales.
  • Vendor Comparison compares each vendor's sales performance against your investment in that vendor's merchandise.
  • Retail History provides an in-depth or summarized analysis of inventory changes at the retail value within a selected period.
  • Sales Analysis shows the retail and off-retail values so you can compare discounts and profits.

Alternatively, you can create your own merchandising reports by selecting the columns, grouping, and ranking method you want to use.

Sell-through Report - CounterPoint includes the Sell-through Rate report to provide an overview of how well your items are selling based on each item's sell-through percentage, which compares the total amount of inventory that was available to sell during a particular period to the quantity that was actually sold to customers. The report also indicates the Gross Margin Return On Investment (GMROI) and turn rate for each item.

Transfers

A transaction processing system is provided for initiating and tracking inventory transfer activity and in-transit quantities. A transfer-out may be entered manually and reviewed prior to posting, and may be accompanied by a printed transfer form. The completion of the transfer is accomplished by a transfer-in transaction and an optional transfer reconcile step.

For businesses with more than one store, transfer documents can be completed at the main office or at the other stores.

The Transfer Advice report provides a list of suggested transfers using either the maximum-quantity or the replenish sales calculation method. The Transfer Advice report can automatically create transfer transactions, which may be reviewed and edited prior to finalizing the transfer-out documents. Miscellaneous charges, such as freight, can optionally be added during the transfer.

You can also use "Quick Transfers" to transfer inventory in a single step.

Valuation Methods

Inventory valuation is provided by stocking location using the Average Cost method. With the SQL Enterprise edition, you can use the Retail Valuation method to track your inventory based on its presumed selling price. For example, if you receive two shirts priced at $10 each, you have increased your inventory value by $20. If you later mark down those shirts, you have reduced your inventory value, even though you have not received or sold any merchandise.

Physical Inventory

A complete physical inventory subsystem is provided for streamlined physical counts and variance reporting. Support is provided for importing count transactions from text files created by handheld data-collection devices.

 

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