Products
An extensive amount of detail about Warehouse Products is stored in the Products table. These details are stored in four tabs as shown below.
The data recorded under each tab can be summarised as follows;
Product Details Most generic product data
Specifications Dimension and weight data. Cubic data calculations.
Dangerous Goods Data relating to hazardous goods if applicable.
Comments Text data
Product Details
A wide body of data is recorded under the Product Details tab. An explanation of the various data fields is below the screen shot.
Code This is a system generated unique ID for the record. It is made up as a combination of the Product Code and the Customer. The Customer is recorded in brackets.
Customer A valid Customer who owns the product. This can be left blank to denote that it is not a third party product.
Product Code The identifying code for the product. Often this will be the Customer’s stock code.
Description Free form text that describes the product. This description will appear on the various Warehouse forms and reports.
Item Type This is used to show the base unit of storage / handling for the product. It is provided for information purposes only.
Product Type This field is used to group products for rating purposes. For example you may wish to charge all White Wines in the same manner. So by applying a Product Type of White Wine to all of these wines we only need one item line on the rate card as against needing a line for each white wine product.
Transport Item This is the item type that we wish to apply for transport ofWhen transporting the product we can chose to have the warehouse product featuring on the transport job or can convert it to a transport product. In the example above we will transport it under the product of Pallet. This caters for the situation where we are shipping a number of products in smaller quantities yet stacking them all together on a pallet, possibly shrink wrapping it. While a number of products are involved the Transport Management system considers it is shipping one pallet (possibly more). If you leave this field blank the Warehouse product will feature on the Transport job.
Prime Group This is the primary classification (grouping) field for the product. This is used for reporting and product matching in Pick Cards, Put Away Cards and so on.
Secondary Group This is the secondary classification (grouping) field for the product. This is used for reporting and product matching in Pick Cards, Put Away Cards and so on. The Secondary Group may have a General Ledger code recorded against it so if any form of General Ledger analysis is required based upon Products this should be done through the use of this field.
SDS This is a date field that is used to record the renewal date for a Safety Data Sheet.
Cost Price This field could be used in situations where the Warehousing Company either owns or is responsible for the product. For example in a 4PL operation.
Sale Price This field could be used in situations where the Warehousing Company either owns or is responsible for the product. For example in a 4PL operation.
Warehouse Item This field is automatically set to True for all Warehouse products.
Inventory Item This will most likely not be commonly used by a Warehouse operation. If set to True then the Transport Inventory functionality will be used when this product is subject to freight movement. This functionality would enable you to record how much of a product is being held at a subsidiary location, for example at a location where consignment stock is being held.
If you wish to use such functionality the Transport Product should be blank. The address to which the product is being sent should be set with the tick box “Stocking Point” set to True. This will allow you to keep track of the stock levels at that address as well as the stock levels at the Warehouse.
Conversion Factors These are a group of fields that are used to calculate transport job statistics based upon the quantity entered and the conversion factor. In our example it would take 20 cartons to fill a pallet.
There are five conversion factors available for use, these being;
- Quantity per pallet
- Quantity per lift
- Quantity per space
- Quantity per tonne
- Quantity per cubic metre
Documents A number of documents can be stored against a product. These could be
pictures, text data, spread sheets and so on. To attached a product click on the green browse button which will allow you to use standard features to browse for your document and then attach it by clicking on the Open button.
Alternate Product The system allows you to record a number of alternate products against any product. An alternate product is a free form text field. It does not demand that it be a product stored on the system. Its use is purely to provide an alternate search field, this facility being provided in Product Administration and Inward Goods processing. Alternate products can also feature on the forms used within the Warehouse.
Tracking Field There may be different fields that are essential for the management of various products. The system allows you to define these fields (see Tracking Fields). Against any product you can decide what fields (if any) are to be tracked. To do this you must record the tracking fields against the product. To do this you must follow the following procedure;
- Click on the blue + button in the Tracking Fields box.
- This will open a blank line. Click on the green search button on the right of this line.
- This will open a search which lists the fields that have been set up as tracking fields. Tick all the fields you wish to have tracked for this product then click on the blue Select button above the list.
- The required fields will now be recorded against the product.
Specification
This tab enables you to record the dimensions of a base level unit of a product and use this to calculate other statistical values including conversion factors.
Width width of a unit in metres
Length Length of a unit in metres
Height Height of a unit in metres
Cubic This is calculated by the system and is the volume of the unit expressed in cubic metres.
Nett Weight This is the weight of the product excluding packaging.
Gross Weight This is the weight of the product including packaging. This weight will be used for rating calculations.
Conversion Factors These are a group of fields that are used to calculate transport job statistics based upon the quantity entered and the conversion factor. In our example it would take 20 cartons to fill a pallet.
There are five conversion factors available for use, these being;
- Quantity per pallet
- Quantity per lift
- Quantity per space
- Quantity per tonne
- Quantity per cubic metre
The button at the bottom of the screen titled “Calculate Standards” can be used to calculate the Quantity per Weight and Quantity per Cubic Metre for you. This will be an exact calculation so you may wish to manually alter it to an integer figure (ie: alter the quantity per weight to 208.0000).
Dangerous Goods
This tab is used to enable storage of data and links relating to hazardous goods. The fields available are described below.
Hazardous This is a tick box that, if ticked, indicates the product is hazardous.
Packing Group This is a free form text field that is used to describe the packing group of the product.
UNNO This is the relevant United Nations number for the product. TLP is supplied with full UNNO details so to apply a UNNO you may either key it in directly or use the green search button to select the UNNO from the list presented.
Additional Information This is free form text available for the recording of data not catered for by any of the other fields.
Storage DG Classes These are the Hazard Classes for the product that pertain to Storage. Against any product you can decide what storage classes are relevant. To do this you must record the storage classes against the product. To do this you must follow the following procedure;
- Click on the blue + button in the Storage Classes box.
- This will open a blank line. Click on the green search button on the right of this line.
- This will open a search which lists the storage classes. Tick all the classes you require for this product then click on the blue Select button above the list.
- The required classes will now be recorded against the product.
Note: The relevant Transport Classes are obtained from the UNNO linked to the product.
Comments
This tab provides access to two fields which can be used to store comments relating to Transport and Warehouse. Currently these comments can be viewed on the Product Administration screen only.