You can set up specific products in Synergy to be ordered in bulk, e.g. by box, drum, outer, pallet etc. And make use of a feature to suggest products for reordering. Here's how...
This functionality is only available in Synergy Build 383 and above
Introduction
This function is built to provide a user-friendly method of re-ordering stock of products that your supplier provides in bulk, that you on-sell to your customers individually. For example, a retailer might order Chocolate Bars by the box, but then sell these in their shop front individually.
The invoicing and point of sale functionality in Synergy remains untouched, this 'order by container' functionality only impacts Stock Control purchase orders.
Setup
To set up one of your products to be ordered in bulk/containers, find and edit the relevant product in your product list select the Other tab
To correctly use the Order By Container functionality, you'll first need to better understand all the fields available in the Order Suggestion section of this screen.
- Minimum When using the 'suggest' function within purchase orders to suggest parts that need reordering; the system looks for any items where the stock on hand value is lower than the Minimum value defined here.
- Target Here you define the target Qty on Hand you would like to achieve when re-ordering.
- Units Per Container /Re-order Minimum- The label on this field will be 'Units Per Container' if the 'order by container' box below is ticked, otherwise, the label will be 'Re-order Minimum'.
- When you are not using the 'Order by Container' option, purchase orders generated using the 'suggest' function, will order in multiples of the 'Re-order Minimum' (e.g. if the re-order minimum is 5, then the suggested order would make a suggestion that is a multiple of 5, e.g. 5, 10, 15, 20... ).
- When you ARE using the 'Order by Container' functionality, this field is where you specify how many individual items per container.
- Order By Container (tickbox) Tick this box if you want to set up the selected product to be ordered in bulk / by the container.
- Name of Container This provides a label/name for the type of container this item is supplied in, e.g. Box, Carton, Pallet, Drum, Outer etc. Simply type in the appropriate name.
Example:
If, for example, this product had a Qty on Hand of 30; and I clicked the 'suggest' option when creating a Purchase Order; the system would see it is less than the Minimum qty of 50; so it will suggest for this product to be ordered.
It sees the Target is 126 and there are 42 units per container (which equates to "3 full containers").
So the Suggested Order would be for 3 boxes (outers) of this product. This would bring my total Qty on Hand to 156 (realistically, I will likely sell some of my remaining 30 before the 3 boxes of this product arrives).
Alternatively, if the Qty on Hand for this product was 42 (meaning I have one full box/outer) when I use the Suggested Order function, the system would only be recommending I order 2 boxes, which would get me to exactly the Target qty.
Operation
Standard Purchase Order - Ordering Products by Container
Go to Stock Control and start a New Purchase Order
On the New Purchase order window, add a part you have set up to be ordered by container by either typing its product code into the Product Code field or by finding it in the product list by pressing F2 when the cursor is in the Product Code field.
An extra caption will display below the product input line, informing you that this product is setup to be 'ordered by container', detailing the type of container and number of units per container.
Accordingly, by having '1' in the Qty field of this input line, we will be ordering '1 Container of 42' individual products. The Cost has also been recalculated based on the individual cost price set up against this product.
You can edit the Qty and Cost values if required.
When an item is selected within the detail lines of the current order, a further notification will display below, reiterating that this product set up to be Ordered by Container:
Suggested Order
As mentioned within the Setup section of this article; setting up the Order Suggestion figures for a product is required in order to make use of the Suggested Order functionality.
There is one further Pre-Requisite for this functionality, and that is that you have specified one or more Suppliers for the relevant product(s) on the Supplier tab of the Product setup screen:
So assuming your products have been assigned to the appropriate suppliers; here is how to use the Suggested Order functionality:
In Stock Control, click New Purchase Order to start a new order, and select the supplier you intend to place an order with.
Click the Suggest button located at the bottom of the New Purchase Order screen:
This will present a window showing all products linked to this supplier that are at or below their specified Minimum quantities, and recommend the appropriate order to get you back above their defined Target quantity.
Simply put a tick in the Selected tickbox beside any products you wish to re-order (or use the Select All button at the bottom of the window to select all products listed) then click Order and these items will be added to the Purchase Order.
Complete the Purchase Order as normal after checking the Order Qty and Cost pricing is correct.
Printed Purchase Order form Example
On this example you will see that the product ordered will specify the qty and container type within the details of the printed order:
