Keeping track of stock

[Bun]

We have a real life shop as well as the site and I'm just wondering how folk keep track of stock in the shop and their sites updated accordingly?

At the moment we're making a real pigs ear of this, the end result is that we sometimes get orders via the site that are not in stock at the shop end. The customer dosen't want to wait till the item comes in stock again so we lose the sale

Your thoughts would be appreciated

[Miranda Stamp]

How do you keep check of what stock you have anyway? I would imagine that if/when I have a shop as well I'd have bar code scanners to take the shop sold stock off by back office system (not yet in place), the downloaded orders would readjust the levels on the system and the overall tally would be uploaded back to the site on a regular basis. I would think you could do this reasonably efficiently using eg Sage & Sage Link to relay the info to Actinic , so that if the shop system took the stock levels down in Sage I could upload the changes to Actinic?

[pnagames]

although we do not have a B&M Shop we sell through 4 different channels (incl our online store)

there is a high chance of items getting back ordered (especially those that we have one or two units left)

what we tend to do is on every other channel besides the shop to list lesser quantity than the one instock (except where is only one)

in your case as mirance mentioned i would imagine that you have some software for your stock control. the best thing to do is run regular reports during the day to see what has gonne off stock and update the site in regular intervals (we update our twice a day)

[Bun]

How do you keep check of what stock you have anyway? I would imagine that if/when I have a shop as well I'd have bar code scanners to take the shop sold stock off by back office system (not yet in place), the downloaded orders would readjust the levels on the system and the overall tally would be uploaded back to the site on a regular basis. I would think you could do this reasonably efficiently using eg Sage & Sage Link to relay the info to Actinic , so that if the shop system took the stock levels down in Sage I could upload the changes to Actinic?

Although some of the products we have do come with manufacturers bar codes most of them do not.....we've found it very difficult keeping track of items that don't come with a bar codes.....it got too the point were we scrapped the whole system because it was just a waste of time and now solely rely on visual confirmation (wandering around the shop and looking at the shelves to see what's in and out )

Any thoughts?

[buspassjohn]

We are still using the Epos system we used when we had a B&M store, if the item didn't have a barcode then we generated one, after all a bar code is only a number. The sales are entered on the epos from Actinic orders on a virtual till, bar codes are no longer needed as we enter stock numbers straight into virtual till, when we had a B&M store, shop sales were entered at the tills by scanning barcodes and downloaded from shop tills and Actinic virtual till to back office.
This updated stock on back office computer, then Actinic was updated from a CSV, the only thing we are missing is a direct link from the epos program to Actinic but the manual preparation of a CSV takes only a couple of minutes and now only needs to be done when deliveries arrive.
Hop this is clear to follow, sounds more complicated than it is really! the epos we use is MiniPos by Niche International.

[Bun]

At first we did used to generate our own bar codes for products that didn't have any......but some of the stuff is small and we can't get a bar code on there. I did think of generating a printed sheet with the bar codes on....but that didn't go down well with the folk on the tills They was forever flipping through page after page of codes.

[NormanRouxel]

If any one's using the Top To Toe EPOS system I have a program (Norcat) that completely builds the Actinic site from the EPOS data. You don't need to do anything in Actinic except a daily import of the Norcat generated stock data and click Update. This takes a few minutes daily. The rest of the time Actinic usually stays in the Order screen dealing with orders as they arrive.

[buspassjohn]

At first we did used to generate our own bar codes for products that didn't have any......but some of the stuff is small and we can't get a bar code on there. I did think of generating a printed sheet with the bar codes on....but that didn't go down well with the folk on the tills They was forever flipping through page after page of codes.

Our Epos uses touch screens at the till, so you can make a button for each of the small items that won't take labels, one touch brings up all the items in a category/department, with buttons or pictures of products (for those that can't read!)