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Clearly Inventory Satisfies Customers Worldwide

  

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It's a great day at Clearly Inventory!

We're excited to share the news that Clearly Inventory now supports customers in 15 countries throughout the world and 24 states in the U.S.A.  

Clearly Inventory was designed for small businesses to use over the internet but we never expected it would reach so many people all over the world. 

Thanks again to all our customers!  

Clearly Inventory System Upgrade Notice - User Permissions

  

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On Monday night, April 4th, 2011 at 9pm U.S. Central Time (GMT -6:00) Clearly Inventory will be inaccessible while we install a major upgrade to the user permission controls.

Here are the highlights of the new permission features, and what to expect. 

• The distinction between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ users is gone. 
• You can restrict any user from viewing specific items or locations. 
• You can restrict users from seeing all ‘cost’ data across the system.
• You can restrict users from making specific types of transactions (for example, a user can ‘add’ items, but not ‘remove’ items, etc…)
• You can restrict which uploaded files users may download or view.
• Anyone with permissions to the “user detail” area can reset and change user passwords. (Users can still reset their passwords on their own if they want.)
• None of the old functionality has been removed.  Any permission structure you used under the old system will be available under the new system.

• We’ve improved and added more areas to the TAB level permissions.  Also, we got rid of the ‘eyes’ in favor of check marks and “X”s.

Clearly Inventory Milestone: One Meeeeeeliooooon Transactions

  

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This just in from Dr. Evil....

Clearly Inventory customers have processed over One Million transactions!  Actually 1.3 million, but no one ever brags about passing 1.3 of anything, so were just mentioning the first 1 million.

Thanks to all of our customers!  We're working on lots of cool new features to make Clearly Inventory even better!  If you haven't already, be sure to drop us a line and let us know what improvements you'd like to see!  Call us at 800-300-0160 or e-mail support@clearlyinventory.com.

Inventory Management 101 - Cookies, Kits, Bills of Materials, & Boxes of Chocolates

  

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If you're unfamiliar with production or assembly work, or inventory tracking, chances are your also unfamiliar with terms like "kitting", or "bills of materials".  Make no mistake - you understand the concepts plenty well, you just don't know what they're called.  We know this because it's one of the questions most frequently asked during product demonstrations. 

Here's what we tell people about Bills of Materials.

Have you ever baked a batch of cookies?

Well, a "bill of materials" is just like the ingredient list on the back of a bag of chocolate chips.  The ingredients don't tell you how to make the cookies, but they tell you what you need to make them.  And just as important, the 'bill of materials' for the chocolate chip cookies specify how many cookies can be made from the quantities specified in the bill.  In this case, they usually give you the ingredients to make '1 batch' or '2 dozen' cookies, etc...

The critical elements of a "bill of materials" are; the item to be made, the production quantity and unit of measure for that item, and the quantity and units of measure for every item necessary to produce one unit of production.

So what is kitting?

While life may be like a box of chocolates, because YOU never know what you're going to get, the guy with the "kit list" sure better know what you're going to get. 

After all, the "kit list" is what tells him which chocolates go into what box.  Just like with a Bill of Materials, a kit lists all the items and quantities that are required to make another item.  Often kit lists describe items that are made up of discrete components - items that don't change when they're included in another item.  To drive this point home, it's easy to take out a chocolate covered caramel from the box show above, but it would be impossible to take the egges out of the baked cookies shown above.  But aside from that, bills and kits function pretty much the same way.

You can see how important bills and kits are to an inventory system.  Many business stock components or ingredients, and then combine or assemble them when they receive an order.  Users of inventory systems are often asked whether or not they can meet demand for items that are out of stock.  If they're inventory system uses bills or kits, and if those relationships are stored an maintained by the inventory software, then this question is easy to answer.

But there's another big benefit to having bill or kit lists in your inventory software.  It makes it very easy to deduct items from inventory that are used in the production of other items.  Using the cookie example above, a good inventory program should be able to automatically deduct all of the ingredients in the appropriate quantities AUTOMATICALLY when batches are made (and hence added to inventory).  This is a process called 'backflushing' and it will be the topic of our next blog!

Inventory Management Tip - Don't Lose your Locations!

  

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So, you wander into your warehouse with its permanent aisles, shelving, racks, etc... and you see the title of this article and think "what is this guy talking about?  How could I lose a location?"

These Locations aren't Going Anywhere

It can be surprisingly easy - but not with the locations described above.  More often it happens when your location looks like this:

These Locations are Going Everywhere

Lots of organizations use storage devices, like the totes above, that serve as locations for other items.  For instance, one of Clearly Inventory's users is a national disaster relief agency.  They have trailers (another type of mobile location) that are shipped on site when a disaster strikes.  Within these trailers are aid kits, contained in totes like the ones pictured above. These kits contain items like shock blankets, which are used, and then need to be replenished.

Shock blankets can save your life if you know where to find one.

When they need a shock blanket, they look up the item number for the blankets, and find which totes contain them.  But now they need to know where they can find the aid totes.  Since the aid tote is a location, it can’t be “moved” and “stored” the way an item can.  Now what do they do?

They create an item number that matches the location name, that’s what.  There’s no law that says a location can’t be a location AND an item at the same time.  In reality, that’s what’s happening.  When an item is stored in it, the aid tote is a location, and when the aid tote is stored in something else, it’s an item.  So creating both a location name and an item number for the aid tote allows us to capture both ‘real life’ situations.

Aside from tracking all of the aid tote locations, there’s also one other huge benefit to this structure.  By using the “Re-Order by Location” feature in Clearly Inventory, they can specify how many of a given item should be stocked in an aid tote, and when the quantity dips below that level, they’re prompted to “re-order”, or in this case “refill” the aid tote.  And running the “Reorder by Location” report shows them at a glance all the items that need to be refilled, in all of the aid totes.

Welcome to the Clearly Inventory Blog!

  

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We talk to people all day about inventory, we write code, use all types of software products, manage a small business, and routinely work with 'unpolished' data - so we've become freakishly good with Excel.

We'd like to share our knowledge with you about inventory management, asset tracking, and more, in the hopes that you'll drive traffic to our site by linking to it, sharing it with friends, quoting from it at cocktail parties - all that kind of stuff.  That's the deal. 

90% of the time you may think we're idiots, and wonder how we ever partake in life's most basic activities.  But 10% of the time, you'll slap your head and say "sheesh, why didn't I think of that?" or "Wow, I'd better link to that blog post, tweet about it, friend these guys on facebook, etc...

Please tell us where we're wrong by commenting on the posts, and we'd love to hear your questions or thoughts as well.

Thanks!