After 4 months of hard work, we will launch our May 2012 upgrade on Sunday the 27th. This upgrade introduces breaking changes to the way Inventory Transaction documents (Goods In/Goods Out/Goods Transfer/Goods Returns) are handled. It also adds new megaventory modules and functionality to the existing ones. We explain the breaking changes below:
1. New interface in Inventory Transaction Documents
We have updated the user interface of our Inventory Transactions & Invoices documents according to the design that was introduced with our ‘Roma’ upgrade for Purchase Orders, Sales Quotes and Sales Orders. In detail:
a) Inventory Transactions & Invoices Documents can now be saved in the Pending State. While in the Pending state, no actual inventory movement is committed and no costs nor revenues are updated. The actual movement takes place when the document is verified. The Verify action also assigns the correct subsequent number to the documents according to the document type.
b) Inventory Documents cannot be deleted nor the Product Details can be edited once the documents are verified (since actual item movements have been committed and a subsequent number has been assigned).
c) Full user activity logs are available per document in the History tab of the document.
d) Multiple .pdf or image uploads are now possible (i.e. contracts, agreements etc.) per document in the Related Contract or File tab
e) Creating/editing an Inventory Transaction or Invoice document is significantly improved in terms of speed; the Client/Supplier, Document Type and Inventory Location are selected in one single page and all operations are performed using web-services eliminating the need for page refreshes.
f) Invoicing of shipping only /receiving only documents (such as Goods Inbound / Goods Outbound) will be disabled. Invoicing of such documents can be done only against a Sales or a Purchase Order from the Sales or Purchase Order interface.
2. New ‘Return of Goods to Supplier’ document
A new document type has been introduced to handle the returns that your company ships back to its suppliers (for example, defective items). As expected, the creation of the document reduces the inventory and adjusts the costs of the items included in the document.
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| New “Return of goods To Supplier” option at the menu |
3. New Functionality in the Goods Transfer document
As you may already know, the Goods Transfer handles the transfer of items between Inventory Locations. We have broken this operation in separate ‘Shipping from’ and ‘Receiving To’ actions so, in the new upgrade, the shipping and receiving actions do not happen instantly. If a Goods Transfer is only shipped then, the items in the document are handled by a new internal location that has been named ‘in-Transit’ location. Then, in the receive action, the items are received from the ‘in-Transit’ location to the actual location where we intend to receive items in.
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| New operations in the Goods Transfer document |
4. Partial and Full Account Reset
A new Account Reset option has been introduced (partial reset). This option zeroes the inventory but preserves all account data (products, suppliers, clients, etc.). Such an option can be used after a user has finished evaluating megaventory during the trial period and is ready to go into production where real orders and product movements take place.
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| The two Account Reset options |
5. Inventory Taking (Physical Inventory / Initial Quantities)
A new Inventory Taking module has been introduced that can be used for a) getting initial product quantities into megaventory and b) for performing physical inventory counts to adjust inventory.
The Inventory Taking procedure is pretty simple: The user downloads an Excel file that is preloaded with the products of the account. The quantities and product costs just need to be added in the file which can then be uploaded as a CSV in the account. This can be seen from the screenshot below.
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| New Inventory Taking module |
6. New display of documents in lists.
We have made two significant improvements:
a) The print/email icons have been moved in the same column together with the document number and the document number has been made a link that open up the document for viewing/editing according to the user’s permissions. This eliminates one extra column in the list and also the view/edit opening options making it easier for the user.to open up a document.
b) We have added the totals in the footer of the list. This makes it handy to perform sums of values and quantity
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| New design of the document list pages |
7. Display of products that need to be ordered
This was a long-awaited request from many of our clients. Once in the ‘On-hand inventory & Alerts’ page, users may now choose to display only those products that need to be ordered from their Supplier (Physical quantity + Non-Received quantity in Purchase Orders is not enough to satisfy the Non-Shipped quantity in Sales Orders.) This is how the new feature looks:
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| New ‘non-received qty in Purchase Orders’ is displayed per product |
We have also dealt with more that 50 minor improvements and bug fixes to make your life easier. This has been our most impressing upgrade as of yet! Now, let’s get back to work! Next upgrade will include some breaking changes in our reporting module!
Kostis is the Megaventory CEO.