Linnworks Order Management - Managing Inventory

Managing Inventory

Content

Overview
Basics
Managing Inventory
Add New Products
Edit Stock Item details
See also...

Sub content

Tutorial - Part 1

Tutorial - Part 2

Tutorial - Multichannel Inventory Synchronization

Tutorial - eBay Inventory Synchronization

Tutorial - eBay Inventory Sync Multiple Listings linked to the same product

Overview

Inventory control (stock control) designed to help you to track the quantity of products you sell, Linnworks is specifically geared up to do so for businesses selling online. The fundamental functionality of inventory control is to add stock levels for products when you acquire new stock by buying goods from your supplier and deducting stock levels when you make a sale. For businesses selling online the concept is somewhat similar with some degree of exceptions and differences in methodology. This user guide describes how inventory management works in Linnworks, what the system will do for you and how to get full benefits of inventory control.

Basics

All products you sell or stock should be entered in Linnworks.
Each product and its variation has its own, unique SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), or in Linnworks we quite often refer to it as Item Number.
Each product has stock level states:

Physical stock level – how many you actually have in stock.
On order – how many are expected to be received from supplier following placed purchase order.
Minimum Level – to alert the system of the minimum threshold for the stock level.
Available – this is dynamically calculated value i.e. Physical stock level minus in open orders.

Stock level gets deducted from following actions

Sale - Shipping as part of the order. The stock level will only be deducted once the order has been shipped.
Resent – when an item gets lost in the post or the customer requires a replacement.
Scrapping of stock item – damaged products must be scrapped and recorded in the system as scrapped
Direct adjustment – you change the stock level manually using Stock Adjustment screen

Stock value – the system is capable of keeping track of the stock value. Stock value is a dynamically tracked value of the stock – it is determined from the cost of the products you have purchased to populate the stock level and any direct adjustment. This is NOT PurchasePrice x Quantity.
Stock level is being added from following actions:

Purchase – when a purchase order is placed, On Order level will be increased. Once the purchase order is marked as delivered/partially delivered – level on order will be moved to actual stock level.
Returns – when an item is returned to you by the customer and you wish to place the item back in stock for resale.
Direct adjustment – you change the stock level manually using Stock Adjustment screen.
Stock In – you can book stock in when as you receive it from the supplier.

Each stock may have multiple stock level – the concept of multiple locations allows you to have multiple stock levels for the same product. Each location in effect tracks a stock level independently.
You can have stock item composition (packs, bunches, combinations, BOM products)– a stock item which consists of or includes other stock items.

Managing Inventory

You can search, browse, add, delete and edit stock items from a single screen located in Inventory Control > My Inventory

You can also adjust inventory levels, value and find stock which is running low from the same screen.

Add New Products

Go to Inventory Control > My Inventory
You can add new products by clicking the top row. The SKU will be generated automatically for you. By default it will create numerically incremental SKU staring from 100001, however if you SKU numbers are mixed up with character based SKUs the system will generate arbitrary character based SKU like AAA-BBB-CCC
Press Tab to move the cursor to Item Title
You can specify stock level, stock value, minimum level at the point of entry of the new stock item. Please note - you will only be able to see the stock level related fields if you have selected a Location from the drop down box in Show Location filter.

Once the product is added you can enter more detailed info by editing the item.
Alternatively you can click New Item button and enter the detailed product description.

Notes:

You can import batch stock items from a comma delimited file using data import utility.
It is possible to create stock items from unlinked order.
It is possible to import new stock items for eBay listings, Amazon inventory, PlayTrade, Magento inventory (where facility is available)

Edit Stock Item details

Go to Inventory Control &bt; My Inventory
Find the item you would like to edit.
Highlight the stock item in the grid and click Edit Item

Description - stock item details and item image.

Postage Definition - here you can specify default postage details, weight and measurements of the package.

Linked Title - this section allows you to manage Linked Titles for the given stock items. Linked title is a list of listing names which will automatically linked to this stock item when an order is downloaded from a channel (eBay, Amazon, PlayTrade etc).

To add new linked title, click on the top row, enter the SKU (channel sku or custom label), Item Title and Source as EBAY, AMAZON, PLAYTRADE etc. To apply the changes hit Enter.

There will be a number of titles that have already been downloaded with order data from a channel. The easiest way to add already existing title click Add From Existing button, and double click on the title you want to add.

To delete a Linked Title hit Del button.

Channel SKU Mapping - list of SKUs that will link to this stock item for orders downloaded from a channel. This table is also for Inventory synchronization. To add new linked Channel SKU, click on the top row and enter the SKU details including Source and Subsource.

The Subsource for Amazon is a Merchant Name, for eBay is an account identifier i.e. EBAY0 or EBAY1 etc, for PlayTrade is a the Merchant Name. This is not applicable to websites and Megento integration as the Source will identify the exact channel uniquely, for example MAGENTO1 or WEBSITE2 etc.

When Channel SKU is used for inventory synchronization, the last updated status will be recorded for each record. You can review the last status of the submitted inventory data to the channel will be available under Show/Hide Status.

To delete a Channel SKU record hit Del button.

Supplier - list of suppliers and supplier associated details. To add a supplier click Add New, then select the supplier from the list by double clicking the supplier. You can then edit the details such as Supplier code, barcode, lead time (the time it normally takes to source the product from a supplier), Purchase Price from the supplier by typing the values directly into the grid.

At least one Supplier must be a default supplier – i.e. your preferred supplier.

To delete a Supplier from the list hit Del button.

Location Bin/Rack - You can add a list of locations for the selected item. The main purpose for entering location is to identify the item's storage identifier such as Bin/Rack for every location.

Extended Property - extended properties is a list of custom values that can further describe the stock item. This table is used to create Specification tables when an item is listed on a channel using Linnlive service or create Item Specifics attributes.

Each record in the extended property has a type (predefined in the system), Name of the property and a value. To add new extended property click on the top row, type Name, value and select Type from the drop down list.

Composite items - composition enables you to specify a pack/bundle of items that are included with or comprise the stock item. For example is you have a stock item Mailing Bag and you also sell Mailing Bags in a pack of 10, you can create new stock item Mailing Bag pack of 10 and add Mailing Bag as a composite item with quantity of 10.

To add composite click Add New, search for the product you want to add, double click to add to the list. To change the quantity type the value in the quantity cell and hit enter.

After editing click Save to apply the changes. The screen will refresh indicating the successful saving of data.

To add Product Image:

Edit the item;
Click Add Image on the Description page;
Select the image from the disk.

You can enable product thumbnail image on the My Inventory screen (note: when product list is large it may consume quite a lot of your PC resources to display all thumbnails)