Celerant Command Retail: Physical Inventory

Celerant Command Retail’s physical inventory module lends itself to merchandise counts being performed by outside services (ex. BOWH, RGIS) as well as by internal personnel. Celerant’s retail software works perfectly for annual and semi-annual physical inventories, which are often performed for each store in its entirety, and, in addition, more granular physical counts, at various categorical levels. In addition, Celerant’s retail software provides cycle-count functionality, allowing for the scheduled counting of individual items.

Sessions

Each physical inventory contains one or more sessions.

A session is simply a group of scans downloaded into the physical inventory, regardless of how they are downloaded. Celerant’s retail software is completely based on the user’s discretion as to how to define each session; perhaps each shelf will be grouped into its own session or each wall or some other distinction. If an inventory service performs the count for a store, that company will most likely provide a single file containing all the scans from the entire store. This would then be downloaded as a single session.

Downloading the Scans

With Celerant’s complete point of sale and back office software, there are several ways to “download” the scans into a physical inventory.

For small stores or small-scale counts, you can connect a scanner right to the workstation and scan directly into the physical inventory screen. If you are using a hand-held data collector, you can download the scans stored in the data collector into the physical inventory by connecting it to the computer. A file can be downloaded into the physical inventory. Celerant’s retail management system accepts files in several formats, including a file containing individual scans or a comma separated file containing each barcode and its scanned quantity.

In addition, another very convenient method of downloading scans into a physical inventory is with Celerant Command Retail’s wireless physical inventory application. This application runs on wireless scanners; and validates each barcode scan on-the-fly. Upon the completion of each scan session with this application, it is not necessary to sync or dock the device with a computer. With the click of a button on the wireless device, the scans download directly to the server, saving them as a new session.

Comparing the Scans to the System Inventory

Regardless of the download methodology or methodologies used, once all scans in your point of sale software have been downloaded into a particular physical inventory, it is compared to the system

inventory. Since the sessions (especially if they are files received from an inventory service) may not be downloaded into the system until days after the count was actually performed, your retail software compares the scans with a virtual snapshot of the system inventory. This “snapshot” provides the system inventory as it was when the physical count was actually performed. This now allows the user to extract a report (either in Acrobat or Excel/CSV format) of the comparison, showing the discrepancy item by item, and in terms of units, cost and retail values.

Adjusting the Inventory

Once you are satisfied that a particular physical inventory should be applied, you will simply click a single button.

Within seconds the system inventory is adjusted accordingly. The retail management system generates physical adjustment transactions so there is a complete audit trial record of the adjustments generated from each physical inventory.