Setting up your items and inventory is a key step to ensuring the success of your store. Inventory is a collection of products available in your store and where you record essential product information like product names, pricing, supply costs, variations, and inventory. A well-set-up inventory makes for an efficient sales process, accurate reporting, and better inventory management.

Understanding item types

There are different types of items that can be added to your inventory:

Individual item

An individual item is a single product with a single SKU and its own inventory. Examples include a plant, handbag, or one of a kind housewares.

Item matrix

An item matrix is a group of similar items offered in different variations, such as size or color. Each variant in the matrix is a unique SKU with its own inventory. Examples include a shirt that comes in different colors and sizes or teapots that come in different colors.

Boxes

A box is a situation where you buy an item by the case but sell it by the case, in smaller packs, or as a single, like a case of soda you also sell as single cans.

Assembly

A assembly is a combination of individual items you receive from vendors and sell them as a fully assembled item, such as a bicycle, or items you sell as a bundle such as a gift basket.

Non-inventoried items

A non-inventory item is an item with no stock, typically a labor item. For example, a gift wrapping service or maintenance fee.

Adding items to your inventory

Items can be added to your inventory individually from the Inventory page. Learn more about adding:

• Individual items
• Item matrices
• Boxes
• Assemblies
• Non-inventoried items

You can also add items to your inventory using a spreadsheet for larger product offerings or already digitized product inventories from outside of Retail POS.

Managing inventory levels for your items

Retail POS inventory management helps you maintain accurate stock levels for your items as you make sales so you always know what you have in stock.

Before you begin adding stock levels, ensure you've correctly entered a unit cost for each of your items, as reporting relies on accurate unit cost. Reporting is also an important part of inventory management, not only for tracking the sales performance of your products but calculating the cost and profitability of those products as well.

• Unit cost: The cost of the item when you buy it from the supplier. This is initially entered when adding a product to your product catalog and subsequently confirmed or updated (as needed) when creating purchase orders/receiving stock. The unit cost is then used to calculate the product's average cost.

  

• Average cost: The average cost is a value for each product that is automatically calculated in Retail POS by averaging all supply prices recorded over time. The calculation for average cost occurs and updates in the following situations:
  • When items are received from a purchase order.
  • When the item’s unit cost and/or quantity on hand is updated manually.
  • When performing a vendor return.
  • When performing an inventory import that includes quantity on hand and cost information.

While you're still setting up, you can add inventory to your items directly by editing items manually or importing using a spreadsheet, as long as an inventory movement hasn't already been triggered for the products.

Once you've gone live, inventory movements have been triggered, and the average cost is set, you should only use a purchase order to add inventory.