Usage#

The [Inventory & Stock] main menu item allows access to the items that allow you to view, manage and change things related to stock.

Sending and receiving deliveries#

In Tryton you use Shipments to send stock to your customers and receive stock from your suppliers. There are different kinds of shipments available depending on whether you’re dealing with customers or suppliers and whether you are sending or receiving stock.

Although each type of shipment helps you manage the delivery of some stock, and encompasses the same set of ideas, each is tailored for a particular type of delivery.

From Suppliers#

You use a Supplier Shipment when receiving stock from a supplier.

  • The supplier shipment is first received in to the Warehouse’s input Location.

  • You can then use the Restocking List to help you put the stock away in the right locations in the warehouse.

To Suppliers#

If you need to send stock back to a supplier you use a Supplier Return Shipment.

To Customers#

You use a Customer Shipment when sending stock out to a customer.

  • When the customer shipment is waiting to be worked on, normally the first thing you need to do is Assign it.

  • You then pick the stock from the Warehouse. A Picking List helps with this as it details how much stock you need, and where it can be found.

  • Once you’ve picked and packed the delivery you can dispatch it to the customer from the warehouse’s output Location. It is common practice to send a Delivery Note along with your customer’s shipment.

From Customers#

Stock that is returned by customers is handled by using a Customer Return Shipment. It works in a similar way to supplier shipments.

Moving stock within your company#

If you want to move stock between Locations within a Warehouse, or between warehouses that belong to the same Company you use an Internal Shipment.

The internal shipment helps you manage the processes of moving stock from one place to another.

  • Once the internal shipment is waiting to be worked on, you need to go ahead and Assign it.

  • You can use the Internal Shipment Report to help you find and pick, or move, the stock.

  • If the stock is intended for another warehouse you then send the shipment to it.

  • Finally once you’ve put the stock away in the correct locations the internal shipment is done.

Tip

You can use the Stock Location Lead Time to setup how long it normally takes for shipments between two warehouses.

Note

If an internal shipment is expected to take more than one day to complete then when the stock is sent it gets put in a transit location until the shipment is done.

Assigning shipments#

Any Shipments types that normally take stock from either a storage or view Location must be assigned before they can be done. The aim of this process is to find and reserve the stock specifically for the shipment.

The Assign Shipment wizard is used when assigning shipments. It tries to Assign each of the shipment’s incoming Stock Moves. In doing so it updates the stock moves based on what stock it managed to find.

If there is not enough stock available to fully assign the shipment you can force the remainder to be assigned, although this will result in some stock locations having negative stock.

Note

When stock moves from a view location are assigned the stock must always be taken from one of its sub-locations, as view locations cannot be the source or destination of a done move. This also means moves from a view location cannot be forced.

Viewing stock levels#

In Tryton there are a few different ways of seeing Product Stock Quantities. You can also easily see what the stock situation was at any time in the past, and get an idea of what the stock situation will be after any Stock Moves that are still being processed have been completed.

Note

Tryton is designed to allow you to create stock moves even if they create negative stock. For normal storage locations negative stock levels indicate that more stock has been used than was available. This suggests that there may be incoming moves to the location that have not yet been done, or a mistake has been made that can be resolved by Checking and correcting stock levels.

However, although it is possible to create negative stock, you will normally use Shipments to help manage stock moves, and a process to assign them. These respect stock availability and wont allow you to create negative stock unless you force them to.

Depending on what you are trying to find out you can get information about stock levels for either Products or Locations.

If you are interested in finding out where some particular products are stored, then once you have selected the products you are interested in, you can use the menu items Stock Locations in the product’s Open related records menu.

To view how much product is in one or more stock locations you first need to select the locations you are interested in. Once you have done this you can use the Products item from the Open related records menu. This then shows the total stock that is in all the selected locations.

Tip

From the [Inventory & Stock ‣ Locations] main menu item you can quickly get a list of products in a single location by opening the location you are interested in.

Tip

If you have only selected a single location then the stock levels will include all the stock in the location’s children as well. However, if you selected multiple locations then only the stock in the selected locations is included, any stock in their child locations is not included.

Checking and correcting stock levels#

There are a range of things, such as mispicks, damages and theft, that can cause the stock levels on Tryton to not match the actual amount of stock available.

Tryton allows you to check for and correct these discrepancies by performing an Inventory of a Stock Location. This process is sometimes also called a stocktake, stock count or inventory check. How often you need to do this, and to what extent, is very dependent on your business. You may do this once a year at the end of your fiscal year, or continuously by means of a cycle count.

When you create a new inventory you can use the Complete button to complete the creation of the inventory. This adds a line to the inventory for each product that is expected to be in the location.

How you go about actually counting the stock will depend on how your stock location is organised. If each Product is all together and is easy to count, then you can enter the totals directly into the Quantity column. If there are many different lines in the location, or not all of each product is together, then you can start the Count wizard using the Count button to enter the quantities as you go. In this case, multiple quantities for the same product will be automatically added together.

For each inventory you can choose how to deal with any lines where the quantity has been left empty. You can either keep the stock in the location, or empty it out.

Once the inventory has been finished you use the Confirm button to correct the stock levels on Tryton.

Finding the value of your stock#

In Tryton you can easily find the value of stock that’s in one, or more, Locations as the stock’s cost value is included when Viewing stock levels for the locations you are interested in.

Updating the value of your stock#

The value of the stock that your Company owns is based on the Quantity of stock and its cost price.

You can correct the quantity of stock by Checking and correcting stock levels.

You can also change how much the stock is worth by Updating a product’s cost price.

Updating a product’s cost price#

A Product’s cost price is affected by various factors including its cost price method and in some cases the value of stock received or dispatched.

The Recompute Cost Price wizard is used to update a product’s cost price using the product’s cost price method.

Tip

Most of the time you will not need to run the wizard that recalculates your products’ cost prices, because, by default, there is a scheduled task that runs once a day and does this for you.

You can, however, also run the wizard at any time to ensure you are seeing the most up to date information.

Once there are some Stock Moves for a Product you can make a manual adjustment to a product’s cost price using the Modify Cost Price wizard. This allows you to do things like reduce the cost price, and consequently stock value, of a product by 10% from a certain date by using cost_price * 0.9.

Note

If you modify a cost price you may also need to run the Recompute Cost Price wizard to see the changes reflected in the product’s cost price.

Viewing cost price changes#

You can get a list of any manual cost price changes that have been applied to a product by using the Cost Price Revision relate action from the product’s Open Related Records menu.

Using stock periods#

You can use Stock Periods to stop Stock Moves being created or updated before a specific date, and to improve the performance of Tryton when looking at and using Product Quantities.

Tip

Depending on the number of stock moves that your Company generates you may find it useful to create new stock periods as part of your accounting period end, or fiscal year end, processes.