Introduction - The importance of Goods In
Goods In is in many ways the most critical process in your warehouse. While all operations affect warehouse efficiency, a poorly managed Goods In area can seriously undermine your e-commerce business because you won't know what inventory is available to fulfil orders. Deliveries of stock also frequently bring exceptions to the normal inventory management process, such as incorrect items or quantities being delivered or purchase orders being combined or split across several consignments. These all need to be tracked to avoid paying for stock that you did not receive or, worse, not being able to fulfil orders placed on your website. Goods In needs conscientious and competent staff supported by a carefully designed warehouse management system.
Another reason why Goods In matters is that it can reduce the time between ordering your inventory and offering it for sale to your customers. The ideal scenario is preselling - you know what inventory is on order and when it will arrive, so you can advertise the product on your website and secure orders for it before it's been received into your warehouse. This helps maintain cash flow through the business and can even reduce the required warehouse capacity, but it relies on a solid supply chain with reliable lead times. If this is beyond your business at present, then PVX offers other ways of controlling receipt of your inventory accurately and rapidly - with accuracy being the first priority.
Configuring your Receive process
In general, there are two ways to receive goods that you've ordered:
Assume that all consignments are correct and perform spot checks at random; or
Check every consignment and count in all items.
PVX recommends the second approach for the following reasons:
Accuracy in inventory levels is maximised.
Errors or deliberate fraud in consignments are caught and can be handled immediately.
It sets expectations among your suppliers and their couriers that consigments will be checked thoroughly, increasing the likelihood of deliveries being correct.
However, we realise that this approach places a substantial burden on your Goods In operators, so the Receive function in PVX has been designed to help them as much as possible to deal with the various issues that can arise:
Scan every item. Each scan adds increases the total by one. This is the quickest and safest way for operators to receive and ensure there is no miscounting, errors in manual input or counting of the wrong item.
Note: It is possible to scan an item once and then manually enter a quantity but we only only recommend this as an exception by supervisors/managers where the risk of an error in either counting or input to the device is lower.
Use delivery notes or GRNs to group items received. Multiple operators can work together to receive a single order by using the delivery note number to consolidate the records of the items each has received; a report can then be produced in the web app to summarise the items scanned under this delivery note and used to reconcile with the relevant purchase orders. A similar approach can be used by a single operator who receives a consignment in stages while performing other tasks; a report can be produced for all the GRNs (Goods In Reference Numbers) generated by each stage of the receiving process.
Optional features
There are also a number of options that can be added to your PVX account that can help you to configure your Goods In process to suit your operation:
A default quantity option allows you to define a quantity for each item that is normally received. This could be 1 if you are an e-commerce business that handles a very wide range of items but only stocks a single example of each. You then only need to scan the item to receive it into your inventory. (However, we still recommend that you visually check the quantity delivered.)
An option to over-receive allows more items to be received than were ordered (with an optional warning given), and the excess is added to a separate purchase order for handling subsequently.
PVX can group like items together to help with reconciling purchase orders that are split over separate consignments; scanning items with the same barcode will give an accumulated total in the mobile app.
If you regularly receive items which are not correctly marked with the purchase order, then a Receive by PO by scanning option allows you to scan one of the items in the consignment; the system then identifies all purchase orders which contain this item and you can choose the correct one for receiving the order.
You can even receive goods without scanning at all, by choosing the optional Receive Without Scan feature; this allows you to amend a purchase order to reflect the quantities received. As part of this, you can also add an option so that PVX searches for items by using a small part of the barcode (such as the last three digits) rather than the entire code, very useful if you are entering the codes manually.
Note: Receive Without Scan is a chargeable feature.
All the options mentioned above can be activated on your account by raising a ticket with the PVX helpdesk.
Reconciling purchase orders and deliveries
We recommend importing your purchase orders into PVX alongside your warehouse inventory. This allows you to take full advantage of the features in the software for receiving and reconciling deliveries and purchase orders. You can then add the option to automatically reconcile purchase orders with the goods received and enter the results into the inventory immediately; this is recommended if all goods are being checked and counted during receiving. (If spot checks are being done then we recommend using manual reconciliation as this gives a chance to catch errors and incorrect deliveries.)
If you choose not to include purchase orders in PVX then you can still receive goods by item using the mobile app, but the reconciliation will need to be handled separately.
Registering inventory
The Register function in PVX offers another way to help manage your Goods In area. Register is used on an ad hoc basis when there is a need to record incoming inventory quickly, although it is does not record any associated information such as purchase orders or delivery note numbers and only allows the items to be assigned to a single location. It is therefore not suitable for receiving goods that need reconciliation, but it is useful for quickly adding items to the inventory so they are available for sale while they await proper receiving and putting away.
For reporting purposes, you can add a reason when registering inventory. To use this feature you need to set up register reasons - statements that give information about why an item was registered in the warehouse. Register reasons include a barcode field, so users can scan the appropriate barcode from a pre-printed sheet to speed up the registration process further.
The following register reasons are supplied with PVX:
Free sample registration
Incoming inventory from another site
Item outside purchase order
Return received from another supplier
To add a new register reason, follow the steps below:
Go to the Register Reasons tab in the Setup module of the web app.
Click Add New.
In the Add new register reason dialog, enter the code and description of the new reason (both are required).
Click Save.
You can edit an existing register reason by clicking the reason in the tab, then clicking View and Edit. You can also delete a reason by clicking Delete in the tab.
Once you've created your register reasons, you can print them out using the same software you use to print your item and location labels. Your Goods In operators can then quickly scan the barcode for a reason when registering new inventory into the warehouse.
Managing put-away
Put-away is a function in PVX that helps you find locations for inventory items that have been received into the warehouse. It can be used for individual items or containers of multiple items such as pallets. Put-away does not affect the level of inventory in the warehouse, only where it is located.
You can choose the level of sophistication of your put-away process to suit the complexity of your warehouse operation. At its simplest, you can assign a location for each inventory item and include this as an attribute of the item. If you then add the Item type details option to your PVX account, then the details of where the item should be put away can be displayed on the screen of the mobile app.
The next level of put-away configuration involves adding the Default holder option to your account; with this you can pre-define the 'To' location when you are receiving particular items to show the operator where they need to be located.
However, the best way to organise your inventory is to use the Directed put-away feature in PVX. This applies a series of steps to choose a location for an item that you've scanned and want to put away. The basic premise is to store the same items in the same location:
If the same items are currently stored in a bulk location in the warehouse, this is used as the put-away location.
If not, then pick locations are searched to see if the items are stored in any of these.
If not, then the other location types (quarantine and despatch) are searched.
Finally, the system finds the first empty location in the warehouse hierarchy and uses that as the put-away location.
Paid Feature: Directed put-away is a chargeable feature. You need to raise a ticket with the PVX helpdesk to have this option enabled on your account.
Although this process gives a logical basis for assigning locations to items, there may be times when items cannot be stored in the put-away location suggested by PVX; the box might be too big, for example. In these cases, the operator can select a skip reason in the mobile app and then choose another location that is more suitable. You therefore need to set up skip reasons in the web app to allow the required flexibility in the put-away process:
Go to the Skip Reasons tab in the Setup module of the PVX web app. Existing reasons are displayed in the tab; these are related to picking.
Click Add new.
In the dialog, enter a name, description and barcode for the new skip reason, and then select Put-away from the Action drop-down list.
Click Save. The new skip reason is now displayed in the tab and the barcode can be printed using your normal label printing software for quick scanning during put-away operations.
You can edit an existing skip reason by clicking the reason in the tab, then clicking View and Edit. You can also delete a reason by clicking Delete in the tab.