Inventory Tab

The Inventory Tab contains important information regarding inventory characteristics of each item. It allows you to select categories, costs, shelf life and other information concerning your items.

Details
Inventory Category
Every item must be assigned to an item category. Item Categories are used to help determine the source and storage location for an item.

Financial Class
This field lets you define the financial class for this item. This can be purchased food, supplies, commodity, or other. You cannot edit this list. This field is useful for reporting and exporting information to your financial system.

Person Responsible
Enter the person responsible for this food item.

Shelf Life
Every item must have a shelf life. This is used to determine when a lot of an item will expire. The Shelf Life value is added to the date received or date produced to compute the expiration date for the lot. The default is 0.

Note: This field is not used for any calculations by the program. For example, the system will still issue a lot of expired items if they are in inventory. The Expired Items report will show any items that are past their shelf life.

Cyclical Count Code
The cyclical count fields are used to create daily or weekly inventory sheets for spot checks on quantities. These fields are used when taking physical inventories. The date and cycle help to determine when and if an item will be counted. Choose from the combo box whether this count is Daily, Weekly, and so on.

Date of Last Cycle Count
This field is updated automatically when you take a Cycle Count Physical Inventory for this item. The default is the date the item is first entered into the system.

Substitute Item
Enter a suitable substitution in the event the primary item is not available. Both the original item and the substitute item must be on the same Master Purchase Order. You cannot use a different vendor for the substitute item. Once you enter a Substitute item you can see the description for that item.

Force Substitution
Checking this field will force the substitute item to be used in place of the main item regardless of availability.

Effective Date Range
Enter a beginning and ending date that the substitute item can be substituted.

Costs
Auto update Standard Cost
If the field is selected, the item standard cost information will be updated automatically,without prompt, when the price changes on the PO line item. If this field is not activated, you will be prompted when the PO line item price changes.

Standard Cost
This field is used for budgeting purposes for recipes and menu plans. It is usually the average price paid in the previous year for the item being entered. If you enter a cost for a basic food that is used as an ingredient in a recipe, the Know as You Go Screen in the recipe will show you the food costs as you are building the recipe. If the item is a commodity, this field should contain the total USDA delivery cost and processing fee cost per Case.

Note: If you know your labor cost by recipe, you can add the labor costs to the calculated Standard Cost and enter the total in the Recipe Standard Cost field to override the accumulated value.

Upcharge
An upcharge is a charge for a product that is based on the product's cost plus handling and storage costs. Warehouses sometime upcharge a site for goods they deliver.

Commodity
A commodity is an item provided for free to the district by a government agency, usually the USDA. A full commodity comes from the USDA ready to be used. "Contains Commodity" applies to a recipe or prepared item type only, where one of the ingredients is a full/processedcommodity. A
processed commodity undergoes further change at the district's expense.

Note: Shipping costs may still apply to commodity items, but there is no charge for the actual item.

Allocated Commodity
If the item should be considered for commodity allocation, select this check box.

Fair Market Value
If this item is a commodity item, enter the amount that you would have to pay, per unit of measure selected in the next field, if you had to purchase this item. The USDA should provide this information to you.

Identification
District Defined Barcode
The District Defined Barcode is an optional field that lets you store item information for tagging items once they enter your districts inventory system. It can be used in customer reports and applications.

UPC
Enter the UPC Field used for barcode tracking for the different measurements.This field can contain up to 14 digits. Since UPC can vary for an item based on the packaging style or manufacturerof the item, you can associate multiple UPC identifiers to a single item.

Note: Only measurementsdefined in the Ordering & Inventory Measurementswill be available to link to a UPC.

Storage and Shipping
Tie
Enter the pallet tie for this item. This information can be found on the bid specs from the vendor.

Tier
Enter the pallet tier for this item. This information can be found on the bid specs from the vendor.

Gross Weight
Enter the gross weight of one of this item, including packaging materials, in kilograms. The unit used here is the same as the Standard Cost Unit.

Case Dimensions
Enter the length, width, and height of a standard case of this item in inches.