Inventory Management

The Inventory Management System is a unique feature in AIMsi that takes the guesswork out of maintaining inventory levels.

The inventory you purchase from your vendors is sometimes based upon impulse, emotion or perceived savings through sales hype from the vendors.  AIMsi eliminates these influences because the inventory optimization procedures are based on realities and these realities are based on what you are selling.  These automated procedures will replace the paper, pen and calculator approach to determining what to order, the quantities to order and the right time to order.  They were designed to keep your store stocked with items that sell.

• You determine the number of days of stock you wish to carry.  As an example, you may set the optimum level of inventory to be 60 days worth of stock and the minimum to be 30 days worth of stock. 
• Seasonal stock (items stocked year round but increased during a certain season) and seasonal product (items stocked during certain seasons only) are accounted for in the analysis.
• You also have the ability to exempt items.  As an example, you may not want to include in the analysis those inventory items that are sold but also used for in store use (such as repair parts).
• Inventory that is not selling will be assigned a status level.  As time passes and the item remains unsold, the status of the item is downgraded until it finally reaches a recommended deletion status.  You control whether the item should be deleted.
• Purchase orders can be generated by vendor based on minimum and maximum levels.  Stock orders and seasonal orders can be generated in minutes rather than hours or days.

Note: The Inventory Management System will optimize your inventory levels by adjusting the minimum and maximum order quantities according to past sales history.  For this reason, the Inventory Management procedures will generate the most accurate results when you have used the sales and inventory portions of AIMsi for at least the amount of days established as the 'days for history' variable (i.e. 180 days).  However, AIMsi will take into account the number of days the item has been in stock, compared with sales of the item in that time period and the days for history variable, in order to generate the minimum and maximum order quantities.

The Inventory Management system is tied closely to the AIMsi Purchase Order module; however, you may use the Inventory Management features without generating purchase orders in AIMsi.  Reports will give you the information required for you to generate your own purchase orders.  The main report to run is "Inventory Reorder" on the 'Inventory' tab of the Report Catalog.