In this article
The Inventory management application allows you to have control over the available quantities, the overall value, and the details of purchased and sold goods. It is possible to handle warehouses of all kinds.
It is also the ideal solution if you sell goods online because, thanks to virtual warehouses, you can keep track of merchandise to be shipped, incoming stock, and even manage more complex workflows.
Recording movements
The Transactions Table is the core of the application, allowing you to enter incoming and outgoing movements for each individual item, with quantities and prices. You can specify the source warehouse (location) from which the item originates and the destination warehouse it is intended for. You can also include descriptions and annotations.
The program keeps the quantities updated, and if you make a mistake, you can modify the transactions to always maintain an accurate situation.
The Items table
All the items in the warehouse are defined in the Items Table. Each item has an ID and a description. You can group items into categories and subcategories. In the Items Table, the program also displays the available quantities and other information that is updated based on the movements.
There are several columns available, and the display can be customized. You can also add new columns from the Data > Columns setup menu. Various parameters are defined for each item, which are then reflected in the Transactions Table.
Once the parameters for each item have been defined, recording merchandise movements becomes very fast. You simply need to enter the item ID in the Transactions Table and input the quantities. All the other values are automatically filled in.
Managing customers, suppliers and projects
With the Inventory application, you can add columns and tables to input information about the customers to whom the merchandise is sold and the suppliers from whom the merchandise is received. Additionally, columns can be used to manage projects related to the merchandise.
Using the Extract Rows function, you can display operations performed with customers, suppliers, and for projects.
For more detailed information, please refer to the Advanced Functionalities page.
Multiple and virtual warehouses
To manage merchandise that arrives or is shipped from branches, the Locations Table is used, where the location of each warehouse is indicated. In the case of your company having warehouses in various locations, you can specify which warehouse the merchandise enters or exits from, or keep track of which warehouse the merchandise is shipped to customers from.
The Locations Table can also be used for other purposes by changing the header. One practical use could be to record the movements of keys in the management of a block of flats, by setting the names of the tenants.
Additionally, you can manage an online shop, and in this case, the Locations Table is used to indicate virtual warehouses.
For more detailed information, please refer to the Advanced Functionalities page.
Printouts
All data contained in the various tables can be printed, either in its entirety or by selection. Before printing, you can customize the columns.
To to carry out the printing:
- Journal
By selecting the Print option from the File > Print menu while in the Transactions Table, you will be able to print all the warehouse movements in the desired chronological order.
- Items Cards
To print article data click on the menu Report > Item Cards
One or more item cards can be selected for printing. Item cards can be printed according to the following groupings:- Group
- Location
- Period
Many advantages
Automated calculations and specific functions keep your work to a minimum, saving you time and energy:
- You have accurate stock control at all times:
- Initial values and quantities.
- Current values and quantities.
- Separate columns for incoming and outgoing items.
- Unit and total prices.
- Single item card.
- Group of items card.
- Item and group cards by location.
- You can search for items immediately and, if they are no longer available, you can replace them with others.
- Corrections are possible at any time.
- Indication of which warehouse goods enter or leave from and the exchange of goods between locations.
- Export to PDF for archiving data.
- Import of data from other programmes in Text, Ascii and CSV format.
- Columns for archiving products that are no longer available.
Features currently not available
The Inventory application was conceived as a powerful yet easy-to-use tool, which works independently from the other Banana applications.
Its main element is the ease of use, so we have refrained from loading it with too many functionalities.
Here are some of the features that, although requested by some users, are not available at the moment:
- No connection to the accounting file. The transactions of purchase and sales invoices in the accounting file do not update the data in the warehouse. The data in the warehouse file must be updated manually.
- Calculation of cost prices and margins
In the Items table, unit prices must be entered manually.- Users expect the programme to calculate cost prices and margins automatically. There are very different calculation systems (average price, LIFO, FIFO). We thought about evaluating this functionality within the Items table, but we saw that it would make the programme too complex and it would be very difficult to cover all requirements anyway.
- We are considering adding specific printouts. We welcome suggestions and possible simple solutions from you users. It would be very helpful if you could send us an Excel file of how you would like the report and which methods and calculations you would use to calculate the prices.
- Printing of stock situation at a specific time (end of month).
- Print warehouse overlook by location.
- Create a new year.
It is possible that certain functionalities will be added in the future.
In all cases we appreciate your suggestions.
Further information: