See what you have
Overview
The whole business on one screen: stats, graphs and alerts.
The screen for the question you open the app with in the morning: how are we? The figures, two graphs, a ring showing where the value sits and the alerts for what needs doing are all on one screen.
For the owner who wants to know how the business is doing before opening anything else.
What is on it
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The figures at the top
Stock value at cost, products and units, how many are running low, and what sold in the last 30 days.
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Sales, last 12 weeks
A column for each week at today's selling prices, with the figures in a table underneath for anybody who would rather read than point.
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Stock value, last 12 weeks
A line of what the shelves were worth at the end of each week, at today's costs.
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Where the value is
A ring splitting the stock value by building, with every name, value and share printed beside it.
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Needs attention
Products running low or not moving, products with no cost, orders waiting to be picked and counts left open, each with a button to the screen that deals with it.
How it works
- Record sales, deliveries and counts as they happen, in the other screens.
- Open Overview for the figures, the graphs and anything that needs attention.
- Press an alert's button to go straight to the screen that deals with it.
What it does not do yet
A screen that looks like it did something it didn't is the worst outcome, so this is said here as plainly as it is in the app.
- A sale records how many went out, not the price it went for, so the value of past sales and past stock is worked out at today's prices and costs, and the graphs say so.
- A move is recorded in one act, taking stock off one shelf and putting it on the other, so stock on a van between two of your buildings is not shown as in transit yet.
Questions people actually ask
Why is last month's stock value worked out at today's costs?
Because a sale records how many went out, not the price it went for. The two graphs say so on the page: they restate history at the costs and prices you hold now, which is the honest way to compare twelve weeks when the only figures anybody typed were quantities. Change a cost and the line moves, because the line was never a record of what you paid that week.
What decides that something needs attention?
Three things, each of which opens the screen that deals with it: a product at or under the minimum you set, a product that has not moved at all in ninety days, and stock reserved for an order nobody has picked. When none of them is true the card says so rather than showing an empty list.
Does this show money I have not been paid yet?
No. It values the stock you are holding at what you paid for it, and sales at today's selling price. It knows nothing about invoices, debtors or bank balances, and it is not an accounts system. What it is for is the question you open the app with: what have we got, what is it worth, and what needs doing.
Why do businesses lose track of their overall stock position?
Because the number lives in pieces: a count from three weeks ago, a delivery note nobody entered, a sale rung through a till that never touched the spreadsheet. Each piece is individually true and the total they add up to is wrong. Overview only works because every other screen writes to the same figures - there is no separate step where somebody reconciles the pieces, because there are no pieces to reconcile.
The other tools
- FindWhere everything is, and what you have got.
- ScanPoint the camera at a barcode.
- CountCount a shelf and record what you actually find.
- ReceiveTake a delivery in and record what actually turned up.
- MoveMove stock from one place to another, and know it arrived.
- PickGather an order in the order the shelves are in.
- SellRecord what went out of the door.
- BuyWhat is running out, and how much to order.
- OptimiseWhat is not moving, and what it costs.
- AutomateThe jobs the app should do instead of you.