A. Product A 'Product' in the Idalica Suite is something that can be sold and/or purchased, (or something that can be stored) and it has to have a Price. Some of the Products in the inventory management software include:
Items
Services
Resources
Expense Types
An 'Item' in The Idalica Suite is a physical good that can be sold. 'Services' are not restricted in terms of availability whereas 'Resources' are restricted. 'Expenses' can be billed, for example: a consultant who incurs some travel expenses can be invoiced to the customer.
A Product can also be described as a "collection of Assets with similar attributes." One of the attributes of a product is its storage location as defined by warehouses and locators.
The warehouse is the point of service. A warehouse may have more than one locator. Each Locator has predefined dimensions:
Aisle
Bin
Level
Another attribute for Products in the Idalica Suite is the 'Product Category'. Product Categories enable you to group products with similar characteristics, pricing structures, accounting rules and reporting. For example, by using the controls of the Idalica Suite you can globally set or change a discount structure for a Product Category. All products in that category inherit the revised discount structure.
B. Product Catalog The Product Catalog organizes all of your products for simplified searching based on product attributes. For example, you may use the Product Catalog to search for all products that are "shirts," "yellow" and "short-sleeved." The Product Catalog optionally details product bills of material (BOM) and substitutes.
C. Price Lists Multiple Price Lists are supported for all purchased and sold items. The Idalica Suite has a Purchase Price List functionality, which allows simple control of discounts from suppliers. The system provides general and customer specific sales price lists. Price Lists are date-controlled to allow special sales initiatives.
D. Bill of Materials A Bill of Materials (BOM) contains one or more Products, Services or BOMs. The number of elements a Bill of Materials may contain is unlimited. The Idalica Suite maintains the following types of Bill of Materials:
Stocked — The available quantity represents what actually is stocked, not what could be produced. If the price is 0.00, the price is dynamically calculated (i.e. sum of the individual parts).
Non-Stocked — The available quantity of a non-stored Bill of Materials is dynamically calculated on an item to item base and represents what could be available. Non-Stocked BOMs are mainly for data entry convenience. When processing the order or invoice, individual order lines are generated for each product sold. The price of a non-stocked BOM is always the summary price of its individual parts.
E. Distribution and Multi-Warehouse Control The Idalica Suite supports multiple warehouses with user defined locations within each warehouse for recording stock locations in shelves and bays (Bin Locations). With the Idalica Suite inventory management software, physical warehouse can be broken into multiple logical warehouses such as receiving, quality assurance and testing, bulk storage and picking. Priorities can be set to ensure that picking takes place from bin locations in a prescribed sequence. Inventory movements can be effected between bin locations and warehouses.
Movements between warehouses can be configured to produce appropriate shipping documentation and manage 'in transit' stock. Stock counts and stock valuation adjustments are managed by recording the difference between the book stock quantity and the count quantity and processing any difference so that sales activity in the inventory management software can continue in parallel with the other data entry processes. Stock used for internal purposes can be written-off to record the stock decrement and consequent financial entries in the Financial Ledger.
F. Material Receipts and Replenishment Using the Idalica Suite, shipment documentation can be created in batches or individually on a per order basis. Goods received from vendors can be compared directly with the purchase order or the vendor invoice. The inventory management software shows 'available to promise', after considering reserved inventory for future customer shipments and expected vendor receipts.
Material Replenishment lists are created based on inventory replenishment rules, past sales, or targeted inventory levels. Requisitions or Purchase Orders (PO) can also be automatically generated from the Material Replenishment report. Optionally, you can also replenish a warehouse from another warehouse.
G. Costing of Product and Services The Costing functionality in the Idalica Suite is flexible and comprehensive. Users can customize it to meet their unique business needs. Users can specify the detail and level of costs to track. Users can have multiple parallel costing methods. These can include Standard costs and Actual costs. Product costs may be composed of both Material and non-Material costs.
The Idalica Suite maintains the information for the following costing methods:
Standard Costing
Actual Costing (Last PO, Last Invoice, LIFO, FIFO)
Average (PO, Invoice)
Costs can be recorded at three levels – 1.) Company, 2.)Organization or 3.)Batch/Lot. You can also specify a different costing method or costing level for a Product Category. This allows the maximum flexibility for financial analysis. You may switch the costing method used any time. The information is very valuable to compare trends. Costs are maintained in your accounting currency.
Using different costing methods (Standard, Actual, or Average) can result in different financial results. The Idalica Suite supports using more than one costing method, e.g. for legal accounting and business decision-making.
The following general information is maintained per Product and Accounting Schema:
Current Cost (based on Standard or Actual Costing)
