Knowledge Base

The Helpers Tool on the PO Dashboard is a powerful feature for keeping track of inventory levels. It lists all your Suppliers that currently have products under them that need to be replenished or reordered. 

Setting up Minimum and Maximum Stock Quantities can help you take control of your inventory levels and reorder points. This will also make the Helpers Tool more powerful.

Navigate to the PO Dashboard screen. From there, select the Helpers button at the left of the screen. Initially, it may not list many (or any) suppliers here. However, as you sell items and set up your minimum and maximum quantities, this list will become populated with suppliers that have products that need to be reordered.

To set Minimum or Maximum stock quantities for a product, navigate to a Product Card. Click the Status tab at the top, and input your desired values in the Min/Max Reorder fields.

Minimum - This field sets a minimum level or floor quantity for this product. Once your current In Stock quantity for the product falls below this level, it will be marked for Reorder in the Helpers section on the PO Dashboard. The supplier this product is ordered from will show up in the list, along with how many products are needed to bring it back to the minimum level that was set.

Maximum - This field works alongside the minimum level to set the quantity that will be ordered once the quantity for the product falls below the minimum level. This can always be changed manually once you create the PO, but the maximum determines what number is ordered there by default.

- CheckIn takes your On Order AND In Stock quantities into account when calculating Minimum/Maximum Quantities. For example, if your Minimum Quantity for a product is 10, and you have 5 in stock and 5 on order, it will not be considered as needing to be ordered yet as those 5 on order are being counted as part of your available quantities. On the other hand, if your Minimum Quantity is 10 and your product has 3 in stock and 3 on order (for a total for 6) that product will be considered as needing to be ordered.

- Checkin also takes into account your Reserved quantities. For example, let's say you have a product with a Minimum Quantity of 10 and a In Stock quantity of 10. Typically, this would not trigger the item to be listed as needing to be ordered. However, if you create an Order for a customer for this item with a quantity of 2 - that will reserve 2 quantities in the Product Status. This will take your available quantity of the product down to 8, which will trigger it to be listed as needing to be ordered.

- You can set a Minimum Quantity without setting a Maximum Quantity and vice versa.

- If no Minimum Quantity is set for an item, it will default to 0. This means it will only be added to the Helper list when it reaches a negative amount.

- Setting an item as non-Inventoried (using the checkbox at the bottom left of the Product Card) disables the Min/Max feature.

Once you have set up your min/max levels eventually you will reach a point where you need to reorder your items. Navigate to the Helpers Tool to view the Suppliers that have products needing reordering.

Next to each Supplier, you will see the number of products needed and also three buttons. From here, you have a few different options. You can use the first button from the left to view the products that need to be re-ordered. That screen will allow you to create a Purchase Order with the items of your choosing. The middle button will allow you to view all the open Purchase Orders for this Supplier. Lastly, the button on the right will create a Purchase Order and add all the items that need to be reordered to that PO.