Items in Rise Business: Overview

By Rise SA Team, March 7, 2024

In the dynamic world of modern business, accurate and detailed product information is the key to success. Managing inventory effectively, optimizing purchasing decisions, and enhancing customer service all depend on having a well-maintained item card in your accounting system.

However, with numerous product variations, it's easy to get lost in the sea of data. Mistakes in item cards can lead to inventory discrepancies, delayed shipments, and even customer dissatisfaction.

To avoid these pitfalls, it's crucial to establish clear guidelines for filling out item cards in Rise Business. By investing time and effort into maintaining accurate product information, businesses can unlock the full potential of their WMS system, drive operational efficiency, and stay ahead of the competition.

For the purpose of this article, we will consider two examples:

A wine trading company registering pick semi-dry French wine Domaine Moncourt, "Roche Noire" Rose d'Anjou, 2021.
An online garden supply store registering kits of 5 maroon pots 9.5 cm in diameter + soil for violets. Usually, we use kits to register products that can be sold separately, but we can also combine them into kits to easily add to sales document and provide discounts.

STEPS OF CREATING ITEMS IN RISE BUSINESS

In general, there are three steps for keeping records of items in the system:

Enabling functional options.
Filling the Item kinds catalog.
Filling the Items catalog.

First of all, enable all the necessary functional options. You can do this in Master data and settings – Master data and sections – Items.

In the Accounting dimensions section, you can enable additional options for the Items catalog:

Multiple item kinds. Allows you to use more than two items kinds. In addition to goods and services, you will be able to create sets, reusable packaging, and works.
Item variants. You will be able to keep some item properties in a separate catalog.
Item packaging units. Enables to set a number of goods in a commercial or transportation packaging unit, which is a multiple of the main storage unit.
Goods batches. With this option, you can keep accounting of goods serial numbers, lot numbers, and expiration dates.
Quality of goods is designed to separate the items of different quality (new, suitable to a limited extent, not usable). It is often used to keep track of defective goods.

Item kind is a catalog which combines items belonging to one type, meaning they have common accounting parameters and a set of properties that describe them. For example, items related to "Wine" item kind are described by the same set of properties, such as vintage, manufacturer, and so on. To access the catalog, go to Master data and settings – Master data – Item related catalogs – Item kinds.

Item kinds are grouped by common accounting dimensions:

Item type. There are 5 item types available in the system: Goods, Sets, Works, Services, and Packages. Depending on the selected item type, the available item attributes will change.

For wine, we select Goods as it is a physical item we store on our warehouse.
For kits of pots + soil, we select Set as originally pots and soil are separate items we keep in the warehouse. We assemble sets dynamically before sending them to customers.

Item variants. It is a detailed description of the item. For example, the same pot can be presented in the shop in different colors. Using item variants, you can avoid creating separate items in the Items catalog and therefore significantly reduce the number of items registered in the system. For example, instead of registering 10 different items for 10 pots 9.5 cm of different colors, you create one item called "Pots 9.5 cm" with 10 variants (maroon, green, black and so on).

For wine, we can register vintages as variants: in my example, I create "2019" and "2020".
For sets, we will register sets with pots of different colors: "Maroon", "Light green", and "Lavender".

In the item kind, we can specify whether variants will be different for each item of the kind or the same for all item of the kind. In our example some wines can have vintages, others don't. So I select Special for items and will create items in the item card. As for sets, the logic is the same.

Item batches. Batches makes it possible to assign special numbers to goods lots (you can also set expiration dates) or to each product individually. Batch accounting in Rise Business can help you manage customer complaints when it is necessary to find out from which supplier a specific item was received and take appropriate measures.

For wine, we keep accounting by lots with expiration dates.
For sets, we do not use batches at all.

In the item kind, you can set the default values of important accounting parameters for automatic filling. For example, the VAT rate (if it is the same for all items of the kind), the Stock UOM (for example, for wine, it can be bottle), and so on. You can also set up conditions for creating an item of this kind: specify, what fields are required (for example, manufacture for wine), templates for generating item names, and other. This will reduce user errors when registering new items.

To create a new item, go to Master data and settings – Master data – Items. When creating a new item, the user specifies what item kind it belongs to. All possible attributes are populated from the corresponding item kind.

The item card consists of two tabs.

The first tab contains information as a text. It is very convenient for viewing and searching. You can edit the attributes on the second tab. Let's take a look at them one by one.

Firstly, specify the Working name. If the Print name is left blank, when saving the card, it will be copied from the working name.

For wine, we specify "Domaine Moncourt, "Roche Noire" Rose d'Anjou".
For a kit, it will be "Set of 5 pots 9.5 cm + soil for violets".

Under Main accounting parameters, select the required item kind, VAT rate, set up variants and batches if required. The new field here will be a list group. A List group combines items with common features. For example, you can group alcohol by manufactures.

For our wine, it will be registered as follows:
Item kind: Alcohol.
Variants: 2019, 2020.
List group: Domaine Moncourt.

For sets:
Item kind: Sets.
Variants: Maroon, Light green, Lavender.
List group: Home sets.

You can also take advantage of goods quality. The application allows you to keep track of items of different quality and, when detecting defective goods, reflect the change in goods quality in the documents. In this case, you can match one or several low-quality goods to the item. For example, for "Joseph Mellot Destinea Sauvignon Blanc", "Domaines du Chateu de Riquewihr Les Sorcieres", and "Hornhead Sauvignon Blanc" items, you can create one card of the spoiled product: "Spoiled wine".

Another big block is Units of measure. Rise Business offers a great variety of measurement units for all business cases. Whether you're buying liquids in barrels but selling in liters or handling cables in pieces but selling in meters, you can easily register these operations in the system, using the required features:

Packaging units will help, if you store items in one UOM, but sell in different UOMs. For example, you can sell wine in bottles, in boxes of 10 bottles, in pallets of 9 boxes, and so on. In this case, you can use packaging units instead of creating multiple items in the Items catalog. For each packaging unit you create, you can assign a physical package you use in transportation (boxes and pallets are not just UOMs but physical packages I want my customers to return, so I register them as reusable packages in the system). For each package, specify its weight and volume to help the system put items into storage bins in the warehouse.

Report unit. It is a unit of measure you can use to analyze inventory balances in some system reports. For example, you can analyze available balances of wine in bottles and in liters. In our example, 1 bottle contains 0.75 l of wine, so 1 l will be 1.333 bottles.
Weight, volume, area, and length. When your additional unit of measure is a unit of weight or volume, you can take advantage of metric characteristics specified in the item card. If your item is measured simultaneously in pieces, kilograms, and liters, for each item you can set two or even three full-fledged units of measure that can be used in documents and output in reports.

One more interesting field here is Warehouse groups of products. They are used to divide goods into groups of goods that have the same storage or transportation conditions. For each warehouse product group, you can assign a particular storage area. For example, perishable goods are stored in areas equipped with refrigeration units, and bulky goods (furniture) are stored in a separate hangar with high ceilings, and so on.

Under Details, you can add an image and specify a test description of your item.

In the Manufacture details section, you can enter a manufacture, brand, and country of origin of your item.

For wine, we will also specify that this is an excisable product. You can find this setting under Local accounting.

In Supply and production, you can set a Supply scheme for your item. Supply schemes determine how the demand for items will be met (for example, purchase from a supplier, transfer from one warehouse to another, or kitting/reverse kitting). For example, you can set up that the wine will be purchased from a certain supplier to a certain warehouse and a delivery time will be 5 days. So, every time there is a demand for goods, you will know how to cover it to avoid shortages.

CONCLUSION

Let's sum up. Rise Business implements a lot of item attributes, which is an actual labyrinth of possibilities. It is important to fully examine each attribute, decide which functionality you will use, and think about how to structure the Items catalog, meaning how to divide items by types, kinds, list groups, price groups, and other, before you start registering items in the system. This approach requires significant costs at the initial implementation stage, but this is the only way you will create the foundation for effective data management and process automation. This is an investment in the future of your business, ensuring the system optimization, process automation, and generation of valuable analytics for making informed decisions.

Having issues organizing the Items catalog? We are ready to assist in setting up Rise Business or even modify it to meet your specific business requirements. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us to discover how to achieve success and confident leadership in the market with Rise Business.

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