Solid Know How™

Answer: Damaged and expired inventory is unfortunately part of all distribution businesses. By monitoring returns from individual routes though, it may be possible to find areas where inventory returns can be drastically reduced, leaving more inventory at the customer sites, and more cash in the pocket. By using a simple two-pronged approach, all product returns can be monitored on a daily and periodic basis to help paint the picture of why and where returns are happening.

Close Cash Out Report:
The first and easiest method is to make it a mandatory procedure for all route sales people to print out and hand in a Close Cash Out Report at the end of every work period.

1. This report can be printed from the Main Menu of Solid Sales Pro by tapping on [Day/Trip End], followed by [Close Cash Out], and [Finalize This Cash Out]. 

This report will show all the sales for their work period, and also print out a Damaged Stock Report that’ll show all product returns, as well as their return condition. Solid Innovation recommends that Close Cash Out Reports be printed from Solid Business Central for each mobile unit record as well, and confirm that the numbers are the same on both reports.

Damaged and Expired Goods Cost Center:
The second step is to assign each mobile cost center to a specific adjustment cost center, where all their damaged and expired returns will collect. By making note of these adjustment cost center’s inventory value at the end of each month, and then adjusting the inventory value back to zero for the start of the next month, a business can monitor if spoilage is increasing or decreasing for any mobile unit record.

1. The cost center that spoilage is sent to, can be controlled in Solid Business Central by navigating to [Datafile / Cost Center / View].
   
   
2. While viewing a Cost Centers Record, whichever cost center number is set in the ‘DamagedStk Adj_to’ field is where all damaged and expired inventory will be transferred to after the Close Cash Out Report is printed from Solid Sales Pro.

Returned Items Report:
A final method of tracking all returns throughout the system is to use the optional special feature of Solid Visual Analyst’s Returned Items Report. This valuable report can be customized by customer, date range, and return type to give a truly in depth analysis of all the business’ returns. For further details, view the sample Returned Items Report available in the Attachments area for this article, and for further information please contact a Solid Innovation Product Specialist who will be happy to answer any questions, including pricing, of this great feature.