Stock updates – important information

Stock updates to Brightpearl is a core feature of Warewolf’s stock taking module. If you are a Brightpearl customer you should be aware that you must ‘un-allocate’ orders prior to making stock updates from Warewolf. Following that and when the update is finished, you may re-allocate orders in Brightpearl.

Why is that?

Warewolf updates Brightpearl’s ‘in stock’ values for SKUs at locations during stock counting. For example:

Brightpearl inventory data shows

and is a simple calculation where on hand = in stock – allocated

In the stock count 6 are recorded at location A.0.1.0

Since in stock is 10 but 6 were recorded, Warewolf will post -4 to Brightpearl. Brightpearl will attempt the inventory update as:

This will fail because negative on hand values are not permitted.

What should have happened is that the stock count reviewer should have un-allocated the quantity of 9 before updating Brightpearl from Warewolf.

This update would have been accepted by Brightpearl.

You can find further information in the Brightpearl help centre by following this link.

Planned stock counts

In the context of planned stock counts, here are some ideas for you that should make the process flow smoothly.

In the first place, moving stock in and out of the warehouse during a stock count is not a good approach and may lead to inaccurate outcomes. We suggest that you follow the method below. Of course you may want to adapt it to your own business needs:

1. Ahead of the stock count, switch off auto allocation. Of course, if the stock count is for a small part of your warehouse such as a particular location or for a group of high seller SKUs then, the un-allocate method above might work better for you.
2. Process all goods out shipments
3. Put away in progress goods in deliveries and transfers
4. Next, count the stock
5. Review the count and resolve arising issues
6. Update stock quantities to Brightpearl
7. Finally, switch auto-allocate back on and manually allocate in Brightpearl where necessary

Stock counts in retail units

In most instances, retail units do not have allocated inventory making stock counting more simple. But watch out if you allow Brightpearl to allocate stock from the shop to other sales channels like Amazon, eBay or your website. If so, please follow the guidance above.

Your team is counting stock in the shop. A customer comes in and wants to buy a product from you. What should you do?

Where your team has not counted the product yet, sell the product and do nothing. The sale will be processed through the Brightpearl POS system before the count stock update is completed.

On the other hand, if your team has already counted the product, sell the product and reduce the count by one.

Last Update: January 18, 2017  

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