Materials and depots
Each material has a code, a name, a class and a base unit it is stocked in. You define the classes yourself: acrylic, composite panel, vinyl, LED and so on. Give a material a critical level and the list flags it when total stock falls below it, and the depot managers are notified.
Stock is kept per depot and shelf. A shop that does not care about shelves never has to: every depot has a default one. The material list filters to items below their critical level, items out of stock, or a class, and the stock list downloads as a CSV file that opens in Excel.
Stock movements
Stock changes only through a movement document. All lines of a document are posted together or none are, so there is never a half-applied movement. Every document gets a number and records who posted it.
The movement list filters by type, depot, material, order number, the person who posted it and date, so you can trace later where a material came from and which order it went to. Posting movements, reversing them and entering count adjustments are separate permissions; each employee gets only what their job needs.
| Movement | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Opening balance | The first count entered into a depot |
| Goods receipt | Material arriving against a purchase request |
| Order consumption | Material leaving the depot for an order |
| Transfer | Moving stock between depots or shelves in one document |
| Staff assignment and return | Handing a serial-numbered tool to an employee and taking it back |
| Count adjustment | A stocktake difference, recorded with a reason |
Unit conversion, lots and serial numbers
- Units are converted: a material stocked in sheets can be entered in square metres, and stock moves in the base unit by the conversion you defined. Without a conversion the movement is refused.
- Quantities are always entered as positive numbers; the movement type decides whether stock goes up or down.
- A lot-tracked material needs a lot number, and a serial-tracked one needs a serial number that is in stock.
- Stock never goes negative: taking out more than the depot holds rejects the whole document. Two people taking the same material at the same moment cannot overwrite each other.
- The movement screen works with a handheld barcode scanner, so a scanned material code is entered directly.
Reversal: undoing a wrong movement
A wrong movement is not deleted; it is reversed. The reversal writes the exact opposite of the document's stored lines, so you do not re-enter quantities or depots, only a reason. A document can be reversed once, and a reversal cannot itself be reversed.
Whatever the document changed is changed back: reversing a goods receipt returns its purchase request to “Ordered”, reversing an order consumption reopens its material request, and reversing a staff assignment returns the tool to stock.
An order's material needs: from the depot or from purchasing?
Someone working on the order enters a need such as “12 m² of 3 mm acrylic”. SignFlow compares each material against the shop's own stock, in base units, and splits the need:
- When the depot hands the material out with an order consumption, the material request is marked delivered by itself.
- The comparison is not a reservation: stock may change in the meantime, and the real check happens when the material leaves the depot.
| Stock on hand | What is created |
|---|---|
| Enough | A material request to the depot for the full amount |
| Part of it | A material request for what is there, a purchase request for the rest |
| None | A purchase request for the full amount |
The path of a purchase request
Any request not yet received can be canceled. Members see the requests they raised; the buyer sees the whole queue. The home page shows materials below their critical level and requests waiting to be bought as numbers of their own.
- 1
Requested
When a request is raised, the people who see the purchasing queue are notified.
- 2
Approved or rejected
A member allowed to approve purchases approves or rejects it.
- 3
Ordered
The buyer marks it ordered once the material has been ordered from the supplier.
- 4
Received
Nobody sets this by hand: it comes only from posting a goods receipt. Every request shown as received therefore has its material in stock.