Table of contents
What is article management?
One Article management is usually part of an invoicing or merchandise management system and is used to store and manage products and services. In this context, the term Article master This is because the products stored in an item management system can be inserted as items in invoices and other documents. All relevant data can be saved for each product, such as article number, name, description, category, packaging unit, revenue accounts, purchase price, various sales prices, manufacturer, RRP and many other article-related data.
Supplier management
In a good article management system, several suppliers can be saved per article in order to realize flexible sources of supply and to be able to determine the most favorable purchase price in each case. Suppliers are usually stored in a connected CRM system.
Price groups and special prices
In order to be able to use sales prices on a customer-specific basis, an item management system should support the creation of price groups and graduated prices. Any number of price groups with any number of price scales can then be created for each item. If a price group is set in a document that is available in the desired item, the document does not contain the standard price of the item, but the price that was preset in the corresponding price group. It should also be possible to preset a price group within the CRM in the customer in order to be able to automatically insert customer-related prices in invoicing.
Stock management
A good item management system not only stores the master data of an item, but also manages the stock, ideally at several warehouse locations. It should be possible to indicate in the individual product whether the product should be automatically posted to the warehouse stock or not, as service items, for example, are not usually posted to the warehouse stock. With regard to stock, the item management system should keep a log of all stock postings so that goods movements can be tracked retrospectively.
In addition to the stock level, an item management system should also support the specification of a minimum stock level. If the stock level falls below the entered minimum stock level, a corresponding message is displayed or the item is shown in a list of all items below the minimum stock level.
Article variants and attributes
For configuration articles, article management should offer the option of entering corresponding variants or article attributes, for example, for each product. An article attribute contains an article option with a corresponding option value, the stock level, the excess or short weight and the excess or short price.
Barcode and EAN code
Article management should be able to generate barcodes and, if necessary, the EAN13 barcode for each article. In this way, for example, labels and product lists can be provided with barcodes or EAN13 codes directly from the item management system so that the items can be scanned later.
Connection to online stores
In times of digital lifestyle, article management should also have a connection to an online store so that article data and stock levels can be synchronized with the online store.
Parts lists for product configurations
For product configurations and production items, it should be possible to manage parts lists for each item. Each item that is in a bill of materials for an article is automatically posted from stock when the corresponding master article is posted to a document. Some item management systems also support combination items, where each linked item on a document is automatically added to the master item.
Batch management for tracking articles
With batch management, every item can be tracked from purchase to sale. In addition to details of the supplier and carrier, a batch also contains an optional expiry date for each item. The expiry date is also available in all documents so that the expiry date of each item sold can be tracked. Items with maintained batches are removed from the batches according to the "First In, First Out" (FIFO) principle, i.e. always from the oldest available batch.
Customer management (CRM) contains an overview of all items sold for each customer, whose origin and expiry date can be traced at any time via the batch. This data can be used to select customers if, for example, a recall of a specific product or batch has occurred and the customers need to be contacted.
Article management in gFM-Business
The CRM, invoicing and merchandise management system gFM-Business contains an integrated article management system that supports all the functions mentioned above and offers the following functions:
- Management of material and service articles.
- Freely definable Selection fields.
- Automatic calculation for up to three different sales prices (recommended, minimum sales price, online sales price).
- Articles can be different currencies be created.
- Automatic generation of EAN13 codese.g. for printing lists.
- Own Barcode type for all articles.
- Any number Price groups with the support of Graduated prices.
- iPad: Interface to CNS barcode for scanning barcodes with the iPad's camera.
- iPad: Taking product photos directly with the iPad's camera.
- Any number of article attributes per article for recording product variants.
- Parts lists for automatic stock posting of any number of related items.
- Combination article to automatically add any number of additional line items per article.
- Accessories for managing any number of related articles.
- Any number of suppliers per item with calculation of the most favorable purchase price.
- Management of the article stock taking into account any number of locations and branches.
- Stock reservation from order items with display of all reserved products.
- Inventory list with an overview of all article stocks at all locations.
- Inventory log with automatic recording of all changes to stock levels.
- Integrated Batch management with automatic posting during inventory posting according to the FIFO principle.
- Recording of Inventory products from the article management.
- Four freely definable Article revenue accounts for bookings.
- Marking for Inventory and management of the last inventory.
- Printing and data export directly from all input masks. Data export with any field sequence as a text file (.csv, .txt), dBase (.dbf), Microsoft mail merge data, HTML, Excel (.xlsx) or XML.
- Printing of article labels with the support of Dymo label printers and Zweckform labels.
- Data import of articles from external text files, databases and Excel tables.
- Import of article data from Gambio GX2 online stores possible via included interface.
- Export of article data into Gambio-based online stores via the Gambio GX2 interface, taking into account any number of article images, article attributes and up to five customer groups with graduated prices.
- Recording of HTML article descriptions with preview and support for search engine friendly meta data possible with optional interface.
- Event logwhich records every change to the database.
