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Item Master

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Definition, Categories, and Prerequisites

Definition: The Salesforce Item Master is a record in Ascent that is the basis for housing all quantity related, product structure, and pricing information.  

Categories: There are no specific types or categories of items, per se, however, this document will note the major ways that items can be used. 

Item Type: This field indicates whether an item is item type = “item”, meaning that it can be bought, stocked, and sold, and does not contain a bill of material.  If an item has item type = “item”, it can also be of such a nature as to reference a service, once that can be bought or sold, but not stocked. A service would have no inventory capability. Another item type is “BOM”, which stands for bill of materials. This means that this item is eligible to have a bill of materials associated with it, which indicates what components, materials, or sub-assemblies this item consists of.

BOM Type: This field can contain two values, BOM-Phantom and BOM-non Phantom. A non-phantom BOM represents a finished good or sub-assembly that can be stocked and sold. A Production Work Order can be created for it, with components being consumed in the completion process. A phantom BOM can be used for planning purposes and cannot be stocked. While a non-phantom BOM results in a single item that can be sold, a phantom BOM is typically used to represent a group of required components common to several similar non-phantom BOMs. Often times, this is called a “kit”.  Because a phantom BOM consists of specific components shared amongst non-phantom BOMs, they are often used to simplify the management of these non-phantom BOMs as well as allow for sales to order a “kit” and have the warehouse storeroom people pick the components of the kit for the purpose of shipping them out on a sales order. The item that is designated as a “BOM-phantom” will NOT be picked, since it only exists to support the kitted items below it in the BOM, mainly for picking purposes.

Serialize?: If this field is checked, then the item whether it is item type = “item” or item type = “BOM”, must have serial numbers associated with each quantity. By selecting this field, you are indicating that all inventory movements must include a serial number. An item can either have serial numbers or not, depending on the value of this field.

Is Service?: If this item is a service as opposed to a tangible product, you would check this field. A service item can be something like an engineering fee, a special handling charge, or landscaping services.

Configurable: Ascent allows the capability to put items into a configurable group, and then assign many of these groups to an item, to be referenced at sales order entry time.

Allow for Drop Ship: There may be certain items for which you stock inventory, however, in some instances, when there is no inventory available from your own warehouses/stockrooms, you have a supplier/vendor who can supply the material to your customer directly from their own location. This would be considered a drop shipment, meaning that upon entry of this item on a sales order line, an option can be chosen to a) create a purchase order to your supplier for this item, however, the ship to address on the purchase order would not be your address, but the address of your customer, and b) you can record the “receipt” of material on that purchase order, which would then also record the fact that the client has been “shipped” the material, allowing for the item to be invoiced.

Not Counted in Inventory: If this is selected, then the item is not eligible to have any inventory associated with it. Typically, this is coupled with “Is Service?”, however, it can stand alone. An item can be one that is purchased and kept on hand at your company, however, is not counted in Ascent inventory. Examples of this could be solvent, paper goods, or office supplies. They can appear on purchase orders, and can be “received”, however, no inventory activity would transpire.  

Prerequisites: There are certain fields that must be filled in when creating a new item master record.

Item Number: This is the specific identifier for the item.  It must be unique.  

Item Description: This is how you would describe the item in more detail than the item number. This description will be written to two other fields; Sales Order Description and Purchase Order Description. 

Default Item Group: Item Groups serve many purposes in Ascent. First of all, it is a mandatory field on the item master. You cannot create an item master record until there’s an item group referenced in this field. However, there is an Admin Setting that will allow you to circumvent this rule. That Admin Setting is called “Set This Item Group As Default When Creating a New Item”. Here, the value will automatically be put into the item group field on the item master.  This is often used when a company is first starting to implement Ascent, and hasn’t determined how they are going to construct the item group feature. You can find more information on Item Groups here: Click Here

Default Location: A location is defined as a place where you store your items. It can be a stockroom, an aisle/row/tier combination, an entire warehouse, a bin, or just about anything where material can be stored and counted. There must be a default location defined for an item. That does not mean that an item must only be in a specific location; it can be stored in any of a number of locations, at the same time. Some locations could be considered bulk locations, while others can be “pull-from” locations. It can be shared with other items. Many items can have inventory stored in a single location. You can find more information on locations here: Click Here

Available fields on Item Master:

The item master screen is sectioned off into related sections.  The “Details” section:

  1. Item Number: The alphanumeric code used to uniquely identify the item, which will be shown in every related function once you save the item master.
  2. Item Description: A simple description of the item. Will be shown into Item description column, next to Item Number, in Sales Order, Purchase Order, Quote or BOM, etc., once you select the item.
  3. Item Description (Long): A more detailed item description.
  4. Sales Order Description: The description of the item as it will appear on sales orders. It is default set as the same to item description.
  5. Sales Order Description (Long): A more detailed Sales Order description.
  6. Purchase Order Description: The description of the item as it will appear on purchase orders. It is default set as the same to item description.
  7. Purchase Order Description (Long): A more detailed Purchase Order description.
  8. Default Item Group: The particular grouping with which the item is associated. This field can be used to allow a sales rep to select items to be put on the sales order by this group. Some companies use this field merely for sorting purposes on a report.
  9. Default Location: The default location where the item is typically stored.  This is a lookup field and will search the location object. This can be defined on the location object any way you’d like.  Some sample locations would be NJ-001, NJ-001 (for two different NJ locations), FG-HOU, FG-RM (finished goods in Houston, raw materials in Houston), Stockroom, Stockroom1, Stockroom2, SR1-A1-R1-T2 (for Stockroom 1, Aisle 1, Row 1, Tier 2), etc., etc. Ascent performs no editing or validation upon creation of this field on the location object.
  10. Default Vendor: The vendor (account) who the item is typically ordered from. Once the default vendor is set, it will be automatically selected by Master Planner as the vendor on Purchase Order and by Sales Purchase Planner as the vendor on the purchase order.
  11. UPC # – Universal Product Code # – this is not derived, but can either be entered here or can be uploaded
  12. RFID Item Reference – this is used to encode an item onto an RFID tag
  13. Department – there exists a department table, and any entry from that table can be inserted here 
  14. Lot Tracking – if this is selected, then a lot record will automatically be created when the new item is created; if this is blank when the item is created, a lot record would not be created for this item until inventory activity occurs.
  15. Replacement Item – there exists a function (button) called Replace Item on the item master which will allow a user to replace all occurrences of this item master record with the item referenced in this field.  Replacements can be made on BOM Component, BOM Component-Only in Default BOM, PWO BOM Depletion Lies, Sales Order Lines, and/or Sales Order BOM Depletion Lines.
  16. Alt Vendor Item ID: You can maintain a vendor part number in this field.  
  17. Alt Customer Item ID – You can maintain a customer item ID in this field
  18. Hard Allocate? – if this is enabled, allocated lines are created when work order lines are inserted into the system.  Otherwise, allocation is made only when work order lines are completed.
  19. Tax Code – this can be selected from the tax code table
  20. PY Usage – prior year usage; this gets calculated via an APEX job
  21. YTD Usage – YTD usage; this gets calculated via an APEX job
  22. Usage for last n days – 
  23. Item Code – this is a manually entered field, Ascent does not derive anything here.  Some clients, upon implementing Ascent, use this field as an alternate item number;
  24. Currency – the standard currency of this item; if the ORG does not have multiple currencies turned on, then this field will not appear;  
  25. Default Unit of Measure: The default unit of measure for the item. This is not validated, and can be anything the user requires.
  26. Item Type: Indicates whether the item is purchased (“item”) or manufactured (or kitted) (“BOM”).
  27. BOM Type: Indicates whether a BOM item is a phantom or non-phantom. Valid values are “BOM-non Phantom” or “BOM-phantom”
  28. Suggest PO for Master Planner? – for items with item type = “BOM”, there may be times when this item cannot be manufactured.  Maybe an assembly line is down, or the components required to make this item are not available, and you would want Master Planner to suggest a purchase order to replenish this item rather than a Production Work Order. In order for this to work, you would also need to fill in the Default Vendor field, such that Master Planner can suggest a PO for the vendor filled in the Default Vendor field.
  29. Default to CM PO – if Suggest PO for Master Planner? = “Yes”, then you can have Master Planner suggest a Contract Manufacturing PO (Default to CM PO), if you select “Yes” as the option in this field.
  30. Standard Lead Time for PO Receipt: The standard time it takes a purchase order to be completed, if the item is a Purchase Order line item. In other words, this is the total time, from when you send out a purchase order to when you receive certain items in your location.  It is not a calculated field, and is not used to create any dates on the purchase order line.  This field is used in Master Planner, along with the Standard Lead Time for SO Shipment, to determine the Delivery Date.
  31. Standard Lead Time for SO Shipment: This field is not used to calculate any delivery dates on the SO line, but it is used in Master Planner, when added to the Standard Lead Time for PO Receipt, to determine the Delivery Date.
  32. Estimated Production Time: Days consumed for the item to be manufactured. It can be shown as two decimal places. If it takes a half day to manufacture one of these items, enter 0.5 here.
  33. Net Weight – manually entered, this can be the net weight of the item.

Costing/Pricing:

  1. Cost Type – there are three options:
    1. Average Cost – Average Cost can be used when Item Type = “Item” and Bom Type is blank.   If the Item Type = “BOM”, the cost will not be recalculated.  To recalculate the cost you would use the formula: [(current cost * current quantity on hand) + (purchase price * quantity received)] / (current quantity on hand + quantity received).  Here’s an example: you have a quantity on hand = 100 with a cost of $1.00.  You receive a purchase order for a quantity of 50 at a purchase price of $1.25.  [($1.00 * 100) + ($1.25 * 50)] / (100 + 50) = $1.0833.  Deducting from inventory has no effect on the cost.  However, once the quantity on hand is changed, that new quantity on hand is used in the next Average Cost calculation.
    2. Last Cost – Last Cost can be used when Item Type = “Item” and Bom Type is blank.  If the Item Type = “BOM”, the cost will only be recalculated in the same manner as if it were a Standard Cost item.  For Item Type = “Item”, the cost will be equal to the Last Purchase Price, such that when a purchase order is received, that purchase order price will be used in the cost field, as the Last Cost.  For Item Type = “BOM”, completing a PWO will have no effect on the cost whatsoever.
    3. Standard Cost – If you use Standard Cost, the cost will be automatically calculated if the item type = “BOM” by rolling up the costs from each BOM line.  If any of the BOM Components’ quantities or costs changed, then a re-roll of the cost would occur.  An example would be if the current cost on a BOM item is $100.00, and it has a single component with a quantity of 100 and a cost of $1.00.  If the cost of the component changes to $1.25, then the cost for the BOM item would be recalculated, because the quantity * the cost would now be equal to $125.00.
  2. Last Purchase Price: The purchase price for the item that comes from the latest received purchase order line.
  3. Sales Price: The default price at which the item is sold. This is typically the list price.
  4. Average Cost: This field is not calculated by Ascent.
  5. Cost: The cost of the item based on its cost type. There are two cost formats, two decimal or four decimal places (which would be represented by cost (4) in lieu of cost).
  6. Non-Material Cost/Fees: The calculated sum of all non-material costs.
  7. Total Landed Cost: Landed cost is the calculation of the true cost of that item with materials, freight/shipping, customs fees, and labor all included in one total cost. This is a calculated field.

Inventory:

  1. Quantity on Hand: Current quantity of the item in the system for all locations that are counted in inventory.
  2. Quantity on Hand Not Counted: Current quantity of the item in the system for all locations that are not counted in inventory.
  3. Allocated Quantity: The total required quantity of the item not shipped yet, across all locations.
  4. Available to Promise: this is a calculated field.  This is equal to the (Quantity on Hand – Allocated Quantity).
  5. Quantity on Order: This is a calculated field = Qty on Purchase Orders + Qty on Production Work Orders.
  6. Staged Quantity: This is a calculated field = the total quantity on sales order lines for quantities that are staged
  7. Available for Building: This is also a calculated field = this is the total quantity that can be shipped for this BOM-phantom.  
  8. No Lot Expiration: If this box is checked, then no lots created for this item will have any expiration date.
  9. Default Expiration Days: Ascent’s default number of expiration days is 90, such that if a lot is created on 1/1, the expiration date would be 4/1 (approximately).  However, this field can alter what the calculated expiration date would be.  For example, if this field is set to 20, then if a lot is created on 1/1, the lot expiration date would be 1/21.
  10. Receive in Quarantine Lot: If this box is checked, then any time a PO is received or a PWO is completed for this item, the inventory will go into a quarantine lot.
  11. Coverage Code: The inventory management method for which the quantity of this item will be maintained. There are three options, Min/Max, Requirement and Manual.  If this is set to “Min/Max” then the Master Planner will calculate a suggested replenishment quantity based on (Quantity on Hand + Quantity on Order on PO + Quantity on Order on PWO) – (Quantity on SO Lines + Quantity on BOM Depletion Lines on PWO) and compare that to the Minimum on Hand, and a replenishment order will be suggested for the quantity required to satisfy the minimum on hand quantity.  If this is set to “Requirement” then the above formula holds true with the exception of the comparison to the Minimum on Hand. The Master Planner would not take the Minimum on Hand into consideration.  The final setting, “Manual” indicates that the Master Planner should not plan this item, and that planning would be done off-system.
  12. Minimum on Hand: The minimum on hand required for this item.  This is used by Master Planner for replenishment suggestions.
  13. Standard Order Quantity: The standard quantity ordered for the item. If the quantity on hand plus quantity on order (whether through PWO or PO) minus the requirements (whether through PWO or Sales Order) is less than the minimum on hand, Master Planner will recommend a Purchase Order with at least this standard order quantity. It could be more than standard order quantity, depending on how much you need.
  14. Order Multiple: This field is used in Master Planner.  You might have a Standard Order Quantity of 144, meaning that when Master Planner suggests a replenishment order, the smallest quantity it will recommend is 144.  However, after that, your supplier (or plant) might be able to ship (or make) the material in lots of 12, however, 144 is the minimum.  In this case, if 150 are required, the Master Planner would suggest 144 + 12 = 156.
  15. Max Pallet Quantity: This field would only be used if you have the Custom Setting (Use Pallets?) activated.  For example, if this field value is 44, then when receiving a PO or completing a PWO for this item, a pallet record will be created for each quantity of 44 received. If 100 is received, the system will create 3 pallets, 1 for 44, another for 44, and the third for 12.
  16. Standard Pallet Quantity: This is a memo field, Ascent doesn’t use it.
  17. Warranty Duration(days): This pertains to those items that are serialized.  When a serial number is packed, the Warranty Expiration Date is calculated based on today’s date plus the value in this field.  For example, if this field is equal to 222, and the packing date is 1/8/2021 the Warranty Expiration Date will be 8/18/2021.

Barcode:

  1. UPC Code 

Image:

  1. Picture URL: The link to the picture. You can add a picture of the item by pasting the URL of where the image is stored here to illustrate in the item master screen.  Some Ascent clients make use of it such that their sales reps or their warehouse pickers can compare the description of what is being requested to the actual image of the item.
  2. Image Height: The height of picture in pixels.
  3. Image Width: The width of picture in pixels.

Item Settings:

  1. Taxable 
  2. Serialize? If the item is serially controlled, check the box.
  3. Is Service? If the item is a service, instead of a tangible product, check the box.
  4. Configurable: If the item is associated with other items via configured item group, check the box.
  5. Item Status: Active or Inactive; default is Active.
  6. Not Available for Purchase. If the item cannot be purchased from vendors, please check the box.
  7. Not Available for Sale.  If the item cannot be sold, please check the box.  
  8. Not Available for Quote. If the item cannot be quoted, check the box.
  9. Allow for Drop Ship: If the item can be shipped from the vendor directly to the customer, please check the box.
  10. Not Counted in Inventory: If it is not necessary to count the item in inventory, or if the item is a service, please check the box.
  11. Sales Price Increase: if you assign a value to this field, Ascent will take the Sales Price field and increase it by the percentage entered here.  For example, if your Sales Price is $20.00, and you put 10 into this field, your Sales Price will be increased to $22.00.

Serialization Settings: if an item is not serialized, this section should not be used. For a detailed explanation on serialization, please refer to the separate document on “Serialization”.

  1. Serial Number Prefix – Serial numbers can start with this prefix (for example: SP)
  2. Auto-Generate Serial Numbers – By selecting this checkbox, you are asking for serial numbers for this item to be automatically generated.
  3. Serial Number Suffix – Serial numbers can be suffixed with the characters entered here.
  4. Hardware Revision – If this is checked, then when a PO is received or a PWO is completed, this field will be prompted.
  5. Firmware Version – If this is checked, then when a PO is received or a PWO is completed, this field will be prompted.
  6. Mac Address – If this is checked, then when a PO is received or a PWO is completed, this field will be prompted.
  7. Software Key – If this is checked, then when a PO is received or a PWO is completed, this field will be prompted.
  8. Software Version – If this is checked, then when a PO is received or a PWO is completed, this field will be prompted.
  9. Next Autogeneration Index – This is what frames the numeric option of the serial number.  For example, if the value is 100000, then the serial numbers would start with that number.
  10. Serial Number Length – This would be the length of the numeric portion of an automatically generated serial number.
  11. Last Serial Number Digit – This houses the last numeric sequence for this item.

 

Custom Links:

Update BOM Sales Price: If the item has an item type = “BOM”, the sales price can be recalculated based on any component quantities or component sales price changing. However, this feature can be shut off.  If it is shut off, and you wish to calculate the sales price, you can select this button to re=initiate the BOM Sales Price.  

Update Quantity on Hand: If someone manually overrides the Quantity on Hand field on the item master, this button is available to put the Quantity on Hand back in synchronization with the sum of all locations quantities that are available to be put in this Quantity on Hand field.

Update Quantity on Hand Not Counted: There are locations in Ascent that are not counted in inventory.  The sum of those quantities for this item resides in this field. If it gets out of synchronization, clicking this button will put the quantities back in sync.

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