The Inventory Management function in Mekashron Call Center Software is one of the important areas of setup as this is where the details of your products are stored and maintained. Mekashron gives you some powerful linking functionality in this part of the software, as you will see in this chapter:
In this section we assume that you have already installed Mekashron and that you are logged in as the admin user into the main screen. You may already have set up your other users and created or imported your entities; these can be set up either before or after you set up your inventory.
1 - Main Inventory Management Screen
The main Inventory Management screen within Mekashron is accessed via Sales -> Settings -> Inventory. In this screen you will see the list of products that you have added to Mekashron. When you first access this screen before adding products, it will show an empty list as shown below.
Figure 1.1 - The Inventory Management screen
There are editing, viewing and searching functions within this screen, as we will see.
The columns available in the Inventory Management screen are:
- Product Name - The name you will assign to your products as you add them to your inventory.
- Barcode - If you have barcode numbers for your products, you will be able to record this information in Mekashron
- Price
- The price per product. Note that you can set this up to either include or exclude sales tax, as we will see shortly.
- Quantity Left - When you set up a product in your inventory you will record how many you have in stock. Mekashron will then keep track of how many items you sell - so you can always see your current stock levels at a glance in this screen.
- Catalog - The catalog that you have assigned this product to.
The icon bar in the inventory screen contains the following, which we will cover further along in this chapter:
- Add Product button:
Figure 1.2 - The Add Product button
- View/Edit button:
Figure 1.3 - The View/Edit button
- Delete button:
Figure 1.4 - The Delete button
- Catalog dropdown:
Figure 1.5 - The Catalog dropdown
The Products menu in the Inventory screen, shown below, includes the same options as the icon bar, with an additional option, Import Inventory, which we will discuss later in this chapter.
Figure 1.6 - The Products menu
To exit the Inventory Management Screen, select Main -> Close from the top bar menu.
Figure 1.7 - Exiting the Inventory screen
2 - Adding Products
To add a new product to your inventory, either click the Add Product button or select Products -> Add Product. You will be presented with the following screen:
Figure 2.1 - The Add a Product screen
The fields available to you in the Product screen are:
- Product Name - This is a mandatory field for every product that you add to your inventory.
- Price - Price is also required for every product. There are two related fields:
- Currency dropdown - this allows you to select the currency that you wish to associate with this product. The currencies that you have set up in the Sales Setup will be available in the dropdown.
- Including VAT - Check this box if your prices already include tax. Leave it unchecked if your prices don't include tax - Mekashron will automatically add the tax to the price for you.
- Catalog dropdown - Catalog is an optional field. From this dropdown you can select which Catalog you would like to assign this product to. The red + and - buttons allow you to add or delete catalogs.
- Barcode - This is an optional field where you may record a barcode number if you wish to assign these to your products.
- Inventory Quantity - The quantity of this product currently in stock.
- Product Tree tabs - enabling you to link products and create relationships between them.
Before adding your first product, you may wish to set up Catalog entries. This is not essential in order to add a product – the system will allow you to enter products with simply a name and a price – but if you do use catalogs it is a good idea to set them up from the start.
To create a new Catalog, click on the red + button below the Catalog drop down. This gives you the following screen:
Figure 2.2 - Adding a Catalog entry
Enter a name for your new Catalog and click OK. This catalog entry will then be available in the drop down box when you add further products.
If you have products that relate to one another, you can link the products in the tabs at the bottom of the Product screen. There are three separate linking options:
- Product tree – use this tab to link any products that relate to one another.
- Cross-selling – use this tab to select what other products you would like to try to sell to customers who are purchasing a particular product.
- Up-selling – use this tab to select what products you would like customers to buy as add-ons to a product they have already chosen to purchase.
These linking options are particularly powerful when you get to the stage of running Campaigns, as Mekashron can prompt your sales staff to ask the customer for cross-selling and up-selling opportunities based on the product linking you create here.
If you make a mistake you can use the Cancel button to exit the Product screen without saving your changes. Otherwise, once you have set up the product to your satisfaction, click the OK button to save your changes and return to the Inventory screen.
3 - Searching and Filtering Options
Once you have added multiple products and categories, there are a couple of useful filtering functions in the main Inventory screen that you should be aware of.
The first filtering option is by catalog. Select the catalog you wish to view from the drop down and the products in the main inventory screen will be filtered accordingly. If you select the blank option in the catalog dropdown, then all products will be shown.
Figure 3.1 - Filtering products by category
In addition, you can filter products within a category or across all categories by entering a search term in the box at the bottom of the Inventory Management screen and hitting the Search button:
Figure 3.2 - Searching products for a specific search term
To return your Inventory Management screen to the default position of showing all products, simply select the blank line in the Catalog drop down and delete any search terms from the box at the bottom of the screen, and hit the Search button again.
4 - Viewing and Updating Products
To view or update a specific product, you can
-
Double-click on the product in the list
- Highlight it and select the View/Edit button
- Highlight it and select Product -> View/Edit Product
- Use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + E
Once in the Update screen for a product, you can update any of the fields that were available when you added it.
5 - Deleting Products
To delete a product that you no longer supply, you can:
-
Highlight the product and select the Delete button
- Highlight it and select Product -> Delete
- Use the keyboard shortcut Ctl + Del
As a safety measure, Mekashron will ask you for confirmation that you wish to remove the product from your system before performing the deletion.
6 - Importing Your Existing Inventory List
If you already maintain an existing inventory list in a different system, or in a file or spreadsheet on your computer system, Mekashron Call Center Software offers the useful facility of importing your existing inventory into the application. This will save you a lot of time if you have many products.
To import an existing set of products into Mekashron, in the Main Inventory screen click Products followed by the Import Inventory option.
Figure 6.1 - The Import Inventory menu option
You will then be offered a number of options within the Import Wizard:
Figure 6.2 - The Import Wizard
The Import Process for your inventory data at this point is the same as the Import Process for Entities, which is documented in the Entities chapter of this manual at: Importing Entities.
7 - Summary
In this section we have learned all about managing your products within Mekashron Call Center Software. Whether you set up your products within the application or import your existing inventory, you are now ready to learn how to Create and Manage Orders in Mekashron, prior to tapping into the true potential of the application to turn your sales department into a powerhouse of action and results!