Products & Services (Inventory) - Start Here

Overview

Inventory is the module we place all Products & Services in that you might sell. It's both a primary tab on the site navigation, and an overarching concept that includes Purchasing, Vendors, Purchase Orders, Stock Take, and lots more.

Note: Our Products & Services module is also known as our Inventory module. It is most commonly referred to as Inventory in the app, but we labeled the main page as Products & Services since many MSPs do not have inventory. The terms are used interchangeably.

What It Does

  • Tracks the items (both products and services) that you will sell
  • You can choose to maintain stock at the item level
  • Fully Serialized - meaning we track down to the individual instance
  • You can store individual serial numbers on each item if you want
  • Batch Tracking from Purchase Orders ties instances to Vendors
  • Set reorder level, desired quantity, cost, retail, categories, tons more
  • One-Click electronic ordering available for select vendors
  • Pending Orders page - All your reordering in one place

What It Doesn't Do

  • Variants like Size: Small, Medium, Large (you have to just duplicate the item)

Table of Contents

Training Video
Inventory Settings
Organizing Inventory - Category Editor and Tabs*
Adding a Product
Product Upsells
One Time Use Products
Inventory Import / Bulk Editing Inventory*
Purchase Orders*
Pending Orders/Low Stock
Electronic Ordering
Customer Purchases*
Refurbs*
Stock Take - Inventory Reconciliation*
RMA / Returns - Tracking*
Bundles*
Parts vs. Inventory*

* Links to separate article

 

Inventory Training Video


Inventory Settings

Definitions

Send a daily Low-Inventory email: A daily email is triggered to your main account email address that shows you all Low-Inventory Items.

Enable Wholesale Pricing:
Allows you to sell Inventory Items at cost.

Enable Purchasing from the public: Allows you to purchase Inventory items / parts from your Customers. For more information, refer to this article.

Enable Syncro to Syncro electronic ordering: Allows you to set up and purchase from a vendor that uses our application. You can read more about this ability below.

Enable One-Time-Use Inventory Items: Enables the "One Time Use" checkbox on Inventory Products that will set them to be disabled once the stock runs out. You can read more about how to set up and use this below.

Show Categories (overriden to enabled if using PrePay Hours or Desposits): If you want to hide "Categories" uncheck this box.

Enable the PrePay Hours tracking feature(also a Customers setting): Allows you to sell Pre-Pay hours to customers. Learn more about this feature.

Enable the Deposits feature (also an invoices setting): Check this box if you take "Deposits" for services or products. Learn more here!

Show Top-Level-Categories as Tabs (only when no search query): Check this box when you want to show your categories as top level selectable tabs in your Inventory Page. Try it out :)

Enable Photos on Products: If you want to be able to attach photos to a product inside your inventory check this box.

Enable Back Order Feature: This will allow you to sell a product that isn't in stock, then leverage the Pending Orders section to create PO's and fulfill those products.

Use Basic Labels instead of Instance Labels on non-serialized Products:This toggles Basic Labels as the default labels and hides the the In-Stock Label.

Category Editor

The Category Editor allows you to organize all of your products and services by a particular category or sub-category. Product Sales Reports only pulls information by category, so using this tool is perfect for getting granular data on what your shop sells the most.

To learn more about the category editor click here!

Adding a Product

Steps for Adding a Product

Click on the "Products and Services" tab and then click on the blue button that says "New Item" to get started.

UPC Code: This is where you will add your own Universal Product Code(UPC). Our system will generate a barcode for you using this number.

Retail Product or Service: Indicates that the item is a product or service

Discount - Amount/Percent: Use this if you want to create a Percentage discount that can be added as a line item on an invoice. Categorize this as a discount and it becomes a trackable item in your "Product Sales Report"

Price Retail: This is the Price for your customer.

Price Cost: This is what you paid to purchase this product

Taxable: This checkbox indicates whether the item is "taxable" or not. Leave it unchecked if the item should be tax free

Notes: This is a box to add any notes that will be used internally for this product.

Maintain Stock:Checking this box will allow you track quantity, order from purchase orders, and get alerts when an item is running low on stock.

Serialized:Check this box if you have items you would like to track using a serial number.

One Time Use:Check this box if you would like the system to disable the product once it reaches a quantity of 0

Re-order At: This will trigger a pending "Low Stock" request and will alert you if you have a notification set.

Desired Stock level: The system will create a pending order to bring you back to this "desired stock level" when you hit your re-order point

Quantity:This is the amount of items you have in stock

Category:You can categorize items to organize them and certain categories will trigger other features in the system e.g. "Labor", "Pre-Pay Hours", "Deposit"

Sort Order:This allows you to set certain products into a higher position on your inventory list so that they are easier to find. Users will sort by order of importance.

Physical Location: Where the item is located physically in your shop

Condition:The condition the item is in e.g. "New","Used"

Warranty Template:This will allow you to assign Warranties to Products so that when the product is sold the Warranty gets added to the customer's record. You will need to create a warranty template first to use this feature. Learn to create warranty templates!


One Time Use Inventory Products

One Time Use Inventory Products are products that you have on-hand and want to sell to customers, but you do not want to consider them a permanent part of your Inventory and re-stock them when you run out. This feature automatically disables the product once it is out of stock.

How to use

First get started by enabling this at: Admin > Inventory > Preferences > Enable One-Time-Use Products, shown here:

When you create a new Inventory Product or modify an existing one, you will be able to see the checkbox for OTU here:

You will also see the "One Time Use" checkbox when adding a new Manual Product to a Purchase Order. Click on the "Manual Add" button in the Purchase Order next to the "ADD 'MAINTAIN STOCK' PRODUCT FROM INVENTORY" box, then you will see the checkbox at the bottom of the pop-up window:

Things to note

Backordering a One-Time-Use Product is not recommended as they are designed to be disabled and not re-ordered


Pending Orders

Overview

Pending orders page allows you to view and fulfill orders created through the low stock triggers and pending orders triggered on invoices.

What it does

  • Automatically triggers pending orders based on stock levels
  • Allows you to add pending orders or low stock to an existing or new Purchase order
  • Track Pending and Low Stock orders on one page
  • Fulfill orders on invoices after the check-in step of a purchase order

What it doesn't do

  • Order the items automatically

Index

Enabling Pending Orders

To enable Pending orders,

  1. Navigate to Admin > Inventory - Preferences.
  2. Click Additional Settings.
  3. Click the Enable the Backorder feature box.
  4. Click Save.

Once you have enabled the Backorder feature, go to the Products & Services tab, click the Inventory Module dropdown and you will see a new Pending Orders option.

How Pending Orders work

Once the Backorder feature is enabled, it will deduct your inventory past 0 into the negative quantities, these negatives will then show up on the Pending Orders page.

For instance, if you add more items than are currently in stock, these items will show up as Pending in both the Invoice and Product pages. In the example below the original Product had 10 items in stock, but on the invoice 20 was requested. The system then reserved the initial 10 items and added the rest as requested on the Pending Orders page.

How Low Stock inventory works

Desired Stock levels in the Product Detail page triggers the low stock pending orders. When an item is added to Low stock, Syncro is trying to get the product at the desired stock level set in the Product detail page.

In the example below, the Desired Stock level is set at 20 and the Reorder at is set at 2. Once the item reaches 2 it will create a pending order for 18 items to be ordered so the product can get to the desired stock level.

If you go to the Pending orders page (Products & Services > Inventory Modules > Pending Orders), you will see the item is now back-ordered and marked as Low-Stock, with an In-Stock Quantity of 2, Requested 18.

Adding Low Stock & Pending orders to a Purchase order

There are two ways to add low stock and pending orders to a PO. The first is to check the box by the desired pending order(s) and, in the upper right, click Add to PO. Then select if you want to create a new PO or add the order(s) to an existing PO.

The second is to go to the purchase order you wish to add these items to. Below the PO details, you will find three options—Add All Low Stock Items, Add Low Stock Items by this Vendor, and Add All Pending Items. Click the one(s) you want.

Add All Low Stock Items Add All Low Stock Items by this Vendor Add All Pending Items Email to Vendor
Adds all items that are below your desired stock level Adds items that are below your desired stock level for a particular vendor only Adds all Pending Orders to the Purchase Orders, to learn more follow this link This will trigger an email of your purchase order to the vendor to start the order process

After you have added your low stock and pending orders you can add other items or set the Status to Ordered when done.

Fulfill Pending orders on invoice

You can fulfill a pending order on an invoice as follows.

  1. Go to the invoice.
  2. Next to the back ordered item and under the QTY column, click the Pending link.
  3. Check the box by the pending order.
  4. In the upper right, click Add to PO.
  5. Select the desired PO and click Existing.
  6. Change the Status dropdown to Check-In.
  7. Next to the item, click the green Receive button.
  8. In the dialog, check the FULFILL check box.
  9. Click Fulfill.

When you receive those items on a PO and fulfill them, this will allocate those items to your existing pending orders (instead of moving them to "In Stock" in your inventory).

Back to Table of contents


Product Upsells

You can use product upsells to create upsell opportunities for your customers. You can use product upsells with other products or an entire category of products. Upsells work with the POS, invoice, and estimates modules.

To create an upsell opportunity, head to the Products & Services page and select the product you want to upsell. Then navigate to the 'Upsell Opportunities' tab:

You can then choose to add an upsell by searching for a product or a category:

You can add more than one product as an upsell opportunity or a category that will list all products in that category for the upsell.

Once you have saved the products to upsell, they will then show up as an upsell opportunity when creating invoices, estimates, or using the POS system.

Please note: You must enable the upsell opportunities option in invoice settings, estimate settings, and POS settings as they work independently from one another.

Once the product upsell has been saved, you will see the opportunities pop up on the screen when the product is added as a line item on an invoice, estimate, or chosen in the POS.

 

Electronic Ordering

Overview

Electronic Ordering is used when purchasing parts and products online from a vendor that uses our software. You can also use it to sell parts and products to other users of our software.

Table of Contents

Turn on Electronic Ordering
Sell to a Customer
Purchase from a Vendor

Turn on Electronic Ordering

These steps must be done by both the vendor and customer.

  1. To get started, navigate to Admin > Inventory - Preferences.
  2. Check the Enable Syncro to Syncro electronic ordering box.
  3. Click Save.

Once it's enabled, just follow these steps to use the feature.

 

Sell to a Customer

  1. Go to the Customers page.
  2. Create a new customer (or go to an existing customer) that you'd like to sell to.
  3. Edit the Customer.
  4. At the bottom right in the Syncro Subdomain field, enter the subdomain of their Syncro site. For example, if their URL is megadeals.syncromsp.com, enter megadeals in the field.
  5. Click Save Changes.
  6. Send the customer a list of products with the names, descriptions, UPC codes and prices so they can add the products to their inventory (see step 6 in the next set of steps below). The customer will use your UPC as their Vendor SKU.
  7. When the customer creates a Purchase Order on their end (see steps 7 and following in the below section) you will get an invoice with the products they added to their Purchase Order. The Tech Notes shows the customer's Purchase Order number.
  8. Confirm the invoice details are correct (just like any other invoice) and send an email for payment.
  9. Once payment is received you can ship the items.

 

Purchase from a Vendor

  1. Go to the Products & Services page.
  2. In the upper right, click Inventory Modules > Vendors.
  3. Create a new vendor (or edit an existing vendor) that you'd like to buy from.
  4. Add their Syncro subdomain in the Syncro Subdomain field. For example, if their URL is greatparts.syncromsp.com, enter greatparts in the field.
  5. Click Create Vendor or Update Vendor.
  6. Add or modify the products you want to buy from the Vendor with the information—names, descriptions, UPC codes and prices—they provide. You will use their UPC as a Vendor SKU. To do this,
    1. Go to the Products & Services page.
    2. Add or edit the Product you want to order.
    3. Make sure Maintain Stock is enabled.
    4. Make sure the price you enter for Cost matches the Vendor's Retail Price.
    5. Click Create Product or Update Product.
    6. Scroll down to Vendor SKUs and click Add SKU.
    7. Enter the Vendor's UPC code into the SKU field.
    8. Select the Vendor.
    9. Click Add.
    10. Repeat for any additional items you will buy from them.
  7. Go to the Purchase Orders page.
  8. In the upper right, click New Purchase Order.
  9. Select the Vendor, enter the details, and click Create Purchase Order.
  10. Add items that you will order from them, ensuring the Vendor SKUs are present.
  11. Once you do this, the Electronically Process with Vendor button will appear above the Add sections. Click it to place the order.
  12. This will create an invoice on their system and add that Invoice # to the General notes section.
  13. Change the Status dropdown to Ordered.
  14. The Vendor will confirm the invoice details are correct and send you an email to request payment.
  15. Once you pay for the items and receive them, change Status to Check-In. Make sure the Invoice is accurate and matches the Purchase Order. Note: The Vendor's Invoice will charge you their retail price on all items, regardless of what you entered as the Cost for them.
  16. To the right of the items, click Receive.
  17. The Status will change to Finished and the items will move into your inventory.