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Control Centre
Important! |
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Resources |
This is a busy looking area, and indeed this is where all of the management of your Resources takes place, and where many important reports are generated. Note the Direct Access button for Resource Record Cards in the left-hand panel, regardless of which Departmental Access tab is active:
Resources are simply the items you require to build assemblies: materials, manufacturing processes and the assemblies themselves. Assemblies become subassemblies when incorporated in the BoM (see also Design, where BoMs are maintained) of another assembly. Merlin is able to identify which of these records is which when running processes reports, etc. From here on, if you see a reference to your "Stock File" it is synonymous with your Resources File. |
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Resource Record Cards |
The Resources File is essentially the stock file (and is sometimes referred to as such), but in reality it is very much more versatile than that. It must contain a Record Card for each material stock item you use, for each assembly (and therefore subassembly) that you make, and should also contain a record card for each Manufacturing Process if you wish your Shop Floor activity monitored, or your production processes costed. So the Resources centre provides a convenient, one-stop container for everything that goes into the manufacturing process. [more] |
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Stock Movement |
Stock Movement allows you to make manual stock adjustments to individual items, where necessary. This should not be used for Goods-In or Materials Issue. |
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Stock Move Reference |
Stock Movement Reference allows you to store common references for use with the Goods Out option in Stock Movement (above). You can add, edit of delete reference items that will appear for selection in the drop-down box on the Goods Out screen Reference field. You do not have to use this feature, but it will save time if you have regular, repeating entries. |
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Stock Take or Adjust |
Stock Take or Adjust gives you the tools for quickly updating your physical on-shelf stock figures whenever a stock-take or partial stock-take has to be performed. [more] |
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Data Export |
Data Export enables you to export your Stock Costing data, outstanding Purchase Orders and Sales Orders data to to Microsoft ExcelŽ tables for interchange with other software which permits this, such as accounts packages. [more] |
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Bonded Stock |
Bonded Stock allows you to transfer material items from you current stockholding into a separate or bonded area. Once transferred, they will not be included in your current Resources file, nor its valuation. This can be useful for recording "dead stock", or for separating materials owned by a third party, such as a customer. Please see Resource Record Cards for more information. [more] |
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Reports |
Numerous report options are available in the right-hand panel, and in many cases you will be given further choices after you make your initial selection.
Full Stock Listing is your standard
stock report based on current supplier prices, whilst You can view these reports on screen, so it would be a good idea to familiarise yourself with the various options to determine which will form your staple diet. All of these reports are likely to be useful from time to time. |
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Important Information: |
Merlin uses intelligent logic to attempt to keep your internal stock costing/valuation meaningful to the manufacturing process. A different logic is used for Data Export (see above), which may result in a different valuation. This will be explained below. Assembly Costing (and therefore Job Costing) is obviously based upon what the component parts cost to purchase, but in a situation where you have multiple supplier options and/or multiple price breaks, where you may or may not be currently holding stock, and where any stock you are holding might or might not have been purchased all at once, and therefore possibly at different prices, what does a component part actually "cost" in manufacturing terms? Alternatively, (depending upon your point of view), what is its value? You might have stock of 1,000 pieces of a particular item which, if purchased in this quantity from your Default Supplier, takes you into a favourable price break. However, you might actually have purchased these in 2 blocks of 500 at a higher price. Or you may have needed to use an alternative supplier, who might or might not offer a price break, and who may or may not be competitive in price terms. So, is the "cost price" (from a manufacturing costing point of view) what you would pay if you bought 1,000 in a block from your Default Supplier, or what you actually paid according to where and how you bought them? Unfortunately, opinions upon this vary. Merlin is constantly checking your purchase data to maintain the most realistic manufacturing "cost price". Every time you change your Default Supplier (or the Next Order Supplier) or Pack Costs or Minimum Purchase Quantity* for a stock item, Merlin will re-evaluate the nominal cost price of that item, based on all this data. For example, if you set a Minimum Purchase Quantity, and this takes you into a better price break (which is a very good reason for using this feature), the nominal cost price will be adjusted to reflect this.
If you purchase items using [Buying Office
/ Run Main Buy] or Cost Prices calculated in these ways are used for all stock reporting and costing within Merlin.
The exceptions to this rule is Data
Export (see further up this page), where the
data is prepared for use outside of Merlin. Here the pack
prices are calculated against the price break appropriate to the number of
pieces you hold, taken from your Default Supplier data; and |
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Related Items |
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