Inventory Management Series
Using departments and categories
Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) can help you organize your inventory. With items assigned to the departments and categories that make sense for your store, cashiers can ring up sales faster, and you can streamline your purchasing, physical inventory counting, reporting, and more.
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Useful terminology
| • | department – A group of inventory in your store database. The department can represent a location in your store, or it can be a conceptual grouping, such as “Sporting Goods” or “Red Wines.” |
| • | category – A group of inventory within a department in your store database. The category can represent a location in your store, or it can be a conceptual grouping, such as “Football Gear” or “Merlots.” |
Benefits of organizing your inventory
In a large store, the benefits of organizing inventory into departments might seem obvious, with each department effectively acting as its own store. For example, purchasing for the Juniors department might be handled by the buyer for the department, separately from the purchasing for the rest of the store. Also, sales in the department might be tracked separately, with management interested in the performance of items in a number of categories within the department, such as clothing, dresses, and footwear. It only makes sense for the items in the store database to reflect this physical and practical organization in the store.
But even small stores will enjoy benefits with an organization scheme. For example, a wine shop owner might create departments for wine groups, such as Reds and Whites, with categories for varieties such as Cabernet and Riesling. Alternatively, the owner might prefer a department for each wine-producing region, such as Washington, Italy, and France, with categories for specific vineyards. In either case, this organization will provide an improved overview of the store’s inventory and sales.
In addition, the departments and categories in Microsoft Dynamics RMS provide some practical benefits within the software. When using certain features in the program, you can pinpoint your actions so that specific departments and categories are included, or in some cases excluded. You can do this when you:
| • | Ring up sales |
| • | Perform bulk updates with the Inventory Wizard, such as assigning taxes or changing item prices or costs |
| • | Generate reports, such as sales reports and item lists |
| • | Create purchase orders and inventory transfers |
| • | Perform physical inventory counts |
| • | Move inventory into or out of offline inventory |
| • | Search for items |
| • | Print item labels |
| • | Associate suppliers with items |
| • | Perform SQL operations on the database |
Some of these features are discussed later in this article or in other articles in the Inventory Management Series. For additional information, refer to Store Operations Online Help.
Creating departments and categories
Before you begin creating the departments and categories in the store database, give some thought to the items that you want to manage as a group. In particular, consider the reporting benefits that you would like to realize. What sales trends are you interested in? What groups of items will you want to see totals for or compare to other groups? Once the planning is complete, setting up the departments and categories is simple.
To create a department and its categories
1. | On the Database menu in Store Operations Manager, click Departments & Categories. |
2. | Under the Departments list, click New, and then type a unique name and code for the department. |
3. | For each category that you want to create in the new department, click the New button under the Categories list, and then type a unique name and code for the category. |
4. | When you are done creating departments and categories, click Close. |
To create a category in an existing department
1. | On the Database menu, click Departments & Categories. |
2. | Select the department where you want to create the new category. |
3. | Click the New button under the Categories box, add information about the category, and then click OK. |
Assigning items to departments and categories
Assigning items to departments and categories is a simple task, but it can be tedious if the store database contains a lot of items. You will want to balance this initial investment of time and patience against the benefits of organized inventory.
To assign an item to a department and category
1. | On the Database menu in Store Operations Manager, click Items. |
2. | Select the item that you want to modify, and then click Properties. |
3. | Next to the Department box, click the magnifying glass, select the department you want the item to be in, and then click OK. |
4. | If you want to assign this item to a category, click the magnifying glass next to the Category box, select the category, and then click OK. |
5. | Click OK to save the item. |
Modifying an existing department or category
You can make changes to an existing department or category.
1. | On the Database menu in Store Operations Manager, click Departments & Categories. |
2. | Select the department or category that you want to modify, and then click Properties. Note
If you want to modify a department, make sure no category is selected in the Categories list. |
3. | Make changes as desired, and then click OK. |
Deleting a department or category
When you delete a department or category, the items within the group are not deleted. In the case of a deleted department, any categories in the department will be deleted, but the items within the department and its categories will no longer be assigned to a department or category. In the case of a deleted category, the items will remain in the department but will no longer be assigned to a category.
1. | On the Database menu in Store Operations Manager, click Departments & Categories. |
2. | Select the department or category that you want to delete, and then click Delete. Note
If you want to delete a department, make sure no category is selected in the Categories list. |
Ringing up items in specific departments or categories
Cashiers can use departments and categories to locate and ring up items.
To ring up an item in a specific department or category
1. | In Store Operations POS, press F2: Lookup. |
2. | If needed, click Find to display the Find Items window. |
3. | In the Look for the phrase box, type the name or code of the department or category. |
4. | In the In the field(s) box, select the check box for Department Name, Department Code, Category, or Category Code, as appropriate, and then click Find Now. You can select more than one check box. |
5. | Select the item, and then click OK. |
Generating reports for specific departments or categories
The Daily Sales by Department, Daily Sales by Category, Top Departments, Top Categories, and Department Cost/Sales reports are specifically designed to show department and category information. Each of these can be filtered to include or exclude specific departments or categories.
In addition, the following sales and item reports can be filtered to include or exclude specific departments and categories:
| • | Detailed Sales |
| • | Item Price List |
| • | Item Quantity List |
| • | Item Value List |
| • | Item Alias List |
| • | Item Substitute List |
| • | Item Movement |
| • | Item Movement History |
To filter a report to include or exclude specific departments or categories
1. | On the Reports menu in Store Operations Manager, point to Sales or Items, and then click the name of the report that you want to generate. |
2. | In the Field box, choose Department or Category, as appropriate. |
3. | In the Operator box, select Equal (=) to include the department or category, or select Not Equal (<>) to exclude the department or category. |
4. | In the Filter value box, select the department or category. |
5. | Click Add. |
6. | If you want to include or exclude additional departments or categories, select the OR option button, and then repeat Steps 2 through 5. Note
If you specify more than one department or category, you can remove the Inactive=No filter criterion to get the filter to work properly. An alternative is to repeat the Inactive=No filter criterion, like this:
Inactive = No
AND Department = Dolls
OR Inactive = No
AND Department = Infant |
Printing item labels for specific departments or categories
With the Label Wizard, you can print labels for a single department or category, or you can use a filter similar to the one described in the preceding section to print labels for multiple departments or categories. For instructions, see Using item labels in Microsoft Dynamics RMS.
