Inventory Manager - How to Guide

This article applies to:
PoliceOne Academy, CorrectionsOne Academy, and white-label sites.

The Inventory Manager add-on allows you to know exactly what your agency has on hand, who has it, and when it should be replaced.

You can acquire, issue, return, and dispose of inventory. Settings help manage configurations, while Reports help provide an auditable history of inventory changes.

Definitions

A SKU is a distinct type of item  tracked in inventory, which has attributes associated with it that distinguish it from other item types. These attributes can include manufacturer, description, material, size, color, packaging, and warranty terms. When a business takes inventory of its stock, it counts the quantity it has of each SKU. Our inventory manager allows you to enter a serial # for unique SKUs; you can't acquire more than one item for unique SKU.

A SKU type is used to categorize SKUs in our system. You can be as general or as specific as you would like, but keep the mind the SKU types is how your items will be grouped in dashboards and reports. For example, the SKU "Men's pants, blue, size large" could belong to the SKU type "Men's pants," or a more general "Men's Uniforms" or even "Uniforms."

Inventory Manager Main Dashboard

The Inventory Manager feature can be accessed via the Admin menu. The main dashboard gives you several controls for analyzing your inventory:

Settings

• Create new SKU Types or Locations

Acquire Items

• Document inventory items that have been acquired

Search using several data points

• KU/serial/asset number
• Status
  • Inventory
  • Issued
  • Disposed
• SKU Type (define your own)
• Issued to (lists your members)

Quickly perform actions for items listed

• Issue
• Return
• Dispose

Getting started: Settings

Settings allow you to control configurations across your inventory management program. You can access settings via the Settings button.

• You will need to create SKU types so you can organize the inventory items into categories
• By default, your items will be checked into one general Inventory location. If you want to create more locations, you can also so that in Settings.

Once you select the appropriate settings page, you can add new items via the “Add new” button as shown below. You can also edit or delete existing items. Note: Deleting is restricted if the item already has data associated with it, to prevent data loss and maintain an audit record.

Once you are ready to start entering your inventory into the system, you are welcomed to contact your CSM for help with the initial upload. Please make sure all personnel has already been entered into the system.

Acquiring items

After you have set up your SKU Types and any other settings needed, you can start recording items that your organization has acquired.

You can do this by clicking the Acquire Items button on the main dashboard:

This will bring up a form where you can define:

• SKU type
• Description
• Serial # (for unique SKUs)
• Asset #
• Quantity
• Acquired date
• Expiration date
• Unit price
• Comments

SKU type and Description are required; all other fields are optional.

You can Attach Files as you acquire items. This is a helpful way to keep all item documentation together in one place: receipts, pictures, users manual, etc.

You can add more than one item at a time via the Quantity field, and/or via the Add Item button.

You can use the Bulk copying feature to create identical duplicates, and you also have the option to create near-identical copies but with sequentially increasing serial numbers, if you’ve acquired a batch of items that are all basically the same and have consecutive serial numbers.

Once you are done, select the Acquire button to save the record.

Issuing inventory

After inventory is acquired, you can issue inventory to your members via the Issue button on the main dashboard.

When issuing inventory, you’ll see details about the item(s) and you have the ability to specify the quantity of items to issue, the user to issue the inventory to, and provide a comment for future reference in reports and dashboards.

Returning inventory items

After inventory is issued, it can be returned to the quartermaster or program manager by using the Return button on the main dashboard.

When returning inventory, you can see details about the item(s) being returned. You can specify the quantity of items to return and provide a comment for future reference in reports and dashboards.

Disposing of inventory items

After inventory is acquired, you can record the disposal of inventory via the Dispose button on the main dashboard.

While recording the disposal of inventory, you can see details about the item(s) you are recording the disposal for.

You can specify the quantity of items disposed and provide a comment for future reference in reports and dashboards.

Inventory reports

You can view reports of your organization’s inventory history via Admin > Report Manager, or simply clicking on the Report button on the main dashboard.

• The Current Inventory Status format gives you a snapshot of where all the items are presently. It's great for audits.
• The Full Historical Transaction Data format shows all transactions related to the item(s) selected.

Once you selected a format, you can provide the search criteria and run the report.

Like all reports, if you’d like to customize the columns displayed, click on the “Format Options” tab.

Also like all reports, you can save the report as a template that you can revisit, and you can schedule one-time or recurring automated emails of the report to any recipients of your choosing. You can also download your report as an Excel file or CSV file.

Personal inventory record

Your members can view their own personal inventory history. They can do so via My Dashboard > Inventory.

Once on the personal dashboard, the full inventory history of the member is listed and search options are provided for SKU/serial/asset number and SKU Type. You can also sort items using the up and down arrows at the top of each column.

Alerts

You can set up alerts based on the item's expiration date. Learn more on our article How to set up inventory item expiration alerts.