Reordering Inventory

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This report checks inventory levels and produces a list of all items which are below their specified minimum level. Items are grouped according to their most recent supplier. You can use this report to remind you when you need to re-order parts using MainBoss's purchase orders or through your organization's central purchasing system.

Note: When the report shows the most recent cost for an item, the cost shown is either the cost on the most recent purchase order or the most recent price quote, whichever is more recent.

To determine whether an item needs to be re-ordered, MainBoss looks at your current on-hand stock of that item, minus the quantity that has been put on reserve for work orders, plus the quantity that has already been put on order in open or issued purchase orders. (An open purchase order is one that has been filled out but has not yet been sent to the supplier; therefore, an item is technically considered to be "on order" even if the supplier hasn't actually been sent the order. An issued purchase order has been sent to the supplier.) In other words, MainBoss looks at the quantity

OnHand + OnOrder - OnReserve

If this is less than the minimum stock level for an item, MainBoss indicates that the item should be re-ordered. The quantity that needs to be ordered is the quantity required to put the above calculation up to the maximum stock level for the item.

The first step to printing a re-order report is to select Inventory —> Reports —> Re-Order from the menu. MainBoss displays a window that contains the following:

Inventory Item: Lets you restrict the report to a given range of inventory items.
Category: Lets you restrict the report to a given range of inventory categories.
Vendor: Lets you restrict the report to items that were most recently purchased from a given set of vendors. For example, if you specify the same vendor name in the "From" and "To" columns, you can see items that were most recently purchased from that vendor and that now need to be re-ordered.
Preview: Displays the report on the screen. This gives you a chance to see what will be printed out when you click Print.
Print: Prints the report on the current printer. (The name of the current printer is shown above the row of buttons.)

Note: If there are no items that need to be re-ordered, MainBoss displays a message No records were found for the given criteria. when you click Print or Preview. This means that there is nothing for MainBoss to print.

Print Setup: Lets you change printers if your computer is connected to more than one printer. It also lets you change the page setup for the printer, including paper size, margin size, and so on.
Export: Writes report information to a file, in a format that can be used by other programs. There are two possible formats:
- Text format writes the information as plain text.
- DBF format writes the information as a DBF database. This can be opened by programs like Microsoft Excel and Access. For more information, see Exporting Data.
Close: Closes the print window.

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