Inventory Management - Electronic Hotsheets and Advance Ship Notices

Transcription

1 Inventory Management - Electronic Hotsheets and Advance Ship Notices Overview Crucial to any business is operating with valid, current item information. When the integrity of the information in your computer is even slightly inaccurate, lost sales, profits, and overstocks are almost inevitable. In fact, a leading cause of out of stocks is improper item information/setup: To remain competitive and current, Ace makes thousands of item changes on an annual basis. These changes include updates to retails, costs, UPCs, order multiples, item status (i.e. cancelled SKUs), and other inventory related information. This document explains the steps to regularly manage key changes in your computer by establishing disciplined procedures for electronic hotsheets and advance shipped notices (also known as Electronic Invoices). Electronic hotsheets serve as your full data synchronization solution with Ace related to SKU-level information (retail, cost, vendor information, UPCs, manufacturer numbers, etc.). It is the best practice to program your computer to pick up and process electronic hotsheets for both US Retail Support Center (RSC) product and your respective Regional Distribution Center (RDC) items serviced from Shanghai, Panama, or Dubai. Doing so ensures your system s information is synchronized with Ace s corporate mainframe computer. Advance ship notices (ASNs) gives you proactive notification of what will be included on your next Ace delivery and lets you electronically post the purchase order receipts. More specifically, after your order is processed at the Ace s US RSC or at your Ace RDC, the corporate mainframe is updated and Last Update December

2 files are created that allow you to download the receipt information and ultimately update your inventory file. Time savings and reduction of errors are significant. Note: ASNs are currently exclusive to orders for Ace warehouse product (i.e. not Ace dropship). What to do Pick up and process electronic hotsheets and ASNs daily. Process hotsheets first and then ASNs. Though you are picking up ASNs daily, update quantity on hands and on order upon receipt of product. Print bin labels for items that will undergo a retail change. Before you begin Select a store team member that will be responsible for overseeing the implementation of the electronic hotsheet and ASN process. This should be your lead technical person within the organization. Contact your software provider to determine whether they have already programmed their system to pick-up and process electronic hotsheets and ASNs from Ace. If they have, it is matter of seeking their assistance in getting your in-store computer setup to process those updates in a manner that provides maximum benefit. Skip to Task 2 of this document for detail. Obtain a username and password for retrieving hotsheet and ASN data using secure FTP via FTPS protocol. More details are available in Section 2 of the Data Communications Guide: Electronic Hotsheets and ASNs Tasks Task Summary Task 1 Have your software provider program for Electronic Hotsheets / ASNs Task 2 Follow guidelines when programming for Electronic Hotsheets / ASNs Task 3 Contact Ace Support Systems with technical questions and/or issues Last Update December

3 Task 1 Have your software provider program for Electronic Hotsheets / ASNs Using the Data Communications Guide: Electronic Hotsheets and ASNs, have your computer software provider program for picking up and processing electronic hotsheets and ASNs. The guide is technical in nature and is intended for use by Ace Hardware International retailers and affiliated software vendors to establish data communications between Ace corporate and the in-store computer system. The communications outlined in the guide should be applicable to most store computer systems. Subject matter includes: Section Remote site operations Electronic hotsheets and the respective record layouts ASN data and respective record layouts Glossary of technical terms Description This section explains the procedures to be performed in order to utilize the FTPs process to retrieve your hotsheet and ASN data. This section provides information on how to determine when a SKU-level change has occurred, and what type of change was made. This section provides information on how to pick-up and read what is to be received on your Ace delivery. This section briefly describes some of the more technical language included in the guide. Important! The guide provides direction on obtaining electronic hotsheet and ASN information, along with how to understand what has changed. However, it is then the responsibility of the software vendor to determine how to move this information into your in-store systems. For example, if the UPC of the item has changed, your software provider will need to figure out how to feed the new UPC into your computer. Electronic hotsheets and ASNs for RDC warehouse product launches mid-october, 2011, and will be available via XML format. Hotsheets and ASNs for US RSC related products will continue to be available in the proprietary format (i.e. fixed length format). Details are included in the Data Communications Guide: Electronic Hotsheets and ASNs. Last Update December

4 Task 2 Follow guidelines when programming for Electronic Hotsheets / ASNs Below are fundamental principles to follow when programming for electronic hotsheets / ASNs: How often should hotsheets and ASNs be picked up? Ace makes updates to items almost daily, so in order to keep your information accurate, it is a best practice to pick up and process electronic hotsheets every day. Pick up ASNs daily. Though you will not have orders that ship every day, it is a best practice to routinely check to see if any orders have shipped. The ASN tells you exactly what is included on your shipment. This information should be programmed to update your quantity on hand, purchase history, last receipt dates, etc. upon receipt of the product. What important things should I note about programming for hotsheets and ASNs? Thoroughly review the Data Communications Guide: Electronic Hotsheet and ASNs. Note that some information available through the US RSC is not available for your RDC (e.g. retail pricing) and vice versa (e.g. container number for product). It is important that you and your software provider pay special attention to what fields are available for both RDC and RSC warehouse types, what they mean, and how they will feed your system. Ace International has implemented a backorder free policy for the RDC product (i.e. excludes bulletins). As a result, any items not received on a given purchase order should ultimately be closed (i.e. cancelled) in your system and reordered. Bulletins will operate on a backorder premise. Therefore, if ten items are ordered, it is possible for two items to ship immediately, and four items to ship the week after, and etc. Bulletin related items should be reviewed monthly to determine whether or not they should be closed. Before closing, it is a best practice to check with your respective RDC customer service representative to confirm the product is not shipping. For further understanding of the information available through electronic hotsheets and ASNs, contact the International Care Center. When should item changes be auto accepted? Consider auto-updating your POS/Inventory Management system for non-price related changes received from hotsheets with little to no review. This includes changes to UPC, order multiple, unit of measure, mfr. number, etc. Though non-price related changes should be considered to accept without review, a daily report should be available that is capable of displaying the item information that has changed. The report may prompt further action, such as: Last Update December

5 o o Printing new bin labels Stopping the reorder of items that have been canceled, and determining whether a replacement SKU is available Note: Ace suggests replacement items for many items that are cancelled. Replacement item information is transmitted with electronic hotsheets. Have a formalized procedure for reviewing replacement SKUs and taking any necessary action (Example: ordering and stocking the replacement SKU, copying sales history from the cancelled SKU to replacement item, etc.) When should item changes be reviewed before processing updates? Though non-price related information should be considered for auto-feed into your computer system, price/cost related changes should be sent to a pending file for someone to review and make an informed decision on how to handle the proposed updates. This may mean keeping current retails as costs decrease to gain margin, or increasing retails to keep your margin as costs increase. Notes: Because pricing is critical to operating your business and essential to fuel growth, it is important that you implement price changes quickly. Make decisions about pricing by reviewing current and new retail, current and new cost, and new gross profit versus current gross profit. Retail pricing is exclusively available for US RSC products, not RDC items. What sorts of tasks should follow the review of hotsheets? If retails are updated, bin labels on the sales floor must also be updated. Bin labels should be affixed just prior to finalizing your computer with the new retail updates. What more should I know about ASNs? Each container (or truckload) of product has its own individual ASN for RDC product. For instance, if two items were on the order and they get split onto two different containers, two separate ASNs will be available. Another example: If an order was placed for 144 units of a given item, and that item gets put onto three separate containers, three separate ASNs for that product will be available. The ASN lists the container number and the PO number in order to readily track and identify it. The ASN is valuable in posting receipt information and updating quantity on hand and on order only after receipt of the product. If your system permits, it is highly recommended to post by container. Ideally, PO numbers for submitted orders should be at maximum 10 characters. If longer, ASN data will only pickup the first 10 characters. Last Update December

6 Upon successfully transmitting an order, your company receives an order acknowledgment via . The acknowledgement also communicates restricted, cancelled, and invalid SKUs that were on the order. The acknowledgment should be reviewed and impacted items taken action against (e.g. remove item from the order in your system) as needed. Multiple sales orders can exist on a container, but a sales order cannot cross order types for RDC products and bulletins. If a stock order and bulletin order are shipped on the same container, there will be two separate ASNs (one for the stock and one for the bulletin). In general, it is a good idea to use ASNs to add or update the purchase order that exists on the system and use hotsheets to update item information. ASNs should not be used to update cost and item information. Task 3 Contact Ace Support Systems with technical questions and/or issues If you or your software vendor are running into any technical issues programming for hotsheets and ASNs or just have general questions (Example: what certain fields do and mean), contact Ace International s Care Center for one-on-one help. Related Documentation Data Communications Guide: Electronic Hotsheet and ASNs Contact Information Team Type of Assistance Phone International Care Center Retail Analytics Manager Jacob Reyes Technical help with the practices described in this document Information on the theories and practices described in this document [email protected] [email protected] Last Update December