366 Retail User Manual

The Yellow Dog Inventory Retail User Manual contains all the essential information for you to make full use of our software. Yellow Dog Inventory is a feature-rich inventory management program designed to handle any type of Retail environment. Our software is very user friendly, and this manual will provide a detailed roadmap for everyday use, but should any problems or questions arise please contact us using the Support Information below.

Support Information

Support Hotline: 757.663.7514 (9am – 5pm EST Monday – Friday)

Emergency Support: 757. 663.7514, option 1

E-mail Support: Support@yellowdogsoftware.com

To access our Knowledge Base or Support Forum, click here.

A couple of basic things to keep in mind:

All inventory management should be done in Yellow Dog Inventory. Items entered directly into your Point of Sale (POS) will not be recognized by Yellow Dog Inventory unless they are mapped as part of a one-way interface. Please contact your Yellow Dog Inventory implementation guide if you have questions about your interface type.
Make sure the Yellow Dog Inventory client application has a connection to your database. Your implementation guide will work in concert with your IT personnel to ensure that the connection is in place.
There is no limit to the number of Yellow Dog Inventory client programs you can have connected to your database.
Required information is denoted by red text. Black text indicates optional information.
Most objects have right-click functionality.
Permissions vary for each user. If you can’t access something, check your employee setup under System Setup or have your system administrator check it.
Filters for the data you see on the screen are at the top of the page.

System Navigation

The Inventory Items screen, the first screen you see when you log in, is the main point from which most Yellow Dog Inventory functions originate. The left hand side is our navigation menu, while the top section contains filters for the data displayed in the list below.

There are two sections on the right-hand side. The first, to the far right, is the blue section called On Form Help. Each screen you encounter in Yellow Dog Inventory has its own reference section. Hovering over the section of the screen in Yellow Dog Inventory will put a blue box around the correlating section of the on-form help, and vice versa. This can be a great help while learning the system, but if you’d rather keep your screen space for the program itself, use the right-pointing arrow on the top to minimize it to a narrow, vertical blue bar. If you need it again, just click on the bar.

To the left of that are our action buttons that assist with items, documents, etc.

Each section will be broken down in the pages to come.

Inventory Items: The primary list of all item data, able to be viewed, sorted and filtered in several ways. This is where most item creation and editing will be done.
Matrices: Section to create several related but dimensionally-different items (e.g. small red shirt, small blue shirt, etc.) This is mostly used by retail clients.
Recipes: This is where food and drink recipes are created and managed.
POS Item Map: Items and Recipes can be linked directly to items created at the Point-of-Sale (POS) to deduct inventory for the sale of that POS item. This is also where COGS departments are attached to POS items. This section is only used for one-way POS integrations, primarily at F&B sites.
Item Lists: Create and maintain lists of items used for various functions (order guides, etc.) Any function in Yellow Dog that includes Add Items From… can pull in an item list.
Label Queue: Print multiple labels for multiple items in one place here. When receiving using the Purchasing module, you can opt to add all received items to the Label Queue and print them later at your convenience. This can be used by F&B clients to create shelf tags.
Schedule Retail Changes: Used for 2-way retail syncs only to schedule a retail price change update.
Manual Sales Entry: Sales not pulled from a POS (for example, a food truck or catering event) can be entered here. These will show in sales reporting.

Physical Inventory

Physical Inventories: Documents that will record the on-hand of items when they are counted. Counts can be entered manually or can be brought in from other sources.
Count Sheets: A list of items that serves as a counting template. These can be organized in any order you’d like.
Sessions: Lists of item counts taken using a mobile device running ydiMobile, a Yellow Dog counting app or manually entered.
Manual Adjustments: This view displays changes made to an item’s on-hand outside of counting, POS sale, or purchasing; for example, waste, damage, and theft can all be recorded with a manual adjustment. Transfers between non-Yellow Dog managed locations can also be completed this way.

Worksheets

Purchase Order: A single document that will then create multiple purchase orders for multiple stores.
Replenishment: A flexible document that will generate multiple Purchasing documents to resupply outlets. Defaults to Transfers for moving stock from store to store, but can be set to any purchasing document.
Transfer: A worksheet that can use multiple requests to transfer multiple items to multiple stores from a central location.
Production: A tool that assists with assigning recipe creation to different production Groups based on requests from multiple stores.

Purchasing

Requests: A document that indicates that items are needed. Can be converted into a Purchase Order or a Transfer.
Purchase Order: Document of items that are required from a vendor. Can be converted into a Receipt or Invoice.
PO Approvals: Requires a higher-level employee to confirm the accuracy/completeness of a Purchase Order. Can be set to use dollar total thresholds or a ranked hierarchical structure.
Receipts: Acknowledges that items have arrived and will increase the on-hand of items on the document as of the time it is committed. Can be converted into an Invoice or a Transfer. EDI documents can be created as Receipts upon request.
Invoices: Primarily used to track expenses on received orders. When used without Receipts, will add the quantities of items to a stores’ on hand as of the time it is committed. This is the final chance to affect cost of items with expenses. Invoices are the default document for EDI invoices.
Transfers: Used to move items from store to store in multi-store locations.
Return to Vendor: Tracks items that are being sent back to the supplier. EDI Credits will generate here.

Reports

Standard Reports: The list of all reports available in Yellow Dog. Most reports are filterable on time ranges, vendors, levels, etc.
Saved Reports: Frequently generated reports can be re-run quickly and easily. Saves filters, sorting, etc. Use the date range dropdown (yesterday, last week, last 30 days, etc.) rather than specific dates. These Saved Reports can be automatically emailed out using the SendSavedReportsEmail application.

Common Setup

During implementation, your Guide will walk you thru the setup options, however you may find it necessary to make changes, add more details, or edit existing setup options. To do so, navigate to Common Setup.

Dimensions

Dimensions are most commonly used to specify information such as size and color. However, if you have other needs they can be used for anything you like, such as wine/beer varietals, regions, lead times on special order items, etc.

More Dimensions

The default Dimensions screen has two dimensions; however, eight additional dimensions are available if you need them. Please check your employee permissions if you do not have access to this.

Managing Dimensions

To create a new dimension, click on the three dots next to the first empty dimension and enter a title for the new Dimension, e.g. Size, Color, Varietal, etc.
Click “Create New…” and enter in the new Dimension. Click the “Save & Close” button if you’re done or “Add New” button to add multiple dimensions.

Removing Dimensions

To remove a dimension, click on a dimension and hit “Remove”. If the Dimension is still assigned to an item, it will not allow you to remove it.

Inventory Levels

Levels are how inventory items are categorized in Yellow Dog Inventory and are used for reporting. Typically, the hierarchy is as follows:

Level 1 = Department

Level 2 = Sub-Department

Level 3 = Category

Level 4 = Sub-Category

So, the level scheme for an item might look something like this:

Department = Food Inventory

Category = Protein

Sub-Category = Beef

Sub-Sub-Category = Grass Fed

The amount of Levels created and used in the system is fully customizable. You may only require 1 level while another company would require all 4 levels in their tree structure. This is completely up to you and should be discussed and determined before the installation of Yellow Dog Inventory.

At any point, with the correct permissions, users can create, rename, remove, and perform any other edits to the Inventory Levels in the system.

Creating New Levels

Open the Inventory Levels screen, choose either Add Department or select an existing department and click Add Category under…
Enter a Code (numeric), description, and check the box(es) next to the store(s) that the level will be available in.
Temporary levels are used by EDI syncs to create new items. Items in these levels need to be moved to their permanent levels weekly as part of new EDI item management.

From the Interfaces tab, you can customize how Yellow Dog Inventory communicates with your POS system. Select which stores’ interfaces you’d like to see in this window to reduce the number displayed. This will especially help clients with large enterprises on a single database.
Please see the section on Interfaces for a brief overview of them and contact your implementation guide if you have specific questions.

Managing Levels

NOTE: There are many shortcuts throughout the system that will take you to the Levels Editor. Just look for the blue hyperlink.

Right click on any level from the Inventory Levels screen and this list of options will appear.

Removing levels cannot be done unless there are no items assigned to that level. Otherwise, a popup notification will appear.
Take care when merging levels. This cannot be undone except to recreate the merged level and move the items back manually.
Levels can be moved by selecting the level you wish to move, right-clicking, then hitting Move and choosing where you want it to go.

Manufacturer & Vendor Management

Vendors and Manufacturers are created and managed in the same section in Yellow Dog Inventory. A vendor is required, while manufacturers are optional, unless your POS requires them.

Creating & Editing Vendors/Manufacturers

Navigate to the Manufacturers and Vendors section and click Create New Vendor. You will be prompted to enter the Vendor Name. Click OK when complete.
From the Details screen, you will see that a Vendor Code is automatically generated by the system. You can replace the generated code with your own if you prefer.

From the Stores tab, you can choose which stores the Vendor will be available to. Check the box in the “Available” column of the appropriate store(s).
You can also enter Accounting ID, Account Number, Tax Number, Terms and Customer Number as they are related to each store.

The last section is the Contacts tab. From this screen you can enter in Vendor contact information including Email, Address, Phone Number and Fax number.

You can also determine what stores the contact is valid for and if the address entered is used for both Order From and Return To. Entering in email addresses is particularly helpful if you plan on emailing purchase orders directly to vendors.

To complete the Vendor creation process, click Save and Close in the bottom right corner.

Managing Vendors/Manufacturers

From the main Vendors and Manufacturers screen, you have the ability to view a variety of Vendor specific information such as: Active SKU’s, Inactive SKU’s, Total On Hand, Assigned as…, etc. You can also Create New, Edit, and Remove Vendors.

Primary Vendors

Yellow Dog now allows for Primary Vendors to be selected for items. To set this as a feature, navigate to System Setup. Under Global Options/Purchasing, select “Force Purchasing Documents to respect Primary Vendor”.

Then, under the item, on the Additional Vendors tab, set the Primary Vendor for the item. If a Request or PO is created for the non-Primary Vendor and the item is added, this popup notification is generated. Users will also see this notification if they attempt to convert a Request into a PO using a non-Primary vendor for this item.

Flags

Flags allow you to indicate storage locations, making ordering and physical inventories easier. This is primarily used for F&B implementations. To create a new Flag, click “Create New Flag”. Enter a Description, then click “Save and Close” if done, or “Add New” to add more. If you would like to change “Flags” to a more useful title, go to System Setup\Options\Labels.

Once you are done creating Flags, use the right-click option in Flags View in the Inventory Items screen to assign them to items.

Recipe Types

Recipes are used for F&B operations but can be used if creating Kits to be sold. You can create different recipe types to organize your kits. Use the action buttons on the right-hand side to Create, Edit or Remove Recipe Types.

Production Groups

Production Groups are also used for F&B operations. They allow for an additional layer of recipe organization. Production Groups are meant to be used in conjunction with the new Production Worksheet module. By assigning groups, you can print worksheets to identify stations responsible for making requested Production/Batch recipes.

Events Calendar

The Events Calendar is a new feature in Yellow Dog that allows for the user to tag days with event types for filtering reports. You can also search past events using keywords in the Search bar.

Setting Up Events

First, navigate to the Events tab under Common Setup.
To set up Event Tags, click Edit Tags. Click Add, then enter in your first tag. You can either choose Save and Close or Add New to continue adding tags.

The Tag is usually the type of category the event will fall under. For example, a stadium client may set the event tag to the league that is playing and/or to indicate whether it is a day or night game.

To add a new Event, click the Create New Events button from the right hand menu.
Then, add a description and set the dates the event will run through. Note: for a single day, choose the same start and end date and set the time for 12am – 11:59 PM, which is the default setting.

Next, choose your Event Tag(s) for the Event.
Note: If you haven’t already created event tags, you can create them from this screen by clicking on the blue hyperlink next to the event tags field.
Finally, add any Notes for your event, then save and close at the bottom right of the screen.

Events Feature in Reports

Once you have your events set up, you will be able to run sales reports using the events filters:

Choose the Event Tag(s) you would like to run the report for;
Set all other filters needed;
Use the button to generate the report as usual.
Once the report has generated, you can now sort and group your reports by the Event Tags as well.

System Setup

This section of Yellow Dog controls the Admin related options of the system.

Accounts: Used to set up Manual Adjustment reasons, Invoice expenses, COGS Departments & Categories, and accounting interface export codes.

Autonumber: Algorithms used to auto-generate document codes and item SKUs.
Interfaces: Where third-party codes for integrations are mapped. These can be set per Store, per Level, or per Item.
Options

Global: System behavior.
Inventory: Item behavior.
Fonts: System-wide font for item data and section labels.

Labels: Names of sections and titles can be edited here, e.g. Manufacturer can be changed to Supplier, Flag to Location.

PO Approval Setup: Ranks for the PO Approval are created and maintained here. Every Location Type can have a different set of approval rankings.
Print Templates: Used to define labels or any printable document.

Employees

Employees: List of user logins with employee access options, if not using groups.
Employee Groups: A pre-defined set of store specific user accesses that can be quickly assigned to a new or existing user login.
Employee Options: Allows for different login types, such as Active Directory or Windows.
Employee Roles: Defines the hierarchical rankings for who is notified about POs for approval.

Stores: List of outlets in Yellow Dog.
Store Approval Types: Stores will have hierarchical PO Approval rankings determined by the store type. These are determined in the PO Approval Setup section.

Top Menu Bar

Log Out

This logs you out of Yellow Dog. We recommend doing this anytime you leave your workstation to ensure nothing is being done under your login without your permission.

Change Password

This requires you to know the old password. If you’ve forgotten your password and are unable to log in, please contact your system administrator or our Support department.

Password Recovery

Upon fist login, users are encouraged to set up their password recovery.

This can be done by navigating to the top menu bar and selecting “Password” recovery.
Users will then be prompted to re-enter their login information.
Next, users will be asked to choose and answer two security questions. These can either be selected by using the drop down or customized by personalized questions.

Note: Keep in mind, the answer cannot be in the question.

If a password is forgotten, users can simply answer their security questions to reset and create a new password.

Refresh Data

This button forces the system to refresh the data that is being displayed. Occasionally, using this will clear up an issue you’re seeing with the data being displayed.

Recalculate Costs

This button will process any data up to that point and allow for the most up-to-date reporting. This will also refresh recipe costs. Larger databases with a lot of history will take more time to recalculate.

Help

About – displays technical assembly information along with a link to our Knowledge Base. The Knowledge Base is a great place to review software documentation, videos, and other direct and indirect support resources to help assist you. This also includes live chat with a support technician during business hours 9am-5pm Eastern Standard Time (Holidays will effect these hours).
What’s New –directs you to our “What’s New” page on our website, which provides the most up to date product and version release information.
Upgrades –directs you to our “Upgrades” page on our website and allow you to book an upgrade with our team.

Support Info – provides contact information for our Support and Sales departments. It also provides links to our Customer Portal and self-scheduler for additional training requests. All customers are allotted up to two free 2-hour training sessions per company per month.

Announcements – periodically, Yellow Dog will distribute important and noteworthy information via our login Announcements popup. This section of our Help drop down displays any previous announcements we’ve posted over the past three months, by date.
Web Store – this will direct you to our Webstore where you can purchase additional labels or hardware.

Inventory Items Screen

You can change what data is shown on the inventory items screen by using the Views, Columns, and Filters on the top of the inventory items screen.

Views

There are fourteen different ways to view the inventory screen in Yellow Dog Inventory. Your views may vary based on your permission settings.

Classic – This is the default setting. It will give you most standard information.

All Stores – This shows on hands/on order for all items in all stores in the database that the user has access to.

Activity – This shows event dates for the items: Created, First Received, Last Received, First Sale, Last Sale and Recent Session.

F&B Expiration – This view shows items with expiration dates set, how much is expired, and the oldest and newest expiration dates for each item. This view is not typically used in Retail.

Flags – This shows standard item information and any assigned flag(s), or inventory storage locations.

Recipe/Kit/Batch Items Only – This shows all kits, the recipes they are attached to, their ingredients, cost, and how they behave in the system. This view is not typically used in Retail.

Third Party/Interface Codes – This view shows all pertinent interface information as of the last sync and is highly dependent on your POS setup.

Merchandiser – This view allows for more specific item filtering based on any or all 10 dimensions in Yellow Dog.
Parent/Child – This view brings up all items with parent/child relationships, their SKUs, On Hand Counts, and usage.
Problem Items – This view brings up all items with problems, including no cost or retail price, duplicate UPCs or missing Vendor information. Pay attention to items with no cost; these can significantly impact inventory valuation.

Web Items: Lists all items set to push to and/or pull sales data from an interfaced web cart. There are additional right-click options in this view for setting web cart specific properties.

Purchasing – This view shows On Hand, Size, Vendor ordering information, Par & Reorder Points and the Vendor Price for each item.

SKU, Vendor SKU and UPCs – This view shows basic info, plus SKU, Vendor SKU & UPC. Mostly used by Retail clients or clients with barcode scanners.
Interactive View – Item data fields, such as Long Description, Size, Color, Vendor SKU, Retail Price, Reorder Point, Par Level, etc., can be edited directly in this view, similar to how a spreadsheet behaves. Previous versions of Yellow Dog required a single Vendor to be selected, but now all Vendors can be displayed at once.

Filters

There are several options for narrowing your search in the Inventory Items screen.

Store – If you have access to multiple stores, you can choose the store that you want to view by selecting it from the dropdown box. This will show inventory and corresponding on hand quantities for items that are in the selected store, as well as any other information that can be specific to that store, such as retail price.

Manufacturer or Vendor – Use the Manufacturer or Vendor dropdown to view only items that are assigned to the specified company.
Levels – Use the Levels dropdown to view only items that belong to specified Departments and/or Categories.
Other – By clicking on the “Other” dropdown you can choose to hide either parent items or child items from your view. Items without a Parent/Child relationship will remain in either view. Selecting the “No Count” option from this dropdown hides items for which you don’t track on hands.
Include Inactive/Removed – If you check the “Include Inactive/Removed” button, all your removed and inactive items will be populated with your inventory items. Those items will be marked as Removed or Inactive in the descriptions to help distinguish them from the active items.

There is also a new column that shows Status: Active, Inactive, Deleted, or NoCount.

Search – The search box functions as a standard search box. Type what you are looking for into the box, and Yellow Dog will immediately begin returning results. This feature also allows “or” searches to include multiple terms.
Delay Data Fetch until a Search String is Entered – When this box is checked, no data will be displayed in the Inventory Items screen until the user types search criteria into the search box. This function is typically used in larger databases that may run slowly, to minimize wait times.

Blue Hyperlinks

These hyperlinks appear in any section where Vendors/Manufacturers or Levels can be selected from a menu.

Vendors and Manufacturers…

Clicking on this hyperlink will bring up a Vendors window. From here, you can view Vendors, Codes, Active & Inactive SKUs, Total On Hands, Total Requested and Total on Order. You can also Create New Vendors, Edit & Remove existing vendors and Merge them if you have access to do so.

Levels…

This hyperlink will bring up a Level screen. You can Add Departments & Categories, as well as Edit and Remove existing ones.

Choose Columns

You can customize what columns you see in each view by clicking “Choose Columns”. Each view has different column options depending on the information associated with the view. The default options for most of the views are: On Order, Reference, Current Retail, Vendor Price, On Hand, Dimensions, Description, Short Description, SKU, Vendor SKU, Vendor, and Manufacturer & Level. Additional columns depend on the view you are currently using.

Right-Hand Sidebar

These are the main action buttons for the inventory items screen. These options are normally available in the right-click menu as well.

Create new item starts from scratch in creating new items.
Edit Item opens the item you have selected. You can also double click or hit Enter after selecting a single item.
Remove item archives items with no on hand count. More information on removing or archiving items can be found later in the manual.
Print labels prints labels for a single selected item. You can then choose the count and the template.
Adjust on-hand quantity allows for a manual adjustment to on hand counts for items due to reasons not related to sales or purchasing actions.
Create new item based on… copies certain attributes of the initial item, such as vendor, level, description, price and interface settings. It is a quick way to generate similar items.
Item History Reports are great audit reports that show everything from changes to items to on hand adjustments from sales, receiving/invoicing and physical inventory on hand resets.

Right-Clicking

Right-clicking on an item on the Inventory Items screen brings up this menu of options, based on permissions.

Create, Edit or Remove the selected item.
Create Purchase Order containing the selected item or items.
Set Level, Vendor or Stores availability.
Set Dimensions such as Size, Color, Season, Material, etc.
Set Evergreen Status: assign this status to items that do not age (i.e. aren’t dependent on season or don’t expire,) and that you may want to be able to filter out of some reports.
Set Inactive or Active allows you to deactivate or activate items without opening the item itself. This means you can also perform this action on multiple items at once.
Set Interface Code may or may not be available to you based on your permissions. This allows users to quickly change the interface settings of multiple items at once.
Set Recipe Behavior is only available in the Recipe/Kit/Batch Items Only view. This allows you to quickly change recipe behavior for multiple items at once.
Set Web Items Properties is only available in the Web Items view. This allows you to quickly change web item behavior for multiple items at once.
Set Flags is only available in the Flags view. Use this to assign Flags to multiple items at once.
Merge Items allows you to combine SKUs, UPCs, etc. of two or more items into one. PLEASE NOTE: This can cause issues with item behavior, so please contact your Implementation Guide or our Support department as there may be alternative methods to achieve what you are trying to accomplish.
Parent Child Relationships:

Set Parent/Child – allows you to create a parent/child relationship. Once you click this, you will be asked to select the parent item, then you will need to set the numerical relationship between the items in the Item Editor.
Swap Parent/Child – changes the parent to a child item. This only happens if there is only one child per parent.
Break Parent/Child – removes the relationship.

Set as Recipe Ingredient so the item can be used to create Recipes.
Trigger Items to Re-Sync to POS is important to note here: If you are having issues getting certain items to sync over to the POS, clicking this will manually add the item to the list of things the sync will push over the next time it runs.
Print Labels allows you to print labels for the selected item. To print labels for multiple items, use the Label Queue.
Adjust on Hand Quantity opens the manual adjustment editor.
Create New Item Based On… copies all information about the item, except for the Yellow Dog SKU, into a new item. The new item can then be edited as necessary.
Item History Report can be used to audit items. Choosing to show only on hands will display sales, receipts, returns, manual adjustments, etc. Choosing to show all information will also display changes to item cost, price, description, etc.

General Item Management

Creating Items

From the right-hand side of the Inventory Items screen, click Create New Item. This will activate the SKU Wizard:

In the SKU Wizard pop-up, select the appropriate Level and Vendor for your new item. A SKU number will automatically be generated for you based on the Autonumber sequence set up during implementation.

In the example, only the Department code (030) is part of the SKU that is being generated for the new item.

Copying Items

Yellow Dog Inventory makes it easy to quickly create or copy item data to a new item with a unique SKU number.

Highlight the item you want to copy and click “Create new Item Based on [Item]”.

Click “Yes Copy” to open the populated SKU wizard. Levels and Vendor can be changed here.
Click OK to open a new Item Editor screen for the newly created item. Notice that all the data from the original item has been populated in the new item but with a new SKU. Make your changes and click Save and Close.

Item Editor Tabs

Retail Details

In most instances, you will use this tab to build new and edit existing items.

Enter the Description of the item into the Description field.
Notice the Level and Vendor have been filled in based on selections in the SKU Wizard. You may change these at any type if the wrong vendor or level were previously selected.
Enter Vendor Price (your cost) and Retail Price (customer cost). You may also set the retail price by adjusting the Markup & Margin fields.
Enter POS Description 1 information – this typically will be what is printed on guest receipts. Depending on the POS there may be a character limit. Your Implementation Guide will help with configuration.
There are a variety of optional fields you may enter as well

Style No
Reference
Additional Dimensions
Vendor SKU
Manufacturer
Manufacturer SKU
UPC(s)
Reorder Point
Par Level
MSRP
POS Description 2
Short Description

Stores Tab

From the Stores tab, you can set Reorder Point, Par Level, and Bin Location. Make sure the item is available in the appropriate stores by selecting them in the Available column.

Setting Multiple Price Levels

From the Stores tab you are able to set multiple price levels for your item. This can be useful in setting up events such as happy hour. While all the programming for these automated price changes must be done on the POS side, we are able to assign the prices that will result when that automated change takes place.

Setting Reorder Points and Pars from the Stores Tab

Reorder points and pars work together to give you a simplified, automated way to create a purchase order, based on item on hand. Reorder points will tell the system at what point to trigger the item to be purchased, while Pars will tell Yellow Dog how many of your item needs to be ordered to get back to the desired inventory level. To set those points, simply enter the numbers in the associated fields.

Performing On Hand Adjustments from the Stores Tab

On hand adjustments are usually intended to track damage or waste, or to reset on hand quantity due to a counting error. To make an on-hand adjustment from the Stores tab, you will click the button labeled “Adjust On hand for [Store]”. You must enter a Reference, and Accounting Code if applicable, to make the adjustment.

Running Item History from the Stores Tab

You can also generate a store specific item history report for the item you are editing.

Highlight the store you’d like to run the report for,
Select “Item History Report for Store_____”,
Choose to see all adjustments or only on hand adjustments and hit “Ok”,
Choose to Export, Save, Print or Close the report when finished. Remember you can re-sort the report or choose additional column by selecting “Change Columns, Sorting and Grouping” hyperlink.

Add Child Item Tab

Most retail operations do not use this feature.

Parent/Child relationships are most commonly used for inventory items that are purchased in different sizes than they are sold or used. Typically, the parent will be the larger size (e.g., Case) and the child will be the smaller useable/sellable size (e.g., Each or Bottle.) The Parent can be the smaller size depending on your business needs, but in all situations the Parent is ALWAYS where the on-hand quantities of items are tracked.

Other Details Tab

Use the checkboxes to specify how you’d like an item to behave. This can include:

Making it inactive – takes the item off the active item list, but the on hand remains; useful for discontinuing seasonal items and product brought in for special events.
Setting it to no count – useful for items such as cleaning supplies or vendor-supplied displays that you don’t necessarily want to inventory.
Making it a recipe ingredient – this must be checked for an item to be added to a recipe.
Whether the item can be added to or affected by manual adjustments or physical inventories.
Setting the item to be sold at a point of sale or used in purchasing documents.
Telling Yellow Dog Inventory to prompt users to print labels for the item when it’s received.
Blocking the item from being used in Transfers – particularly useful if you only want to transfer a specific size between stores. This will allow you to block sizes that should only be used for recipes or counting, not transfers.
Evergreen – this allows for items with no “aging” that are excluded from those reports.

Note: These behaviors may be affected by an attached recipe, and that recipe’s behavior. For more info, see the “Create Kit or Recipe Tab” section.

Retail Schedules Tab

This tab is useful for viewing retail cost history/clearance/sales/etc. on specific items. A sale can be configured using the Schedule Retail Changes menu on the main YDI screen.

Additional UPCs Tab

This is another location for managing item UPCs. The UPC Check field will notify you of the type of UPC used, or if it is an unrecognized barcode type.

If you have more than one UPC for an item, enter them here.

Label Queue Tab

This tab allows you to add the item to your label queue or print a specified amount of labels right now.

Create Kit or Recipe Tab

If you are creating bundled items, such as a gift basket, use this tab to attach the bundle (called a Kit or Recipe in Yellow Dog) to a countable inventory item.

Attaching Recipes to POS Items

To connect a recipe to the item, click the ellipsis (…) next to “Kit/Recipe”.

This will bring up the “Lookup” screen where you will need to select the appropriate recipe.

Recipe Behavior

The Kits/Recipes tab makes assigning behaviors to your kit/recipe items simple with a dropdown menu of recipe item behaviors.

Note: Typically, in Retail operations the Retail and Purchasing Kits are the only behaviors used.

The POS Menu Item Recipe behavior is used most often in F&B environments. These recipe items aren’t produced until they are ordered. A burger might have a recipe that includes the bun, patty, and toppings. While the ingredient items are counted separately, they are sold as one unit.
A Batch Recipe item is made ahead of time but not produced in Yellow Dog using manual adjustments. When added to physical inventories, Batch Recipe Items will bring in their ingredient items, along with any related batch recipes and their ingredient items.
Production items, made in house to sell, are produced in Yellow Dog through manual adjustments, which is the only time their ingredient items are affected. These items have an on hand and can be counted in physical inventories, but they do not bring their ingredient items in to physical inventories with them.
The Production Transfer Item behavior allows for a two-step process where one location produces a recipe item and another sells the recipe item as is. The “Production Store” will have ingredients subtract from inventory upon a Transfer. During the transfer, the Store To will receive an on-hand value tied to the recipe item for their use in selling. No ingredients will deduct from the Store To’s inventory when the recipe item is sold; the on hand value of the recipe item will simply decrease.
The Retail Kit behavior allows users to assemble and disassemble the kit, count the kit in physical inventories, and sell or return the kit at a POS. The ingredient items are only affected by manual adjustments. These kits are usually store-assembled gift baskets or bundles of items.
The Purchasing Kit behavior allows users to receive by the recipe and sell by the ingredient. For example, use this behavior if a vendor sells a display of products as a set but the individual components are what you are selling at your POS.
The final behavior is “Other”. This behavior is used to set non-standard, possibly conflicting, item behaviors.

If you have questions about kit behaviors, please contact your implementation guide or Support.

Additional Vendors Tab

This tab allows you to set additional vendors for items, along with any different Vendor SKUs and Prices. You can also view or clear the vendor price history for those items. Yellow Dog now also allows multiple vendor SKUs per Vendor, which is especially helpful for those clients with EDIs. The Create Alias option in Invoices uses this new feature. For more information, see the EDI subsection of Purchasing.

The Additional Vendor tab should be used for product purchased in the same size from different vendors. If the size is different, use the Purchasing Item section of the F&B tab. Please talk to your implementation guide if you require access to this tab.

Item Reports Tab

This tab allows for transaction level report, filtered down to the item you are currently editing for faster analysis.

Purchasing Activity Tab

This tab displays all purchasing activity related to the current item and provides the ability to open the source document.

Pictures Tab

Using Amazon S3, the pictures tab allows you to associate images with your inventory items. High resolution images are saved to S3 while thumbnails are available for viewing in the Yellow Dog client.

Web Properties Tab

The Web properties tab is used to add item details for a 2-way web store interface.

Interfaces Tab

This tab will depend greatly on the POS interfaces set up for your store. Please contact Support or your implementation guide if you have questions.

Removing or Inactivating Items

Removed Items are items that you don’t plan on reselling or reordering. These should be removed from the system when the on hand reaches 0.

Note: an item that is removed will always exist in the database. This is so historical sales data will still be available.

To remove an item, highlight the item and click Remove Item.
Make sure the On-Hand Count is zero before you attempt to remove an item from inventory.
Use Adjust On Hand quantity if you need to manually deplete the remaining inventory.
If there is an On-Hand count for the item, you will receive a popup notification:

To un-remove an item, double-click on the item and click Yes Undelete. The item editor screen will open for the item. Click Save and Close to complete the undelete process.

Inactive Items are typically seasonal product that you plan to store until the next time you want to sell them. These items usually do not expire and do not require the stock to be 0 to be removed from your everyday inventory item view(s).

To set an item to Inactive, navigate to its Other Details tab in the Item Editor and uncheck the “This Item is Active” checkbox.
Depending on User Permissions, you can also achieve this by right-clicking the item on the main inventory items view and selecting “Set Inactive”.
To set an item back to Active when you are ready to sell it again, use the right-click “Set Active” option, or re-check the “This Item is Active” checkbox in the Other Details tab for the item.

Once an item has been removed or set to inactive, you can view it by checking the box in the Inventory Items screen that says “Include Inactive/Removed”. The items will be flagged with (removed) or (inactive).

Matrices

Matrices are a great tool to use for a lot of apparel retail environments. Rather than manually creating each piece in every size/color combination, matrices allow you to create multiple items at once.

To create a Matrix, navigate to the Matrices section under Item Management, then choose “Create New Matrix”.

Matrix Editor

The requirements of what needs to be filled in for a matrix will vary depending on your company standards and user permissions. Yellow Dog requires the following be filled out:

Description – The extended description of a Matrix, typically without any size or color references.
Level – Department or Category that the Matrix belongs to, for reporting.
Store – the Store(s) the Matrix belongs to.
Vendor – Primary Vendor that you order the Matrix from.
Manufacturer – This will be auto-filled by the Vendor unless you set it differently.

Optional fields:

Style – this can be used to form a bond between items, inside or outside of a Matrix, that will allow grouped reporting by all items with the same Style number.
Short Description – a truncated description, usually 16 characters, that can be pushed into the POS description field.
POS Description 1 – this is typically the description sent to your POS.
POS Description 2 – this is typically the second description sent to your POS.
Default Vendor Price & Current Retail – set these as necessary. If items are at different vendor prices and retails depending on size, etc., uncheck “Update Default Vendor Price & Default Retail’ to be able to control those per item. You can also use the Markup and Margin calculators to determine what to charge.
Evergreen – Check this box to mark the Matrix items as Evergreen. Evergreen items can be included, excluded, or the only items returned as a filter option in most reports, including Aging reports. Any non-seasonal item available in your store may be an Evergreen item.
Notes – use this field for any additional information you’d like to note about the matrix.
Additional Dimensions – if set up, you can also choose to assign additional dimension attributes to the Matrix item you are creating.

Once your base information is set, you are ready to choose the Dimensions that will make up your Matrix items. Choose “Select Dimensions” in the bottom right of the Editor and use the checkboxes to make your selections. You can either create a Matrix based on Dimensions 1 (Size), Dimension 2 (Color) or Dimensions 1 and 2 (Size and Color).

Once you have selected all the dimensions needed for your Matrix, click OK. The system will prompt you to confirm whether or not you want to create the new items. If you are creating a brand new Matrix with brand new items, click “Yes Create Items Now”. However, if your items already exist and you are trying to connect them together into a Matrix, choose “No Do Not Create”.

Once the Matrix items have been created, clicking on the ellipsis next to the item brings up several options.

Choosing “Remove Item from Matrix” disassociates the selected item from the Matrix, but saves it as an individual item.

Matrix Item Details Tab

You can add more information for the individual items you’ve created in this tab. The following options exists:

Vendor SKU
UPC 1
UPC 2
Retail 1-10 (Used for multiple price levels needed by some POS)

On Hands by Store Tab

This tab will display the current on hands for each store the item is assigned to as well as a cumulative total.

On Order by Store Tab

This tab will display all the current on order quantities for each store the item is assigned to as well as a cumulative total.

Calculated Cost by Store Tab

Like the previous two tabs, this tab allows you to view the calculated cost of the item for each store it’s assigned to.

Reorder/Par by Store Tab

This tab allows you to set up reorder points and par levels for each store the item is assigned to. You can maintain different pars and reorders for each location. This will aid in reordering. Both must be filled out to use this feature.

Pictures Tab

This tab will display all pictures attached to the items in the Matrix. Clicking on the picture field will bring you to the Item Editor for the individual item, where you can use the Pictures tab to add pictures and alternate text. Once the items have pictures, they will display on this tab with each picture and text label associated with the item.

POS Description Tab

This tab is a quick way to view all the POS 1 and POS 2 descriptions for each item in the Matrix. Remember, these are typically the two fields that get sent to your POS for customer receipts.

Matrix Reports Tab

This tab allows you to run specific reporting tied to the Matrix you’re editing. The only detail returned here belongs to any item that is part of the Matrix. Use this to quickly analyze your data without having to go to the Standard Reports section of Yellow Dog.

Purchasing Activity Tab

Here you can view every purchasing document that the items in your Matrix were included in. You also have the ability to open the source document directly from this Tab.

Web Properties Tab

The Web Properties tab will be used if you have a web cart integration.

Propagate Web Settings to all Matrix Items
Checking this box will apply the web properties set in this tab to all items in the Matrix.

If you uncheck this box, you’ll be able to set each item’s web properties individually. This is helpful for products where certain items aren’t available yet, but you want to publish the available items now.

Web Cart Settings
All web cart integrations will have their own specific requirements. Yellow Dog has a variety of fields that may or may not be used depending on your web cart. Most fields are Rich Text formatted and allow you to attach links and convert what you type to HTML.

Title
Short Description
Extended Description
Product Type
Tags
Send to Website – allows you to publish the Matrix to your web cart and gives you the ability to create Matrices in advance.
New Item
Last Chance
Taxable

Associated Web Items
This is the last section of the Web Properties Tab and allows you to control the order that items push to the web cart. Items will push in the order they appear. Highlight an item and then use the arrows on the right-hand side to set them in the desired order.

Manual Adjustments

To remove item quantities from inventory (waste, sampling, breakage, known theft, etc.) or to affect the on hand of a production item and its ingredient items, you will be using Manual Adjustments.

In the Inventory Items screen, find the item(s) you plan on adjusting. Highlight the item(s) and hit “Adjust on Hand Quantity” on the right-hand side of the screen.
Yellow Dog will prompt you to select the store in which you will make your adjustment; Manual Adjustments are store-specific.
You can change the date/time or keep the current pre-populated information. This allows you to set the date and time the adjustment will affect the item’s on hand.
You can adjust multiple items at once.

Choose “Add Items” and select the other items you wish to adjust.
Or choose “Add Items From…” and chose your source.

If you are adding items manually, you will need to enter in quantities.
Fill in the Reference field. You will not be able to submit an adjustment without a reference.
If your company requires it, you will need to select an Accounting code from the dropdown. Please see the next section for information on setting Accounting Codes.
Once you are done, click Submit.
Hitting “Esc” or “Cancel” during the adjustment will exit out without saving your changes. Finish your adjustment in one go.

Accounting Codes

Accounting Codes allow the user to set standardized codes for things such as waste; production of recipes; transfers to departments not in Yellow Dog, such as HR; etc.

To create Accounting Codes for Manual Adjustments,

Navigate to System Setup\Accounts\Manual Adjustment Accounts tab.
Choose “Create New Accounting Code” and fill out a description.
If you have different Accounting codes for Stores you can use the checkbox to mark codes inactive at certain stores in Yellow Dog. This will prohibit that code being used in any manual adjustments for the selected stores.
If you are going to set up an accounting integration, fill out the gold/tan Manual Inventory Adjustment column with the appropriate GL codes.
Lastly, decide whether you would like the accounting code to affect COGS. For more information on COGS, please see that section.

Manual Adjustments List

We’ve created a new screen that will allow you to view all the manual adjustments in the system. This list can be filtered by date, level, vendor, and store, as well as sorted by column like the main Inventory Items screen. You can also choose to include Auto-Zero adjustments in this view which will show each adjustment done by maintenance to zero the on hand of an item marked as Auto-Zero.

Recipes/Kits

A Recipe is a group of items that are combined to be sold as a single item in the Point of Sale. While there is only one kind of recipe you can create, the same recipe can behave differently when attached to different inventory items and assigned different behaviors, e.g the recipe for a Gift Basket would have “Retail Kit” behavior assigned. For more information on Recipe behavior, see the section on the Create Kit/Recipe tab.

You can create different Types of Recipes/Kits (e.g. Valentines, Christmas) by selecting Recipe Types under Common Setup. This can be useful in organizing your Recipes/Kits.

To create a new Kit, navigate to Recipes and click Create New Recipe.
Give your new recipe a description, use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate recipe type, then click “Add Ingredient Items”.
Now select all the inventory items used to create your kit. For example, in a Wine Picnic Basket you might include Wine Glass, Basket, Stainless Bottle opener and a bottle of Wine.
Next fill in the quantities.
You can also set the Target Cost Percent to assist with assigning a retail price.

Several additional tabs are available to assist with your recipe creation.

Yield/Used By is mainly used in F&B where they map the recipe to a point of sale item. For retail clients, you would attach this recipe to an item using the Kit/Recipe tab.
Instructions allows you to write assembly instructions for the Kit.
Pictures allows you to attach pictures of the kit. You can attach as many pictures as you’d like and they will be saved to Amazon S3 cloud storage, permitted that option is enabled.
Links allows you to attach a URL to the recipe. Typically, this would be used for demonstration of assembly.

POS Item Map

POS Item Mapping is typically used for F&B clients and allows users to attach recipes to POS items in one-way interfaces and map COGS categories.

For one-way POS integration, choose the store that you’re working with. If your stores share a POS server with identical item numbers for items, then select all the applicable stores. If your stores are on separate, or non-identical servers, choose one store at a time or uncheck “Automatically select matching rows”.

Once you start mapping POS Items or COGS departments, click “Hide POS Items that have…” to shorten the list of items you’re working with.

To map a POS item to a recipe:

Click “Show recipe columns”, then use the ellipses to select a recipe.
Or, if the item only has one ingredient item, or you would prefer not to build recipes through the recipe module, check “show ingredient columns”. Make sure you confirm the count on the UOM.

Other options:

Search – behaves like the main Inventory Items Search.
Ignore POS Item – removes the POS Item from view. Check “Show ignored POS Items” to bring them back.
Don’t Ignore POS Items – displays an item you’ve ignored.
Copy Recipe – allows you to assign one recipe to multiple items – helpful when working with multiple revenue centers or multiple items with the same recipe.
Paste Recipe – the other half of the Copy Recipe function.
Insert unsold POS item – Items that have been sold since the sync have been run are automatically added to the list. This adds every other item.
Set COGS Account/Reset COGS Account – where COGS are assigned to POS items; this is primarily used in F&B food cost reporting.

Item Lists

You can also create and save items into Item Lists. These are handy to create if there are items that are frequently ordered together, you need to keep a barcode/SKU sheet by the register for items without barcodes, you want to create order guides, or to keep your physical inventory process organized.

Item Lists can also hold Quantities per item. We’ve added a Quantity column on the main page to quickly identify those lists that have quantities attached.

Click “Create New Item List”, add items from the Item Lookup, and reorder and remove them as necessary. You can also add items based on Par Levels; Sales, Transfers & Adjustments; Sales; GoFetch; ydiMobile; an Excel or CSV file; or another Item List.

Manual Sales Entry

Manual Sales Entry allows you to create simple, basic sales transactions using your inventory items without going to your POS. This can be useful for offsite sales, like a food truck in the example below.

Choose the Store you wish to adjust the items from.
Click on the arrow of the next blank line; this will make all fields editable in that line.
Search for items to adjust by clicking on the SKU ellipses.
You can also change information such as Transaction Date, Retail, Discount, Reference and Ticket by selecting those fields.
Enter in the quantities to adjust by using the + or – buttons or by manually entering in a number.
Once you’ve reviewed the sale, click on the Green Arrow to commit the line your working on or you can use the button on the bottom right corner to “Commit All Open” sales.

Sessions

This screen allows you to manage sessions from mobile apps, handheld devices, or those created directly in the client. They can be filtered down to a specific store’s sessions, session status or to those sessions containing a specific item.

On this screen, you can:

Create New Sessions – allows you to create a new session directly in Yellow Dog for manual data entry of a count sheet.
View Session – allows you to view any review any existing session. Keep in mind that if you are using a Mobile App a session is not completed until the status is “Finalized”.
Delete sessions – useful for keeping session lists organized. Once this is done, there is no way to undelete a session.
Import 3rd Party Session – Allows the import of Third Party Sessions that have been added via our API.
Mark as Processed – Use this to indicate that a session has been used in a physical or another document and should not be used again.
Adjust on Hand- allows you to use a session to make a bulk manual adjustment. Whatever session you have highlighted when you hit “Adjust on Hand” will then load into a Manual Adjustment editor. Users will still be required to enter Accounting and Reference fields based on system setup.
Force Recount – If using one of the Mobile Apps, force recount will send the session back to its original device to be recounted.
Create Physical – this will allow you to highlight one or more sessions and create a physical inventory based on only the items that are in the session. This is not our recommended option and should only be used with caution as the likelihood of leaving off items that should be counted is high.
Launch Sync YDI with Handheld– shortcut to launch the handheld sync. Works the same as the desktop shortcut.
Configure Sync YDI with Handheld – This is a shortcut to configure the handheld sync. Your implementation guide will walk you through configuring the sync. This will need to be done on each computer the handheld is plugged into.

Physical Inventories

Yellow Dog Inventory gives you the ability to periodically check actual on-hand counts against the counts as reported by Yellow Dog Inventory, and then update Yellow Dog Inventory with new on-hands. This process is called a Physical Inventory.

Creating a Physical Inventory

Navigate to Physical Inventories.
Create a new physical inventory by clicking the Create New Physical Inventory button on the right side of the screen. If you have access to more than one store, you will be prompted to select the store to perform the Physical Inventory for.
Select the items you want to count. You can select “Add active items for store …, filtered by vendor or level (recommended)” or you can Select from other options. It is *highly* recommended that you choose the first option.
If you would like to count specific Vendors/Level combinations, you can make that selection here.
If you are confident that any items that do not have an on-hand count in the system will not need to be counted, you can remove them by selecting “Skip Items with zero on hand”.
From the Review screen, you may add, edit, or remove items that should or should not be part of this Physical Inventory. Once all changes have been made, click “Select All ### Items”

Now, bring in your counts if you have already gathered them. You can add from a GoFetch session, a regular Session or an Excel, CSV or text file. Alternatively, you can hit Skip to enter manually. You can find information on the ways to count inventory under “Inventory Count Options”.
Each count source you choose will create a new column in the editor.

Physical Inventory Editor

Effective Date/Time

From the Physical Inventory Editor screen, you can set the Effective Date and Time that this Physical Inventory will be applied to the system.

IMPORTANT: When committing a Physical Inventory, the counts will be applied to the system as of the EFFECTIVE DATE AND TIME that YOU set. This gives you the ability to count on a Sunday evening and come back Monday morning and commit the counts without losing any data integrity. THIS DOES NOT MEAN that you can take a week to conduct your Physical Inventory and expect the inventory counts to be accurate. In general, it is best to complete your Physical Inventory at one time.

Columns

Each source will bring in a column, however, you can create new ones with the buttons on the right hand side:

Add Column
Rename Column
Remove Column

You can use the “Choose Columns” option to hide these at any point.

Sort By

From your new Physical Inventory, use the “Sort By” dropdown to decide how your worksheets should look. The sort order on the screen will be how your worksheets will print.

You can sort by:

Item
SKU
Item List/Count Sheet Order
Item List/Count Sheet Order (Reverse)
Level, Item
Vendor, Item
Manufacturer, Item
Dimension, Item
Bin, Item
Variance Quantity, Item
Variance Quantity (Descending), Item
Variance Cost, Item
Variance Cost (Descending), Item

“Print Worksheet” will print based on the sort order chosen.

Find

Search key words in the description, or search for a specific SKU.

Check “Hide rows that don’t match Find” to only show filtered items.

Disable automatic recalculation

If recalculation takes longer than 2 seconds, this will appear as an option. Check to speed up the physical and reduce auto processing.

Show only items with variances

If checked, the editor will refresh to only show items that have a variance to assist with validating counts.

Hide All Flag Columns

If using flags, once you’ve entered your counts, check this box to refresh the editor to remove those columns for easier analysis of your inventory.

Finishing an Inventory

Once you have updated all the inventory counts, you can see information on the physical inventory at the bottom of the screen. The variance count indicates the number of items that have counts different from what the Yellow Dog system has calculated should be on hand. A positive number means you have more inventory, a negative number indicates less inventory on hand than calculated. The variance cost is calculated using the cost calculation you have chosen; Yellow Dog’s default is weighted average.

We recommend running the Detailed (Select by Physical Inventory) report under Standard Reports/Physical Inventories before committing. You will need to select Show Uncommitted.

When all counts have been entered and you are ready to commit the Physical Inventory, click Commit Physical Inventory.

You have the option to either Commit Physical or Commit Physical and Recalculate costs. If you have many inventories to review and commit, we recommend skipping recalculating and running Maintenance afterwards. Otherwise, you can commit the physical and recalculate to finalize.

If you have items that have not been counted, the system will prompt you. If you are confident any items that were not counted do not need to be counted, click ‘Yes Commit Counts”. This will set any items that were added to the original inventory but not counted, even those with counts in the system, to zero.

If you did not miss items, the system will simply prompt you to commit the inventory. Both prompts will also display the effective date and time.

Run the Detailed Report again as a final check. Most clients use this report to turn in their numbers to the accounting/finance department.

IMPORTANT: Once you commit the physical inventory, the counts that you entered in to the “Counted” column will now become you current on-hand number. If a count is left blank, it will result in updating 0 on hand for the item.

Inventory Count Options

With CountRetail App

We do offer a CountRetail app that can be used on iOS and Android cellphones. This allows you to download all your inventory items and then scan and lookup product to add counts.

You can create multiple sessions (series of unique counts) across multiple devices using the app to quickly divide and conquer a retail space during inventory.

These counts would then be uploaded to Yellow Dog using a wifi connection as sessions and then brought into a physical inventory editor.

For more information, you can reach out to Support or your Implementation Guide as well as review the manual in our knowledgebase.

With a Data Collector (YDIMobile)

Follow the steps in the beginning of this section to create a new physical inventory.

Make sure the device is connected to your PC via either the cradle or USB cable and the scanner is powered on. To test if the handheld is truly connected, open Windows Explorer and ensure that YDIMOBILE has become an accessible drive.

If this is your first time using SyncYDIwithHandHeld.exe, please refer to the ydMobile guide.

You can configure the handheld to sync for a single store, which is useful when there are multiple stores to be counted. Simply go to the “Stores” tab on the sync, select the store you wish to count and hit Go on the main tab. This will limit the sessions stored on the handheld to the store you have chosen, reducing the number of sessions you need to go through to import your counts.

Run SyncYdiWithHandheld.exe (this will update the device with all new items and updates). The sync can generally be found either as a shortcut on your desktop or in C:\ YellowDogInventory\ SyncYdiWithHandheld.
Disconnect the device from the computer and follow the onscreen instructions to launch YDIMobile.
Once the program opens, select your employee. Note: Depending on the version you are using, it may not prompt for an employee. In that case, skip this step.
Click Count Inventory Items.
From the Select Session screen, click Create New Session and enter a session name. Choose something that is both unique for this inventory and for the handheld if there are multiple handhelds being used. It can be helpful to name sessions based on date, store, and employee name. For example, Bethany, Mary, and Curt are each using a scanner to count both the Lobby Gift Shop and the Casino Store on January 17th. Recommended session names would be:

Jan17Casino Bethany
Jan17Lobby Bethany
Jan17CasinoMary
Jan17Lobby Mary
Jan17Casino Curt
Jan17Lobby Curt

Then, select the store you are counting if you have access to multiple stores.
Click “Add Item”.

You are now ready to scan your items. Use the bright blue buttons on the sides of the device to enable scanning.

When an item is scanned you will be prompted to enter a count for the item. Yellow Dog Inventory can handle decimals if necessary. Use either the on-screen numbers, +/-, or the keypad located at the bottom of your handheld to enter in your counts. Once completed click Submit and move on to the next item. Alternatively, scan each barcode and the system will tally the counts for you.

Occasionally, an item with an unrecognized UPC will be scanned. From here, you can either

Search for the item using the search field below the error message. Click the item you want associated with the barcode, and enter your count. Or,
Click “Create Item” and enter in the description. Fill in any identifying information that will be helpful as you will be able to finish creating the item when you import your counts.

If you make a mistake adding a UPC to an existing item, hit File, then Edit (Item), click in the UPC field, then follow the directions on-screen. Click the UPC you wish to remove, then hit Yes when prompted. Click Close, then Close again. Change the count to 0, then hit Submit. Then, hit “Add Item” to go back to scanning.

Once your count is complete, click Close and then Exit.
Open your Physical Inventory in Yellow Dog and click Import Counts From…
Select Add counts from Session.
Click Launch Sync YDI with Handheld. This will sync the device with Yellow Dog Inventory and allow you to choose the sessions you wish to import.
Select the sessions you would like to import and click OK.

NOTE: If any problem items exist in the import, Yellow Dog will show you now. Examples of problem items include inactive/removed items that were scanned or items that are not assigned to the store.

If the item is in the system, selecting it and clicking “Edit Item” will prompt you to fix it, either by un-deleting it or making it active in the store.

Alternatively, you can remove it from the session by clicking “Remove Selected” or “Remove Problem Items” to remove all problem items in the session.

Single Scanner

To add multiple sessions from a single scanner after running the sync, select every applicable session that you would like to import.

Multiple Scanners

To add multiple sessions from multiple scanners, repeat the process for a single scanner as many times as needed.

NOTE: After the first scanner is synced, that scanner’s sessions will appear again in each subsequent scanner’s synced sessions. You do not need to import these again. Ignore them and import the unique sessions from any subsequent scanners.

Multiple Sessions for the same Physical Inventory

In Yellow Dog, you can have multiple sessions for one physical; whether manually keyed in sessions, synced from data collectors, uploaded from the Apps or a combination of the above. When importing these sessions into a physical, each session will create a new column with the session description at the top. This is useful when dealing with large amounts of inventory, for control and count purposes.

Worksheets

Replenishment Worksheet

The Replenishment worksheet is a tool that utilizes a designated warehouse store to generate requests or transfers for multiple locations within a single screen. This tool uses algorithms to decide which store’s requests get priority fulfillment based on sales for a chosen timeframe. **Pars and Reorder Points must be set for this tool to work. **

To start a new Replenishment Worksheet, navigate to the Replenishment tab on the left-hand menu.

Select “Add” from the right-hand menu to open the Replenishment wizard where you can choose to create a new document or use a template from a previous document.

On the next page, add filters to the replenishment. If you choose a template, the filters will be pre-populated but can be modified as needed.

The description will be the identifier on any other purchasing docs that are created from this document. Add an extended description to the field below that if needed for more granularity
Choose the store fulfilling the replenishment (usually a warehouse but you could use this for store to store transfers as well).
Identify the stores that will be receiving items (also known as the replenishment stores).
Select specific Levels or Vendors to help keep lists shorter and easier to work with.
Choose how you want your data sorted in the worksheet by selecting from one or more sort option dropdowns. If no sort options are selected, items will follow your global sort selection (usually alphabetically by description).
The sales range you specify will be used in the worksheet’s “Smart Maths” function to calculate the usage and determine which store should get what quantity of an item based on the sales percentage when the warehouse store does not have enough stock to fulfill all quantities needed.

If you plan on using this filter arrangement again you will want to choose the “Save as Template” option on the bottom right of the screen

Once you have set all your filters you click the “OK” button at the bottom right of the wizard to open your worksheet.

From the worksheet grid you can review and edit the reorder points and par levels. You can also set multipliers by item or across the whole grid if you do not want to permanently change your standard pars, but know that they will be insufficient for the current replenishment need.

Once you have reviewed your worksheet quantities and made any necessary changes, use the Commit Replenishment button at the bottom of the screen to finalize the worksheet. Once committed, Yellow Dog will generate and commit the documents as specified in your Options / Global setting.

For the example below, the Options / Global setting for replenishment was set to generate Transfers and leave them uncommitted. Note that the documents’ Description field is populated with the Replenishment code and description.

Contact your Implementation Guide or Support for assistance in configuring your settings for Replenishment including document type, commit option, and Smart Maths algorithm.

Purchase Order Worksheet

The Purchase Order worksheet assists in generating POs for multiple stores within a single screen.

From the Purchase Order Worksheet list, use the Add button, then select the parameters to create the Purchase Order: Vendor, Buyer and Receiving stores. Click OK to open the Purchase Order Worksheet editor.

Yellow Dog will auto populate a Purchase Order Number and Description. This can be changed with certain user permissions.

Fill out the Start and Cancel Ship Dates as well any Instructions or Notes for this order. Use the +/- to the left of “Worksheet Details” and “Additional Worksheet Details” to see the full worksheet if your screen resolution requires it.

Next, add items from:

inventory items
matrices
store specific lists
location
pars
sales
count sheets
physical inventory
sessions

Just like in Purchase Orders, only items that are assigned to the selected Vendor will be available to bring into the worksheet.

Additional information on the item can be viewed by selecting the Choose Columns hyperlink on the right-hand side. Items can be removed by highlighting and selecting “Remove”.

Once items have been added, use the Order Sheet grid to specify the quantities to be ordered for each store. Use the On Hands and On Order tabs to view both current on hands and on order for each store to assist in this process.

Once the order is complete, commit the Purchase Order Worksheet to generate a Purchase Order for each store on the worksheet with the specified items and quantities. Users from each of the stores will then be able to review and commit the POs in the system.

Transfer Worksheet

The Transfer Worksheet is useful for any site that regularly needs to Transfer items from a Warehouse to multiple Stores from Requests. This can also be used in conjunction with Production Transfer Items to deduct prepped good ingredients from the producing store to the new location as an inventory item with an on hand for consumption.

To create a new Transfer Worksheet from the Transfer Worksheet List

Select the Add button.
Follow the steps in the Wizard:

select a Warehouse store (this will act as the From Store in the transfer),
decide if you’d like to exclude items where the on hand in the Warehouse store is zero or less, and
decide if you want to save your selections as a template for quicker setup in future.

Then either select from Requests or skip that step and add items via the Add Items and Add Items From buttons in the Transfer Worksheet Editor.

Note that these worksheets can also be created from the Requests list. In that case, all items will be included by default, whether they have an on hand in the selected Warehouse store or not.

Next, in the Transfer Worksheet editor, you can use the Fill Requests button to transfer the requested quantities. You can also set a multiplier on individual lines or across the entire Worksheet to increase the quantity to issue.

If the current on hands in the Transfer Stores and/or the quantities requested cause the quantity to issue to be a non-whole number, use the Rounding Method dropdown to round the quantity as needed.

Once you’ve made any necessary changes, Commit your worksheet and Transfer documents will be created per store.

The setting in Options / Global will determine whether the Transfers will auto-Issue when the worksheet is committed. Talk to your Implementation or Support Guide for assistance in determining the best configuration for your site.

Production Worksheet

We also have a new Production Worksheet, geared towards F&B organizations to aid with assigning the production of requested items to different groups.

Purchasing

The Purchasing section of Yellow Dog Inventory enables users to handle every aspect of the “Purchasing Flow.”

Each purchasing screen has filters at the top. The main filters are for Store, Vendor, Status, Committed Date Ranges and the Search feature.

To search all purchasing documents that contain a single item simply use the check box to “Include Items in Search”. Searchable fields include an item’s description, SKU, vendor SKU and style no.

Users can click on the Green Check Mark to select all statuses or click on the Red X to deselect all and choose the type of status(es) they want to view.

Purchasing Documents

The document types you use will depend on how you purchase items for your location. All of the Purchasing components work similarly with a few variations. Because the functionality of these components is similar, the following section will give a basic rundown of how to navigate through them before adding section specific details and instructions.

Creating a New Document

Navigate to the section based on the document you would like to create.
Hit Create New… (The example below uses the Request page).

Add Items

You have several options for adding items to your document.

The most common option is “Add Line Items”. Clicking on this brings up the Item Lookup. From this screen, you can use the top filters and the Select column to add items.

You can also add items though the “Add Items From…” button. This brings up a list of options that will let you “import” items automatically.

Flags allow you to bring in items that are flagged together. For example, if you need to reorder almost everything in your Produce Walk-In, it may be easier to add the entire flag, and remove what you don’t need to order, than it would be to add items one by one.
Par Levels are great for reordering product. See the Stores tab section for more information on setting par levels and reorder points. Once you select this, you will have the option to choose items at or below the reorder point. It will then bring up those items and you can choose to add all or pick and choose which items to add.

Adding items based on Sales, Transfers and Adjustments will replenish any product that has left the store during the time period you specify.
Add Items based on Sales replenishes product based only on Sales. Again, just choose the date ranges you want to use. Most clients who use this feature choose the last time they ordered as the early date.
Count Sheets allow you to add items from selected count sheets.

GoFetch is the handheld scanner software that pre-dates ydiMobile. All clients on Yellow Dog Inventory version 345 or later will be given ydiMobile. If you have questions about GoFetch, contact your implementation guide or the Support department.
Add by Physical Inventory can be used by locations that don’t have specific sales and aren’t willing or able to set par levels. For example, if a restaurant does a flat price for a liquor package (and thus can’t deduct specific drinks), they can do a physical at the end of the night to reorder.
Sessions are created using Yellow Dog handheld software, mobile app, or manually in the client itself. For more information on ydiMobile, please see the section on Sessions.
Yellow Dog Inventory can also import Excel, CSV or text files. To do this, there must be something Yellow Dog Inventory can match to, whether it’s the Yellow Dog SKU, Vendor SKU or the UPC in Yellow Dog. Clients without Yellow Dog mobile software can sometimes use this function to import counts from their existing scanner.
The next option is through Item Lists. While you can filter “Add Items” by vendor, a lot of clients use item lists to create order guides for vendors from which they regularly buy only a small percentage of the items the vendor offers.
In some instances you will have the option of bringing in items that have been REQUESTED but not yet ORDERED this is when the system recognizes requested items that have not been added to a purchase order as of yet.

Other Functions & Features

Remove Line Item – removes the selected item.
Edit Item – opens the Item Editor for the selected item.
Replace Item – removes the selected item and opens the Item Lookup screen. The new item keeps the previous cost, notes and On Hand.
Split Line – this can be used for items that you pay two different costs for (promos such as buy 11 bottles of vodka at full price and get the 12th free) or product you can purchase and return in the same invoice, such as keg deposits.
Renumber Lines – allows you to change the order of the items on the document. Sort the document how you want by clicking on the top of the columns, then use Renumber Lines to change the “Line Number” to the correct order.
Round Quantities – This button will allow you to round all quantities in a purchasing document to your choice of partial or whole number. It is especially useful when using Par/Reorder points that might calculate your quantities as partial cases.
No Related Documents/Open Related Documents – these allow you to quickly see and explore documents related to the one you’re working in, e.g. the PO that became the invoice you’re bringing in, or the transfer of the partially received product. “No Related Docs” only changes to “Open Related” once there are related documents to open.
Receipt Detail Report – a new feature that will allow you to run a receipt detail report on purchasing documents to easily determine what has or hasn’t been received it.
PO-Rec-Inv Report – another new feature that will allow you to immediately run a report detailing the purchasing flow from PO to Receipt to Invoice.

Document Information

The top of each document type has general, as well as document specific, fields that allow you to add important information.

The general fields are:

Reference – Frequently used for internal PO numbers, vendor invoice numbers, etc.
Description – Can be used for more detailed information (event name for a catering order, holiday weekend stock up, etc.).
Instructions – These can be for the vendor or the receiver (for example, “6 empty kegs to be picked up, double check bottle count”).
Notes – This field is useful for jotting down even more detailed information than the Description or Instructions fields.

Other Purchasing Notes

As with any other screen in Yellow Dog, the fields that are gold can be typed in directly. This is helpful for changing vendor and retail prices as well as descriptions.
The Notes field on each line can be used to check off the item as you go through an invoice or packing slip, inform the requester why they’re not getting a full count they asked for, etc.
If you have issues with vendors charging to a fraction of a cent for a single item, use the Extended Vendor Price (available under the “choose columns” blue hyperlink) to enter in the total cost and the system will round. While Yellow Dog Inventory only shows two decimal places by default, it does calculations based on the true number.

Note: To change the default decimal place calculations, you’ll need to change the Windows Regional settings for currency and numbers.

If you would like to leave the document open and come back to it later to add additional items, just select Save and Close. Keep in mind that the document will not be convertible, nor will On Order or On Hand counts change, until it is committed.
If there is an order you repeat on a regular basis, use “Create New (Doc) Based on…” to copy it, much like you would an item.
You can attach both Files and Links to a purchasing document by clicking on the corresponding button at the bottom of the editor. This allows for keeping any scanned copies or URLs of orders tied to the purchasing document in Yellow Dog.

Inventory Requests

Inventory Requests are most commonly utilized by users that do not have permission to create Purchase Orders. However, this is not always the case and they can be used by anyone to suggest or request items to be purchased. Most large operations with purchasing departments use Requests to start the transfer of products to outlets. Requests are store, but not vendor, specific.

Navigate to Inventory Requests in the Purchasing section and click Create New Request.
If you have access to more than one store, you will need to select the appropriate store.
If necessary, fill out the “Need By” date.

Next, add items to your Request.
Once you have selected your Request items, you can adjust the quantity, add notes, add an item reference, or adjust the cost of the item.
When all edits are complete, click Commit Inventory Request to complete the request process.

Some Third Party Catering integrations will populate orders as Requests in Yellow Dog. Users have the ability to mark these Orders as “Completed” or “Canceled” when fulfilled or canceled.

If using Transfer or Production worksheets, you can start either worksheet from the Request screen by selecting all or any requests you’d like to use.

Purchase Orders

Purchase Orders are used when placing orders for stock that you need from a particular vendor. You might send this directly to your vendor or to your purchasing department.

If creating a Purchase Order based on an Inventory Request that was generated,

Go to the Inventory Requests screen.
Highlight the committed Request and click Convert to Purchase Order.

Note: You can also use the Ctrl+click function to highlight multiple requests to turn them into a single PO. Each vendor will have its own PO, regardless of Request contents.

Adjust any quantities as needed or add additional items.
Click Commit Purchase Order when finished.

If you want to create a new Purchase Order that is not based on an existing Request:

Navigate to Purchase Orders, click Create New Purchase Order and follow the on-screen instructions.
Add information to the top section of the Purchase Order.
You will notice that you can add a Start Ship Date and a Cancel Ship Date. This will come in handy if you need to receive items by a certain day and cancel the order if not shipped by the date marked as Cancel Ship Date.
When finished, click Commit Purchase Order to finish or Save and Close to leave the Purchase Order uncommitted for additional edits.

The menu on the right side of the Purchase Order editor allows you to perform a variety of customizations:

Most of the buttons are the same as the Inventory Request module.
Pre-Allocate to Stores – If the item is available in more than one store, you can use this to pre-allocate quantities to be automatically transferred into chosen stores when received into the system.
Round Quantities – If using Par/Reorder point to populate your Purchase Order, this button will help round any quantities that do not fall in line with an ordering amount. There are a variety of rounding options available.

Emailing Purchase Orders to Vendors

You can now email purchase orders directly to your vendors. This feature can be utilized by navigating to the Print screen of any purchase order. Keep in mind, the template in the preview will be what is sent to the vendor. You’ll want to make any formatting changes or template selections prior to following the outlined steps below.

To begin, click the Email to Vendor button in the print preview screen.
Yellow Dog will populate a pdf name for your document. You can change this if you’d like. Keep in mind, the file name must have .pdf at the end.
A Send To email address will be auto-populated if you have email addresses set up in the vendor’s contacts. If not, you can search all email addresses in your system by clicking on the ellipses, or you can type in the Send To information manually.
If your user has an associated email address, this information will populate in the CC field. Just like the Send To you can click on the ellipses to search all email addresses in the database or type in who should be CC’d on this email.
Lastly, you have the option of entering a message that will be sent in the body of the email.
When ready, select OK to send the email.

To view the email history of a purchase order, open the purchase order editor for that document and select the Email History button. Here you can see when it was sent, who was it sent to, who was copied, any associated message and the status of the email.

Copying a Purchase Order

You may have previously encountered the Create Based On…option in several places throughout the system already. For Purchase Orders, we’ve also enhanced this ability to allow users to change the store the Purchase Order is for. This allows you to copy purchase orders from one location to another with minimal effort.

Purchase Orders Approvals

Purchase Order Approvals are used when approval is required to place orders, i.e. purchasing amount restrictions. You can use the threshold method, which only requires one approver, or you can create Hierarchical Approvals which uses multiple approvers.

Using either method will require you to select the approval method under Global Options and follow the specific setup steps for each options’ setup.

Setting up PO Approvals

Threshold PO Approval

This method allows you to use up to four different approval “Ranks” based on monetary value to determine whose approval is required. You can also set up the ability to allow purchase orders to increase by a certain amount once the approval has been given, bypassing the need to go through the approval process again.

Start by selecting the first store you want to set up using the drop-down menu.
Next, use the check box for Rank 1 Approvals.
Set up the Purchase Order threshold amounts.
Determine if you need additional ranks and repeat the above two steps.
Once finished, you will need to navigate to Employee Setup to determine who can request PO Approval and who can grant PO Approval.

Note: Users cannot approve a purchase order that they requested approval for.

Hierarchical PO Approval

Hierarchical PO Approvals use an emailed, ranked system in lieu of a monetary threshold. This feature uses the Yellow Dog API to send emails to required people, and they can accept or reject the PO through a web portal. Email addresses are set in the Employees section in Yellow Dog, so everyone who will be approving POs must have an employee login set up, even if they do not use Yellow Dog. The employee requesting approval will receive notifications upon approval or rejection, so they will need to have their email address assigned to their user as well.

Start by setting the Purchase Order Approval Method to Hierarchy in System Setup/Options/Global.
Build Employee Roles. This will determine who gets emails, and in which order they receive them.
Assign the Employees to their roles.

Note: Employees can have different roles in different stores, if needed.

Build Store Approval Types.

Different store types can have different hierarchies of approval.
A backup notification role can be set here as well, for redundancy.

Set the Stores to their appropriate Approval Types.
Configure the PO Approval Setup for each store type. This is where the roles are sequenced for approvals, per Store Approval Type.

Creating and Approving a PO

Follow the steps above to create a purchase order. Committing will not be an option if Approval is required. Instead, the Request PO Approval button will be available. Select Request Approval, then Save & Close the PO.

Once a Purchase Order has been approved by everyone that is required, you will be able to reopen and Commit the PO.

To Approve a PO Using Threshold

When someone with Approval access logs in, Yellow Dog will open to the Purchase Order Approvals list. You can always access this list in the Purchasing module as well.

From the Purchase Order Approvals list, you can either select the PO and click Approve or Reject, or you can open the PO and approve or reject it from there.

If you choose to reject the PO, the system will prompt you to indicate a reason for rejection.

Once it is saved and closed, the PO will disappear from the Approval list, but it will still be open in the Purchase Order list.

If you choose to approve the PO, it will ask you to Commit the PO.

Once committed, the PO will then appear as Ordered in the Purchase Order screen.

To Approve a PO Using Hierarchy

When a PO has been requested for approval, an email will be sent to any users assigned to the first approval tier.

Following the link in the email, the approver will go to a web page to review, then approve or reject the request.

Note that although multiple users may be assigned to the same tier, a single PO can only be approved or rejected once per tier.

Once the Purchase Order has been approved by one person in the first tier, an email is sent to all users assigned to the second tier, and so on until either the PO Approval Request has been rejected at any point, or it has been fully approved by someone in each tier as configured for that particular store.

When the Purchase Order Approval request has been either rejected or fully approved, the original requester will receive an email notification.

The current approval status can also be viewed from the Approvals button in the Purchase Order editor.

The PO can now be committed.

Receipts

When items arrive at your location, you may need to create a Receipt to receive them into the system. Receipts are typically used for product that is shipped with a packing slip, but has an invoice that arrives separately. If you have an invoice for the product on delivery, depending on your internal procedures, you may be able to skip Receipts and go straight to an Invoice.

Once a Receipt is committed, the received item quantities will be added to the previous on-hand totals.

Convert a Purchase Order into a Receipt from the Purchase Order screen or create a new Receipt from the Receipts section. Again, use the Ctrl+click function to convert multiple documents at once.

From the new/converted Receipt you can add items that may have come in that weren’t on the PO, remove items that didn’t come in, adjust any quantities you didn’t receive, etc.
After all edits are made, click Commit Receipt to finish the Receipt process.

Keep in mind: once you commit the receipt, the items will be added to your current on-hand counts.

If items have been set to print labels when receiving, you will be prompted to print labels for the quantity of items you have received.
If you have pre-allocated items to be transferred to other stores when received, you will be prompted to transfer the items. If you select “Yes, Transfer Now”, the Inventory Transfer screen will open. Click Issue Inventory Transfer.

If you have access to the store receiving the transfer, you will then be prompted to accept the Inventory Transfer.

Invoice Records

Invoices are usually received after or accompanying your products’ delivery. Invoices will contain your freight, handling, discounts, etc.

Convert a Receipt or Purchase Order into an Invoice from the Receipt or Purchase Order screen or create a new Invoice from the Invoices section.

If creating new, you’ll need to bring in the line items to your invoice and adjust the quantities you received. You may also need to adjust the vendor price.
When changing a price, a YD wizard will populate, asking if the vendor price change should be a permanent change or only done for this invoice. In most instances, you will likely use the Permanent Change option. You can also choose an option that will be applied to the remainder of all price changes in the invoice you are working on to avoid having to select during each line item’s price change.

Add your expense charges. We can add as many expenses for invoices as you need. This example has Credits and Discounts, but we can also add Tax. Freight and Other are the defaults.
All expense fields will also support math if needed. You can change these expense fields or add more by navigating to System Setup / Accounts / Invoice Expense Accounts.
You can also distribute the expense charges to the cost of the items either by Item Cost or Item Quantity, and either by All Items or by Departments, or you can choose to keep them as a separate expense.
When all edits are complete, enter the Total amount into the Invoice Amount field to activate the Commit Invoice Record button.
If Yellow Dog Inventory rounding is causing issues with your invoice total, use one of your expense fields to make the correction. Or you can update your Windows Regional settings to show more decimal places.
You also have the option of setting the Commit Date prior to committing your invoice. This is useful if you need to back date when the product was received. Keep in mind, this commit date will respect the closeout date setup for the store and database and will not allow anything to adjust prior to that date.

Inventory Transfers

If you have two or more stores in Yellow Dog Inventory, you will be able to transfer stock from one store to another.

Important: In order for items to be transferred from Store A to Store B, they must be Available in both stores.

Convert an Invoice, Receipt or Request into a Transfer or create a new Transfer from the Transfers section.
Choose the store to transfer items FROM and click Select in the bottom right corner.
Choose the store to transfer items TO and click Select in the bottom right corner.
Select the items you wish to transfer.
Adjust quantities as necessary, and then click Issue Inventory Transfer.
If you have access to the store receiving the transfer, you will then be prompted to accept the Inventory Transfer.
By default, the items leave the FROM store and are in “limbo” until accepted in the TO store, appearing in neither stores’ on hands. Please let your implementation guide know if you would prefer inventory to stay in the FROM store until its accepted.

Negative on Hand Transfers

There is also a permission that when enabled will prohibit transfers to be made from items that will result in a zero or negative on hand in the From Store. If a transfer between two stores is created in the system, only items with a positive on hand in the FROM store will be available to transfer.

If an item without a positive on hand is added to a transfer, a pop up window will appear alerting the user that the item has failed to be added due to the amount on hand in the FROM store. The item will not pull into the Transfer editor at all. It will remain unable to be added until more is received in the FROM store.

Transfer Block

Users may want to block certain sizes of items from being transferrable. This can be done by navigating to the Other Details tab of the size of the item you want blocked.

By checking the box to block the item, it will not appear in the list of transferrable goods even if both stores have access to the product.

Shortage

When Accepting Transfers, the Accepted quantity can now be set lower than the Issued quantity to account for Shortage.

This is useful for cases in which product was damaged during the transfer.

Any shortage quantities will still be reduced in the FROM store and the cost adjustment will be set to the new Shortage account in Inventory Accounts for the FROM store.

Note: For instances in which product wasn’t sent at all, best practice is to accept the transfer as is and perform a reverse transfer for any goods that should not be in your inventory.

Reverse Transfers

Reverse Transfers allow quick creation of Transfers that will contain the same items as another transfer but need the To and From stores swapped. This is useful when returning product that was borrowed or to adjust inventory for product that was never received in the initial transfer.

Simply find the transfer you want to create the reversal for and click the Create new Reverse Transfer… button.
Notice that the To and From stores have been swapped.
You can keep the copied quantities or make any changes needed. You can also include additional items that need to be transferred.
Once you’ve completed any edits, Issue the transfer.

Reports

For detailed information on each report, please see the separate manual covering Reports.

There are two main report features in Yellow Dog Inventory: Standard Reports and Saved Reports.

Standard Reports

Standard Reports are reports that are included with Yellow Dog Inventory. There are over 150 common reports as well as less common ones based on frequent customer requests. If you would like your report list to the left of the filters instead of on top, right click in the Standard Reports screen and choose “Reports on Left”.

To generate a report, select the report you wish to run. Use the Report Tags selector above the report list or the search field below it to assist in finding specific reports.

Most reports can be filtered by timeframe, store, level and vendor. Other reports give you the option to select specific SKUs and include items with no activity or count.

After you have set the filters, click the Generate button.

From here, your report is further customizable by clicking the blue “change columns, sorting and grouping” hyperlink in the top right corner. You can choose up to three columns to sort by, as well as add or remove the columns. Once you have the columns you want, you can click and drag to reorder them.

You can print your report, or you can choose Export… to send it to Outlook, a CSV file, Excel, or PDF. You can also save your customized report template and it will then appear in your Saved Reports.

Saved Reports

Reports you commonly refer to can be added to your Saved Reports for ease of access. Simply run the report you need, customize it as you want and click “Save Report Template” in the lower right corner. Once it is saved, you can Execute, Rename or Remove the saved reports.

For saving reports, the date range of that report *must* be generic, e.g. Last 7 Days, Last Month, Yesterday, etc. If you choose specific date ranges, i.e. 11/01/15 to 11/30/15, you will constantly be running that date range.

Once you have Saved Reports set up, you will be able to set up “Send Saved Reports”. This program will email you the reports you’ve saved to yourself or others on a schedule. Please contact your Implementation Guide for more information on how to set this up.

System Setup

Accounts

From here you can set accounts for Manual Adjustments, Inventory, Invoice Expense, Return to Vendor and Global.

Autonumber

This feature is configured during implementation, where your guide will set up SKU lengths and customize any other number requested such as Invoice, etc. In the example below, the Yellow Dog SKU is set to generate a 10-digit number, with each of the fields checked corresponding to values Yellow Dog will use to create it.

Interfaces

Interfaces are how Yellow Dog Inventory controls item behavior in the point of sale. Each store you have access to will have its own interface section. Also, each integration you have will have its own columns, e.g. accounting, POS, etc. If you have questions about your interfaces, please contact Support or your Implementation guide.

There are three places to control interfaces: Stores, Levels, and Items.

By Store

This section is available under the System Setup module. Setting interfaces here will set them for every item in the store. Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, this is a bad idea.

By Level

Under Common Setup, each Level has an interface tab. From here, you can control the interfaces for all of the items in that particular level. We will attempt to set your system up this way whenever possible.

By Item

In the Item Editor, the last tab is the Interfaces tab. Setting interfaces here will only affect that item. This is the best place to change settings as they are easy to change back.

Keep in mind that interfaces are overwritten by those below them in the hierarchy. Interfaces set by level will overwrite any set by store and those set by individual item will take precedence over any store or level interface.

Accounting / Other Interfaces

Some interfaces do not interact with your POS but instead dictate very specific attributes of your inventory items. These behaviors can be found under the Accounting / Other section of interfaces. Typically, these would be set at the Level or Item.

Inventory Account – This is used with account integrations to tag a specific Inventory account to the product. Mostly this is set by the level and may also be used in conjunction with printing Accounting information on invoices if no Accounting integration exists.

Auto Zero Account – The Auto-Zero feature allows enhanced control of inventory asset management. This setting is used when you don’t want the item to carry an on hand, but you want to track they item’s cost activity.

When this interface is set to an item, the item will behave as normal but the on hand will be automatically reset to zero via a manual adjustment when Maintenance runs.
By setting the account using the drop down you will effectively configure the item to auto-zero. This account will be what is used during the manual adjustment.
To set up additional accounts go to System Setup \ Accounts \ Manual Adjustment.

COGS – This drop down is used to tie a Cost of Goods account to an inventory item for Cost of Good reporting.
Calculate Quantity by Retail – This is used for weighted scale integrations. Using the retail amount to determine how much of an item was sold. This is mainly set up by the item.
Auto Transfer From and Reassign Sales – These are typically Store options that are used for specific store setups and are usually set up during the Implementation process. To learn more, reach out to your Support or Implementation Guide.

Options

This tab allows for customization of the system, from item-specific settings, to system-wide settings such as font and calculated cost method.

Global

All options set up here affect every store in the database. You can always reach out to your Support or Implementation Guide to help determine the best setup for your business.

System Closeout Date

You can define a global closeout date that will prohibit any back-dating of manual adjustments, manual sales, purchasing documents and physicals from going past this date. It should be moved forward as you close out the month or quarter with accounting.

Note that Closeout Date can also be set as a relative date per store; when Closeout Date is set here as well as in the Store, the most recent date between the two will be honored.

Cost Calculation Method

FIFO
LIFO
Default Vendor Price
Perpetual Weighted Average
Last Vendor Price
Weighted Average per Store
Weighted Average all Stores

Negative on Hands

This option is used to define what cost should be applied to negative on-hands when computing the costs of assets on hand:

Zero
Default Vendor
Calculated Cost

Purchasing

The following options are used to set up certain global parameters for purchasing.

Worksheets

This is where the methods are set for Replenishment Worksheets such as Document Type, Multiplier Application, and the Algorithm used to determine replenishment. You can also choose to have the resulting purchasing documents created by worksheets automatically committed.

Foreign Currency

If your business purchases product from vendors that use a different currency you will need to configure this in Yellow Dog.

In the Global Options screen you can define the Native Currency of your system as well as any accepted currencies any of your vendors may use. You will need to type the currency codes as they appear on the exchange rate for example the Canadian Dollar CAD and the Euro EUR.

If you want to always display Retail prices in your native currency, make sure to check the box.

A necessary part of our foreign currency feature is an integration with a third party to sync currency exchange rates. Contact your Implementation Guide or Support for additional information.

Once that sync has been configured and scheduled using the Other Currencies set in Options / Global, configure currency for your Vendors and start using the foreign currency features in purchasing documents.

By Vendor

If you have a vendor that uses a currency different than your native business, navigate to the Vendor and Manufacturer section, find the vendor and open the Vendor editor. In the Details tab, use the Default Currency dropdown to select from the list of other currencies defined in Options / Global.

Purchasing Editor Checkbox

Once you have configured a vendor to use foreign currency, a check box will appear below the Description section on any purchasing document for that vendor to give you the option to Display in that currency. This affects the currency values in the editor and also when printing the document.

Note: This feature is controlled by employee permission: Purchasing > All Editors > Foreign Currencies.

Recipes

Allows you to set the Default Target Cost Percent and choose whether recipes can have individual target cost percentages or duplicate ingredient items. The latter is helpful if you use an ingredient more than once while preparing a single recipe.

API Configuration

API credentials for using the Mobile Apps will be defined here. You can also elect to use Cloud Storage for images which ideal for saving high resolutions images without causing your database size to suffer.

Inventory

Options defined here are used to setup your inventory items to match the way your organization does business. Some of the setup here will match settings defined by your POS. Reach out to your Support or Implementation Guide for assistance.

Maximum SKU Length

The standard is set to 12, but any limitations with this are generally POS-related.

Maximum Short Description Length

The standard is set to 16, but just like with SKU this length is generally POS-related.

POS Item Descriptions

Controls POS Descriptions 1 & 2 length and Default naming schemes for 2-way integrations. Again, this is frequently driven by the POS that your system is integrated with.

Other Options

This section offers control of a variety of options such as when child items update relative to their parent items, whether UPCs should be considered unique, whether to show or hide the POS section of item details, which Web Cart will be used (this determines the web cart options that will be displayed), and how to sort items by default.

Another important thing to note is the new addition of auto-setting items to be inactive. Use the drop down to have maintenance make any item with zero on hand and no recent activity inactive after a certain timeframe. This is very helpful in data maintenance and keeping your item lists relevant with minimal effort on the user.

Fonts

Allows you to change the font. This is system wide and not user specific.

Labels

This allows you to change the labels used throughout the system. Examples include Supplier instead of Manufacturer, Location instead of Flag, etc.

Purchase Order Approvals

If your site uses PO Approvals, from here you can either set Rank approvals for each store to limit the amount certain employees can order or approve order of if using Threshold, or set hierarchical roles if using Hierarchy. For both options, these are set per Store.

Print Templates

Use this tab to work with print templates.

Template Editing

Yellow Dog Inventory includes a print template editor that enables users to create and modify any printable document within the system. A number of default templates are built in for users to print with or copy and customize.

To customize an existing template without worrying about making a mistake or losing the original, click the Create New Print Template Based on Selected button on the Print Templates Screen. You can also create a new template from scratch, edit an existing template, or remove an existing template.

To create a new print template, click on the Create New Print Template button. On the Editor screen, choose the appropriate type, and give it a description.

To change the size of the template, right-click on the Page section at the very top of the editing field, then select the Width and Height accordingly:

Page Headers and Footers are included automatically. If you do not want to have them, simply right-click on the appropriate section and set the size to zero.

When your size and header/footer settings are correct, you can begin adding data fields to the template. Right-click on the grid, select Insert and choose the applicable option:

Data Field: This is used to display information associated with the item, such as retail price, description, or the current SKU. Data fields are specific to Print Template Types; for instance, Recipe templates include Net Portion, Net Volume, and Net Weight fields, and Receipt templates contain data fields relevant to both the receipt and any its related PO, if any.
Expression: You can create a variety of equations that are determined at printing. These are typically used in Purchasing documents, for weighted items, etc.
Text: Any text you would like on the template can be typed here.
Picture: Pictures can be displayed on the template as well.

When you have your data field added, you can resize and move it as necessary. Right-clicking on the field will bring up additional options:

Font: Change the typeface and size, select bold, italics, or underline.
Format: Defaults based on the data field you select. However, you can change the format of any field as needed, most commonly the barcode format, but also including date and time, currency, fraction, and several other options.
Alignment: There are nine alignment orientations to choose from.
Border: You can fully or partially border your information with a thick or thin line.
White on black: Display your information as white text on a black background
Vertical Text: Rotates the text clockwise 90 degrees.

*Note: Ensure that the barcode is large and clear enough for your scanner to read. Additionally, make sure that the barcode format is correct for your POS.

Employees

Yellow Dog Inventory has an extensive list of feature permissions that can be allowed or disallowed to individual employees or groups of employees.

From here you can add, remove or modify employee information, as well as edit permissions.

Employee Access

To set an employee’s access on an individual basis, select Employees under System Setup and click on Create New Employee.

Next, enter the information required for this employee. First name, an Employee Number, and a Password are required. Middle and last names can be filled in if desired, but are completely optional. You can enter an email address, position, and any applicable notes in the Additional Information tab. Make sure to choose one or more stores that this employee has access to; otherwise, he or she will not be able to access anything at all, regardless of what Access Options are selected.

Tip: If a numbering system is already used throughout your company, it can be useful to use the same number as the Employee Number in Yellow Dog Inventory as well.

Employee Permission

To set permissions for Yellow Dog Inventory features, you can use the Manage Access Using Employee Groups checkbox (if Employee Groups have been created). Please note that more than one Employee Group needs to exist in order to use this function. You may also select more than one group per employee.

If the employee will not belong to a group, you will need to select options manually in the Access Options list. There is a default configuration in Yellow Dog Inventory, and each new employee will have default access until it is changes. You can use the All Off button to the right if an employee will only have a few options, you can re-set access to the Default configuration, or use the Clipboard to copy an employee’s access options. This can be useful if you want to create a group based on those options.

Most access options have several levels of access:

Visible: The employee can see the selected features. If only this option is selected, they will not be able to edit the feature.
Edit: The employee can change information in the selected feature.
Edit After Committed: The employee can edit the selected feature after the document has been committed.
Optional: If the Optional checkbox is selected, the user is not required to use this feature.

Some options have a simple Yes checkbox, which will enable them.

To see a full list of options, review the Employee Access Manual.

Employee Groups

Employee Groups allow a number of employees to be given the same level of access to the same stores without having to assign each employee’s access options manually. Multiple groups can be assigned to single employees.

Keep in mind that Employee Groups are store specific: you cannot use the same employee group to manage two different stores’ supervisors unless you want them to have access to each other’s stores. Use the Clipboard feature inside the Employee Editor tab to copy the same settings without affecting Store accessibility.

To create a new group, go to Employee Groups under System Setup and click on Create New Employee Group. Give your group a name, select which store(s) it will apply to, and then select the appropriate options. See above for details on the available options.

Employee Options

Yellow Dog Inventory can also use Windows accounts and Active Directory to validate employees. You will have to set up access options, but employees will use the same information to log in to Yellow Dog Inventory as they do to log in to Windows or Active Directory.

To enable these options, go to Employee Options under System Setup, then choose the appropriate box:

Make sure to include your Windows Domain so that employees will be able to log in. If you have any questions about your Windows Domain, please contact your IT Department.

Employee Roles

This is used to set up Hierarchical PO approvals. Roles need to be created here and then assigned per store. These roles are used to determine who should receive PO approval notifications.

Stores

This section allows you to see Store setup information such as Revenue Center IDs, Accounting IDs, Company IDs and different store behaviors.

By choosing to edit a store, you can take a closer look at the specific settings available. Some information such as the Store Key, Code and Name can only be set by Yellow Dog. Generally, access to editing store information is limited to Admin users of the system.

Here you can edit the Accounting ID information, Company ID information, Square Feet and add any store Notes.

Store Approval Types

This section is also used for Hierarchical PO Approvals. See the section on PO Approvals for more information.

Closeout Method

Use the drop down to set the specific closeout method for the store. This is a perpetual rolling date, so you don’t have to constantly reset. Keep in mind, based on the closeout date determined in the Global Options, the database will respect whichever is the most recent.

End of Day

This should be set to when the Store closes to aid in rolling up transactions for the previous day.

Store Types

You can also set a store to be a Production Transfer Store or a Warehouse.

If a store is used to produce goods (recipes) that will be transferred to other stores as finished product you will want to set the store as Production Transfer. This will make sure that ingredients are deducted from this location when transferred.

By selecting that the Store is a Warehouse, additional reporting options will be made available based on the ability to use this location to resupply others.

Recipe Ingredient Rollup

For most F&B operations the ingredient rollup should be used to help keep item history manageable. This will summarize the use of ingredients into a single transaction per day.

Store Addresses

Using this tab, you can also associate Ship and Bill to address information for the store that you can chose to have populate in various print templates.

Store Approval Types

Use this section to set up the different store approval types for Hierarchical PO approvals. Once you’ve created the types you need you will be able to assign them to stores.

Label Printing & Templates

Label Management

To print labels for a single item from the Inventory Items screen:

Highlight the item and click Print Labels on the right side of the screen. If you have access to more than one store, you will be prompted to select one from the list.
Enter the quantity of labels you wish to print and click OK.
Choose the label type and printer you wish to use.

Label Queue

The Label Queue allows you to add multiple items, adjust their printing quantity, and print all labels at one time.

Navigate to the Label Queue; if you have access to more than one store, you will need to select the store you wish to print labels for.
Add Items by either selecting them manually or by using the Add Items From… button and selecting the appropriate option.
Once you have set your print quantities, you can either Print All Items or highlight and Print Selected.

Once you have completed printing labels for your queued items, you have the option to remove the items.

Installing the Yellow Dog Inventory Client

To install Yellow Dog Inventory onto a new computer in a non-hosted environment:

We will create either a Shared folder on the network for users to access or a desktop folder containing the files to be copied over to each computer that needs Yellow Dog Inventory installed.
Typically, the folder will be copied over directly onto the C: drive.
Open Yellow Dog Inventory initially with Run as Administrator.

To install Yellow Dog Inventory onto a new computer in a hosted environment:

Contact your implementation guide or Support.

Note: The computers must be on the same network as the server unless you are using our hosted option. If you have any issues, please contact Support.

Purchasing Supplies

If you need to purchase additional equipment or labels, please visit our web store.

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