Physical Inventory

Physical Inventory 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. 

Step by Step Physical Inventory Guide 

1.       Sync Handhelds/mobile apps before use.

2.       Create your sessions and scan your inventory.

3.       Sync handhelds again after completing your counts.

a. If you will be counting over a period of days, sync your handheld before COB each day.

4.       Once counting is completed, create your physical inventory.

a.       Navigate to Physical Inventories section of Yellow Dog.

b.       Click “Create New Physical Inventory”.

 

c. Highlight the Store the Physical Inventory is for, then press “Select”.

 

d.       On the next screen, choose “Add active items for store ___, filtered by vendor or level. (recommended)”, then click “Next”.

 

e.       If you are excluding a specific level or only conducting a spot check, choose the levels you need to count in the physical inventory. If you are not excluding any level, ensure “All Levels” is selected.

f.        Choose the option to “Skip items with zero on hand”. (If you have any concern about items being omitted from your physical leave unchecked)

g.       Click “Next”.

  

h.       The review data screen will generate. Here you should click “Select All xxx Items”.

 

5.       The Import Counts From… screen will appear that allows you to add sessions to the physical inventory if you are not ready to bring them into the physical at this  time. 

a. If already counted and uploaded to Yellow Dog, select “Next” to choose your sessions. b. Otherwise, click “Skip”.

 

6.       The Description of the physical inventory may be changed, if necessary.

7.       Set your Effective Date/Time to the time the last item was counted.

 

8.       Click “Save” to save these settings and information and to continue working in the physical inventory.

 

9.       Any handheld/mobile app sessions can now be brought into the physical inventory. 

a.        Click “Import Counts From…”.

 

 

b.        Select “Add items from a Session”, then click “Next”.

 

c.         Select your session(s), click “Next”.

 

d.        Review the data.

i. If there are problem items, select the box “Show only problem items”.

e.       Address these problem items or remove them by clicking the “Remove Problem Items”.

f.        Once there are no longer any problem items, you will be able to click “Select All xxx Items”. 

 

g.       The session(s) is/are now in the physical inventory, and will populate their own columns labeled as the name of the session. 

h.       Click “Save” to save your added sessions and continue working in the physical.

 

 

10.   Add any manual counts to the items by entering them into the “On hand Counted” column.

 

a.       Or you can click the “Add Column” button to put the counts in a defined column.

11.   Click “Save” to save your manual count entries and continue working in the physical. 

12.   Review variances.

a.       Click the box “Show only items with variances” OR click “Reports” and select “Resulting on hand by item”.

  

 b. Review these items. 

i.         It may be helpful to Sort these items by Variance Qty or Variance Cost.

c.       Use the Print Worksheet option if you wish to print this information. It is helpful to have this worksheet to walk around the store to verify your counts. This worksheet should not be used as a report.

 

d.       To investigate an item’s variance, run an Item History report to track the item’s activity.

 

e.       If an item needs a modification to a count in the physical inventory, make those adjustments to the column that contains the count (on hand counted, handheld session, or manually added column).

f.        Click “Save” to save any modifications and to continue working in the physical.

 

13.   Once all of the above steps have been completed, the Physical Inventory can be committed.   a. Click “Commit Physical Inventory”.

 

b. A pop-up will appear confirming that you wish to commit the Physical Inventory. There will be two options to choose from. Choosing “Commit Physical and Recalculate Costs” will generate a more accurate item cost on the reports vs waiting for ydimaintenance to run overnight. Please note, this process will make Yellow Dog run slower for other users as the system will run through the items on the physical inventory and recalculate their cost.

 

14.   Generate your Physical Inventory reports.

a.       Standard Reports > Physical Inventories > Detailed (Select by Physical Inventory) OR Standard Reports > Physical Inventories > Summary by Department – Committed (Select by Physical Inventory).

b.       Choose the Physical Inventory, then click “Generate”.

c.       Once generated, click the hyperlink “Change columns, sorting and grouping”.

d.       Add the New On Hand and New On Hand cost columns to the report.

15.   Verify Inventory by generating the Inventory On Hand by Item report for each store.

a.       Standard Reports > Inventory > On Hand > By Item.

b.       Select the store.

c.       Click the box to “Exclude inactive items”.

d.       If you did not count a specific level, exclude those items from the report by using the level filter. e. Click “Generate”.

 

 Performing a Physical Inventory with a Data Collector (YDIMobile) 

 

1.       Follow the steps in the beginning of the manual to create a new physical inventory.

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

3.       The device should be powered on and showing the Yellow Dog Inventory icon on the screen.

4.       If this is your first time using SyncYDIwithHandHeld.exe, follow the directions starting on page five of the ydiMobile Guide. After it has been configured, move on to Step 3. 

a. 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.  

5.       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 on your C: drive in the Yellow Dog Inventory folder, sometimes inside the Program Files or Program Files (x86) folder.

6.       Disconnect the device from the computer and navigate to the YDIMobile icon on the device and double-click it to open.

 

7.       Once the program opens, select your employee. Some versions do not require this step, so if you are not prompted, skip this step.

8.       Click “Count Inventory Items”.

 

9.       From the Select Session screen, click “Create New Session” and enter a session name. 

a.       Choose something that is both unique for this inventory and for the handheld, if there are multiple handhelds being used. This will ensure that when the sessions are uploaded to Yellow Dog, they will not be overwritten by a same named file. A few examples: NatalieGiftShopSept15, DaveGiftShopSept15, NatalieNewsstandSept15.

 

10.   If you have access to multiple stores, select the store you are counting.  

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

12.   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 if the device has a keypad, located below the screen, use that to enter in your counts. 

13.   Once completed, click “Submit” and move on to the next item.  

14.   Occasionally, an item with an unrecognized UPC will be scanned. You can either:

a.       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*.  

b.       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 when adding a UPC to an existing item: select “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. 

16.  Once your count is complete, click “Close” and then “Exit”.

17.  The counts can be brought into Yellow Dog in two ways. Either using the SyncYdiWithHandheld.exe or from the physical itself. For the latter, open your Physical Inventory in Yellow Dog Inventory on the computer and click “Import Counts From…” 

18.  Select “Add counts from a session”, then click “Next”.

19.  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.

20.  Select the sessions you would like to import and click “OK”. 

NOTE: If any problem items exist in the import, it 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 should be in the system, selecting it and clicking “Edit Item” will prompt you to fix it, either by undeleting it or making it active in the store.  

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

 

 

Multiple Sessions for the same Physical Inventory 

In Yellow Dog, you can have multiple sessions from one or multiple data collectors. When importing these sessions, each handheld will create a new column with the session name at the top. This is useful when dealing with large amounts of inventory, for control and count purposes. The sessions remain saved in Yellow Dog and on the handheld until removed. 

 

Single Scanner 

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

 

Multiple Scanners 

It can be helpful to name sessions based on date, store, and employee name. For example, Bethany, Mary & Curt are each using a scanner to count both the Lobby Gift Shop and the Casino Store. Recommended session names would be: 

Jan17Casino Bethany                       Jan17Casino Mary                                 Jan17Casino Curt 

Jan17Lobby Bethany                        Jan17Lobby Mary                                  Jan17Lobby Curt                              

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. 

 

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 is 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”. 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 to turn in their numbers to the accounting/finance department. 

IMPORTANT: Once you commit the physical inventory, the counts that you entered into the “On Hand Counted” or session column(s) will now become your current on-hand number.