Yellow Dog Glossary

General Terminology

·         Database – is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system

·         Server - a computer program or device that provides a service to another computer program and its user, also known as the client. The Yellow Dog server will be where all the inventory data is stored and could be considered the backbone of the inventory system. This server can be either hosted by Yellow Dog or it can be a local server.

o   Local Server: A local server is a server that is supplied by the client and kept on site. The local server typically operates on the user's internal network, and the Yellow Dog Inventory Client must be run from a computer that is also on that network.

o   Hosted Server: In this case the server is hosted off property in a cloud data center. The Yellow Dog Inventory Client will access this server over the internet allowing users to use Yellow Dog wherever there is an internet connection.

o   Point of Sale Server: The POS Server is the server that hosts the database for the Point-of-Sale system.

·         Yellow Dog Client/ Client – Refers to the copy of the program installed on an end users’ computer. The client accesses the Yellow Dog Server and allows the user to interact with the database.

·         UI (User Interface) – Is anywhere users interact with the software.

·         SQL (Structured Query Language): a language used to view or change data in databases.

·         API (Application Program Interface): A method of allowing 2 dissimilar systems to communicate with each other, the API provides a common language for data conversion. *The Yellow Dog API requires internet access*

Yellow Dog Terminology

Item Management:

·         SKU: Are generated automatically and assigned to every item that is created. The method the system uses to generate these numbers can be customized to be based on codes assigned to departments, and vendors as needed and is assigned during implementation.

·         UPC: The number associated with the barcode that is on an item. The UPC includes all digits beneath the barcode including any digits off to the right or left and is frequently attached by the manufacturer. 

·         Matrices: A group of similar retail items that were created as a set and can have the vendor and retail prices managed as a set, or as individual items. An example might be seasonal t-shirts that come in a full array of sizes and colors.

·         Item List: Item lists can be used to pull groups of items into various areas of the software such as manual adjustments or purchasing documents.

·         Label Queue - Items can be added to the label queue so that labels can be printed all at once.

·         Scheduled Retail – Will allow users to schedule updates to retail prices for a future time. This feature was designed with permanent price changes in mind.

·         Manual Sales – Will allow users to import sales that occurred outside of the point of sale that should be tracked in Yellow Dog. Examples might include a sidewalk sale or pop-up store.

·         Level Structure: The set of Departments, Categories, and Subcategories that items are assigned to in Yellow Dog Inventory. These are used for reporting, accounting, and item management throughout the Yellow Dog system.

·         Dimensions:  Dimensions are labels that are used as identifiers for groups of items. Yellow Dog supports unlimited dimensions, with the first always being used to indicate size. Other dimensions may be used to show information such as color, wine varietal, book editions, or vintages.

·         Flags: Flags are used to identify the storage location for groups of items. For example, you may apply a Flag called Walk-In Cooler to all the items that you store in your Walk-In. These flags can be used for sorting items in Physical Inventory counts among other things.

·         Vendor:  The company where items are purchased from. At least one vendor must be assigned to every item that is created in Yellow Dog. For items that are produced in house the vendor assigned might be In-House, or the name of the organization

·         Attributes:  Are user generated for the purpose of assigning additional traits to items, recipes, or vendors. Attributes can be set up to be text, numbers, multi-select drop down, or a true/false check box.

·         Parent: The primary unit for an item. The parent offers more reporting options than the child, and always hold the on-hand quantity.

·         Child: An additional unit that is related to the Parent item via a child count. The child count is the total number of Child items that it takes to make one Parent Item. If the Parent/Child setup that we are working with is a Case/Bottle of water. The Parent may be the Case, the Child may be the Bottle, and the child count would be 24. Child items could be needed for additional accommodate additional purchasing sizes, recipe sizes, or sizes that may needed for taking inventory.

·         Manual Adjustments:  The ability to adjust the on hand on Yellow Dog outside of the automatic processes. Manual Adjustments are ideal for waste, damages, shrinkage, production, etc.

Physical Inventories

·         Physical Inventory: The feature that allows users to true up the numbers that are in Yellow Dog compared what they have physically in their store. Yellow Dog recommends doing physicals regularly to ensure on hands and costs remain accurate.

·         Count Sheets: Are templates that can be created for the purposes of counting inventory every month. These can be setup to mirror the layout of a physical location. Users can add levels, and/or flags to count sheets, ensuring any new items that are added to the level or flag will included in the count sheet at the time of the next physical.

·         Sessions: Are lists of items that have been counted. They are most frequently used in Physical inventories, but can also be pulled into manual adjustments, purchasing documents, or be used to create item lists.

·         Commit: Is the act of submitting or finalizing. This used not only in Physical Inventories but purchasing documents also. Once a Physical is committed users with the appropriate permission have 7 days to uncommit in the event that there is a gross error.

·         Effective Date & Time: Is the date and time that counts collected will be applied to the system as new on hands. Ideally, this would also represent the time that users completed collecting their counts.

Recipe Management

·         Recipes - A recipe is a group of items that are combined to be sold as a single item. There is only way to create a recipe in Yellow Dog, but there are several behaviors that can be assigned to recipes that will determine how they behave in various areas of the software.

o   Retail Kit: A recipes that might be used in a retail setting. Examples would be gift baskets or bundled products.

o   Batch Recipe:  Are 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. Any counts to Batch Recipe items will adjust the ingredients on hands. This is the most common recipe type used.

o   Production Recipe: Are 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 into physical inventories with them.

o   Production Transfer Recipe:  This 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

o   Purchasing Kit: Allows users to receive by the recipe and sell by the ingredient. While more frequently used in retail operations, a good example of this would be a mixer assortment purchased together. One “recipe” might consist of the “ingredient items”: 6 bottles of strawberry daiquiri mix and 6 bottles of pina colada mix. These recipes only work if the item count is consistent for each order.

·         POS Item Map:  One of two areas of the software where recipes that are created can be linked to the corresponding buttons in the point of sale.

·         Recipe Types:  Are user generated for the purpose of filtering and organizing recipes

System Management 

·         POS Sync: The program that Yellow Dog Inventory uses to push item data into your Point-of-Sale system (for retail customers, and generally not the case or F&B customers) while pulling sales data from the POS into Yellow Dog Inventory's database.

·         Interface Settings: This will be where users can assign the configuration settings that dictate how an item interacts with the point of sale i.e., if the item should push to the point of sale, what reporting groups that item should appear in the POS, or what tax is assigned to the item. Additionally, the interface settings are where Inventory and COGS accounts are assigned to items.

·         Calculated Cost: Yellow Dog calculates item costs in a few different ways depending on the needs of the user. Calculated Cost reflects the item cost as determined via the method that has been chosen by the user. It is important to understand that unless cost is being calculated as Default Vendor Price, the Calculated Cost may not reflect the actual current vendor price for the item. The options for calculating cost are Weighted Average Cost Per Store, Weighted Average Cost All Stores, Default Vendor Price, Last Vendor Price, Perpetual Weighted Average Cost Calculated All Stores, Perpetual Weighted Average Cost Per Store, FIFO, and LIFO.

·         Labels: Users can change how things are labeled in the software. i.e., Stores could be updated to Locations. This is located under System Setup > Options> Labels

Reporting

·         Reporting: Yellow Dog offers over 300 reports, they can be sorted, and grouped in a wide variety of ways. They can also be saved as templates to run again on demand, or configured to be emailed daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

·         Send Saves Reports: The feature that allows reports to be emailed to users daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly and can come as a PDF, CSV, Excel, or directly embedded in the email. These reports can be sorted and grouped to the user’s preference.

·         Relative Date Ranges: Users can create custom date ranges that reflect their businesses periods that can be used in reporting.   

·         Extended Retail: Retail Price * Quantity Sold accounting for Discounts.

·         Margin Percent:(Retail - Cost) / Retail * 100

·         Markup Percent:(Retail - Cost) / Cost * 100

·         Percent Cost:(Cost / Retail) * 100

Purchasing

·         EDI (Electronic Data Interchange): Yellow Dog can receive and pull in Invoices from Vendors. This is often referred to as an EDI.

·         Invoice Expense Accounts: These are fields that can be added to invoices to account for additional expenses such as tax, freight, or deposits. These expenses can be distributed to items based.

·         Return To Vendor Accounts: these are fields that can be added to returns to vendor to indicate why the item is being returned, i.e., incorrect product, wrong location, or spoilage.

·         Worksheets: Are a feature that allows users to fill out one ‘worksheet’ to generate several other documents. Most worksheets are designed to streamline purchasing processes. The exception is production worksheets, which are effectively prep lists.

·         Par Level: This value represents the ideal quantity of an item that would always be on hand

·         Re-Order Point: Ideally an item would never dip below this on hand, and when the item reaches this on hand it should be re-ordered to be brought back up to par. 

Stands 

·         Stands: A store that have been configured to be used in the stand’s workflow

·         Hawker/Vendor: A store that has been configured to be used in the stand workflow, that also returns product to the issuing location.

·         Event Types: Are templates for future events that allow users to specify which stands, and items will be used in that event. Users can also configure specific par and re-order points as well as pricing per event type for items.

·         Periods: Are used in reporting to indicate when sales occurred during an event

·         Events: Are created to represent the events at a location. Events will be created based on event type which will determine the stands and items for the event. 

·         Groups/Group Commissions:  Will be where users can create and manage the organizations that operate stands.

·         Auto-Restock: The feature that allows users to easily restock warehouses and stands prior to an event.

·         Picklists: Lists of items that will be moved to a stand. Picklists can be generated via the auto restock tool, manually, or can be sent to the Yellow Dog Client from Stand Dog mobile as an in event restock.

·         Counting In/Counting Out: Will occur at the beginning and end of an event to confirm on hand values for a stand. During the count out, users will have the opportunity to enter waste/comp values for their items. In the event that Stand Dog or Wi-Fi is unavailable, count in and count out values can be tracked on stand print outs, and be manually entered into the stand reconciliation at the end of the event.

·         Stand Reconciliation: The tool within Yellow Dog used to review and finalize stand data at the end of the event.

·         Stand Dog: The mobile application designed to be used with the stands works flow to capture count in/count out quantities. Stand Dog can also be used to transfer product to other stands, submit restock requests to the warehouse, and capture any waste/comp values.