Question regarding Inventory UNITS and DEFAULT COST

When you set a multiplier of more than 1 in the inventory report it will show cases not single bottles. If you want that specific report to show single bottles you have to set multiplier to 1 and purchase it by bottle…

When I say cases it can be whatever your purchase unit is… if its sold 24 to case or 24 to caja or 24 to sack… if you have multiplier set to more than 1 it will show how many caja, sack, or case… whatever you named the transaction unit.

You must set multiplier to 1 and purchase it in single units if you want that specific report to show bottles not cases.

Bottom line is that report shows quantity of Transaction Unit you have not base unit. So multiplier of 24 if you purchase 2 caja or 48 un… it will still show 2 in that report. If you set multiplier to 1 and purchase 24 un it will show 24 in that report.

To sum this all up it comes back to what I have been trying to tell you for months… if you want to track a case of beer by the bottle in the inventory and not by the case then your multiplier should be 1 and you should purchase it by the bottle. It does not matter if you normally buy it by case or not… nothing changes all that changes is how it reports it and how you enter it.

Maybe @emre can give us options in future to toggle how it calculates a specific item when its entered in as an inventory item… either per unit or per transaction unit but for now it only shows transaction units in that specific inventory report.

In some instances setting multiplier of 1 is an advantage expecially if items per transaction unit changes with each purchase…Sometimes a case of cokes is 12 sometimes they run a special and i get 14 per case instead of defining two different inventory products I can just purchase it per bottle and enter total price it will calculate unit price for me.

My personal primary reason I set multipliers to 1 on some of my products is simply because my base unit is my selling unit and I want it tracked per unit not per transaction unit. I think its great that @emre has allowed this.

Here is an example with screenshot:

I track my foam cups per unit each sale of a coke product uses a specific size cup. I can accurately track how many cups i sell because its always exactly 1 cup per soda sold… here is the setup to track my 8oz foam cups.

I can use simple custom report to convert it and show it as cases…

With this method I can see live on the fly stock. The inventory report will be accurate for any item that I sell this way. The inventory prediction will be my actual live inventory as I am selling it per item… the only reason it would not be accurate would be theft or damages.

This can be true… but it can also not be considered this way. It can simply be for reporting. Both methods work and both are accurate.

My actual live restaurant I use a mix of both methods… For items I want to track down to single items like my cups, candy bars, etc I use multiplier of 1 and I purchase them by base unit quantity in my reports… (I actually purchase by case from supplier) For my items like tomatos and pickles where I am never sure how many are exactly being sold I set my multiplier as how many per case or sack etc. This allows me to track some items down to item level as I demonstrated and it allows me to track some items per % of case both work together at same time.

OK… we all are correct… perhaps is a semantic issue here…

BASE UNIT for me means the basic unit in wich you sell… ergo the unit in wich I want to TRACK stock.
TRANS UNIT for means the unit I may be buying from a supllier… sometimes (most of the time) we buy in TRANS UNITS (like a whole pack of coke or a whole box of beer). sometimes we buy in units… like some special beers that we do not sell often and I buy them buy the unit, or in my case BASE UNIT. If not so, why in transaction screen we do have the option to choose the unit of purchase?

So… if this is the case… WE ALLWAYS SHOULD BE KEEPING BASE UNIT in the database… ando not trans unit…

maybe I am lost again…

Sorry.

G.

My guess is that option is there in case the supplier sells you an odd size case… sometimes cases are 24… and lets say you have a transaction unit with multiplier of 24… but lets say that supplier today has bonus packs that have 25 instead of 24 per case… you can select to purchase it per unit… but the report is still going to show transaction unit…This lets you purchase a case of 25 from same supplier on one day and still use case of 24 for most days.

bottom line, until I figure this out…

BASE UNIT and TRANS UNIT became ALL the same and MULTIPIER is now 1… no more problems with units.

Thanks!!!

G.

You dont even set a transaction unit if your using multiplier of 1… if you set transaction unit to box… your report will show how many of single items you have… but it will say Box… Just leave Transaction unit blank and when you purchase just select base unit in unit… it will be blank by default you just click it and choose your base unit.

BTW You should not think of it as how many you normally buy from supplier… SambaPOS does not care… its all about reporting. You just make sure you fill in your purchase correctly based on your multiplier. It will calculate inventory based off that multiplier…

Or you can set Base and Tx Unit to use the same word when your Multiplier is 1… not sure why you would want to leave it blank.

Because it lets you choose base unit in the dropdown. I did not need two choices of same thing.

But your right you could do it that way so it autofills unit… I prefer it to show on the report without the Unit… so I left mine blank. Notice in my report screenshot it just says product and quantity it did not show unit if you leave it blank… This is how I wanted it.

If I am tracking it per unit I Just want to see Product and quantity this gives me a quicker visual reference on items tracked per unit vs per case. There is no need to see Unit in the report if its tracked by base unit…

1 Like

having two units… and using only one seem to me like having boobs and not letting people touch them… LOL…
SORRY
SORRY
SORRY
SORRY
SORRY

I had to say it, and now I regret it… sorry…

seriously… having two units and having them set as only one, or both the same seems a waste of programming time for me…

I am really trying to get a grip on this and trying to understand it so I can use both and benefit from it.

I know that BASE UNIT is the unit in wich you sell. I know also that TRANS unit is the unit in wich you buy things at least most of the time. so far so good. Showing in stock reports TRANS unit seems to me not usefull, since you may buy in (as we say in protuguese ATACADO) PACKS OR CASE OR SACK… but you really track in SELLING UNITS.

@Jesse gave an example of tomatos, pickles… etc.

OK here is my approach, wich may not be corrrect but seems to work in my case…

I ussualy buy 1kilo tomatos at least, I never buy 250 grs., but I track grams since I know exactly how many grams go into a pizza or a sandwich or a salad. So:

Item: Tomatos (can be cheese, ham, bacon, and all items I buy by the kilo)
Base Unit: GRS
Trans Unit: Kilo
Multiplier: 1000

I allways buy in kilos and allwyas sell in grams...

next:

Item: Whisky (could be any beverage that you sell by the DOSE)
Base unit: ML (mililiter)
Trans Unit: Litre (you CANNOT buy 350 ml of any of those beverages)
Multiplier: 1000

I allwasy buy at least ONE (1) bottle....

next

Item SKOL 600ml (famous beer, LOL)
Base Unit: UN (or bottle, unit, individual... that the way we sell it!!!)
Trans Unit: CAJA (Box)
Multiplier: 24 (there are 24 bottles of beer in one CAJA)

This means that 99% of the time I buy a box... but there are some times in wich I buy 10 or 12 or 20.... special ocasions... saturday night... run out of stock and go to my neightbor supermarket (wich is open and buy just 10, so I have enough until I close)...

I do buy by a kilo or a box or gross… but in the stock reports I like to see my selling units. this gives me a almost accurate idea where am I standing, how much can i produce or sell, do I have to buy more, and exactly how much money I have sitting in stock. I my case I prefer my money in my pocket and not sittong in stock…

Long time ago I aked @Emre If he could show both units in the stock report, and he sayed that it was difficult to do… I still do not understand why, it was simply a calculation BASE UNIT by MULTIPLIER… once he had all the math done for one unit, the other one came along alone… Please @emre, dont get mad with me for bringing this

Thats why I was so happy with two units, and I was so happy that I could use any of them in my purchase transactions. In the last tests I have done, purchasing in different UNITS makes Stock control crazy. I did not have chance to find out exactly whats foing on, but I hace some spare time on monday and tuesday and then I will do some tests and will inform here what happend… I also have to change some reports I have done, so it reflects multiplier correctly… I am working on it.

sorry for the long post.

THANKS!!!,and sorry for the initial joke again…

G.

Lol I get your analogy but to me its just a report. If Emre changes how multiplier works for reports then the way I use it will break. I use both methods. I want to track tomatos by % of transaction unit tracking these individually is a impossible task.
I do not think you understand me. I’ll explain better when I get home

@gerlandog It really does not matter what you buy or how you buy it. You will buy it however you want that will not change just because of a setting in SambaPOS. Where Samba comes in is how you record those purchases for tracking. You set your base unit as the smallest unit used in recipe (This should never change it should always be this way) You have the option of setting a Transaction Unit (You do not have too) and then you must set your multiplier (This dictates how it appears in reports and the purchase screen)

None of that really has anything to do with how you actually purchase it (It makes sense to correlate Transaction Unit with what you typically purchase from supplier but you do not have to do this)

Now all of that said what I do is I like to see what % of case of tomatos in my inventory because I need to know how close I am to using up a case… I do not care how many tomatos are left all I care about is how many cases or % of cases I have left. It is impossible to track tomatos accurately by the slice… So I use a multiplier that is equal to how many Base Unit I purchase in one sack… because of how Samba is set up this allows me to view % of case in reports.

Now I understand how multiplier works and relates to reports so I set Multiplier to 1 on specific products like Cups and I do not set a Transaction Unit because I do not want it showing in the report I just want it to show Product and Count.

This allows me to track tomatos by % of case and Track Cups by eaches… at the same time on the same report. I enter my purchases accordingly Cups I enter 1000 because they come 1000 to case. Tomatos I enter 1 because I am purchasing 1 sack. I do not care that I have to enter them differently because I Just want my reports to work accordingly.

I told you all of this because it seems your expecting it to work one way and only that way and you get confused if other options are shown.

PS If @emre was to change how this reports or change how stuff is purchased or how inventory is calculated it could easily break the function for many people. And there is nothing wrong with how it is working now. It works great and it is how most restaurants track inventory.

It is not how most retailers track inventory and it sounds like your idea of how you want it to work is more in line with retail setups. I mimic a retail setup by using a multiplier of 1 and purchasing my products accordingly for specific products only.

BTW With a multiplier of 1 you can get live on the fly stock with the Inventory report… Warehouse will too but you have to ignore the InStock tab and go only by the Prediction. The only issue is it does not count for theft,throwaways or shrink. It is not setup for that and I understand that so I take for account a margin of error.

1 Like

Ok… but here is my problem with all this approach… REAL CASE:

ITEM: COCA COLA CAN 350 ML
BASE UNIT: CAN
TRANS UNIT: PACK WITH 12 CANS
MULTIPLIER: 12

I have in stock 7 cans…

Items report from Samba: 0.58 of a PACK
Items report in SQL to see actual quantity: 6,96

The problem is that I DO HAVE 7 cans, not 6.96, not 6.99, not 7.04.

I cannot ask my clients to buy in 12 multipliers, like 2,3,4,6… I sell them by the UNIT. So it happens in a daily basis that I do have 7 cans of a 12 sack, or 17 bottles of a 24 box.

As most people do here in latin America, we do count selling units, and do base our stock reposition point in selling units and not in Transaction units.

Thats why I am saying: having two units… and using only one seem to me like having boobs and not letting people touch them… LOL…

I physically have 7 cans, and samba informs me 0.58 of a pack or 6,96 cans. You will say now that the reason for a End of Day Report is exactly that, correct those differences… that means that I will have to check every day twice (one in the beggining and one at the edn of the period for this. And what happens when you found a difference of 1 CAN?.. will it be a missing can or just that you carried during many days differences so that the sum of all those differences is exactly 1 can of coke?

this is why I still cannot use the second UNIT, and why I am struggling whit this…

Sorry for the long post… sorry for beeing so annoying whit this topic!!!

Thanks!!!

G.

@gerlandog you’ll never have 7.04. This happens because of rounding and that will be slightly less than the integer value. You can safely cast them to integer.

 1 PACK = 12 PCS
 1 > 0.08 PACK > 0.96 
 2 > 0.16 PACK > 1.92 
 3 > 0.25 PACK > 3
 4 > 0.33 PACK > 3.96 
 5 > 0.41 PACK > 4.92 
 6 > 0.50 PACK > 6 
 7 > 0.58 PACK > 6.96
 8 > 0.66 PACK > 9
 9 > 0.75 PACK > 7.92
10 > 0.83 PACK > 9.96
11 > 0.91 PACK > 10.92
12 > 1.00 PACK > 12

1411 > 117.58 PACK > 1410.96

We display 2 decimals but as we store 3 decimal places for quantities it will work fine for up to 1000 multiplier.

1 PACK = 312 PCS
1 > 0.003 PACK > 0.93
2 > 0.006 PACK > 1.87
3 > 0.009 PACK > 2.80
4 > 0.012 PACK > 3.74
5 > 0.016 PACK > 4.99
6 > 0.019 PACK > 5.92
7 > 0.022 PACK > 6.86
....

For more than 999 (or for most cases 99 will be enough) multiplier you can display fractional value as they’ll be probably grams.

I am using CONVERT function… this convert to integer, so that means 6.96 will become 6.

I will try with CAST to see what I get…

Thanks!!!

G.

EDIT 1: CAST does not seem to work, or I am using it wrong… but:
CAST(6,94 as INT) throws me 6, which is wrong in my case

G.

I think ROUND(x,0) function will do the job.

3 Likes

YES that seems to work… so I ROUND it and the I CONVERT it… LOL…

nice SQL

CONVERT(INT,ROUND(CASE WHEN [BaseUnit] = [TransactionUnit] THEN
        (ISNULL([PhysicalInventory],([InStock]+[Added]-[Removed]-[Consumption]))+
		ISNULL((SELECT TOP 1 [Quantity] FROM [InventoryTransactions]
	     WHERE [InventoryItem_Id] = [PeriodicConsumptionItems].InventoryItemId AND [Date] >= CONVERT(varchar(10),GETDATE(),121)
	     ORDER BY [Id] DESC),0))
      ELSE
        ISNULL([PhysicalInventory],([InStock]+[Added]-[Removed]-[Consumption]))*[UnitMultiplier]
	  END,0)) as Stockfisico,

Thanks @Emre!!!

G.

Hello, is it possible to make the “Default Cost” to calculate not “0,01” but with more signs like this “0.00115”. Because I’m making the alcohol menu and I’m calculating how much every separate ml cost. For example I have vodka that cost me 0.0115 per 1 ml? Is there any other way to calculate correctly default cost of 50 and 100 ml of a bottle?

Thank you.

pretty sure samba only works to 2 decimal places

hmm do you have any idea what to do?