9 eTurns Features For Efficient Inventory Management

9 eTurns Features For Efficient Inventory Management

eTurns TrackStock has multiple features that save costs and reduce the time that distributors and their customers spend on re-ordering and counting inventory. Our software has so many features that sometimes our clients overlook some of them – including several that would make their lives easier and save even more money.

Here are nine of our own teams’ favorite features that you need to know about:

1. Minimum/Maximum Tuning 

As a distributor using eTurns TrackStock, your customers can set desired inventory levels to trigger automatic replenishment, so that the amount of an item on hand never drops below  or gets higher than  those set levels. Most of the time, users guess their min/max levels and normally they guess too high. That means many businesses have a lot of cash flow locked up in carrying costs. 

What many users don't realize is that after a couple of months of tracking usage with eTurns, eTurns automatically determines ideal inventory levels and notifies you of recommended min/max settings for all products. This feature equips you to optimize inventory top to bottom, guaranteeing you’ll never run out, while simultaneously preventing overspending. In the case of consigned inventory, the savings are big.

2. Customized Reports

Our customized reports are a feature that many clients should use more.  In the upper left-hand corner is a "view reports" button. Within that area there’s an option to customize reports. 

From there, it's easy to move fields, reorganize, even rename the reports. eTurns allows users to both remove columns they aren’t using in any report and add new columns. You can also reorder the columns,  adjust column width and total report width, in addition to displaying it in landscape or portrait.

Any column used in the report can then be selected as the primary sorting column with the user able to sort on up to five different columns. The report can be designated as a “private” report that only the user can view or be designated as an enterprise report that all users can use. Each user has freedom to create their own reports without involving the IT team.

3. Scheduled Reports

One feature businesses don’t always consider, but can be valuable, is the ability to email “empty” reports. Usually, reports are sent when there is activity, like inventory moving in or out. With many systems, if a week goes by and there is no movement in a certain item, you may not get a report.

But that inactivity may be an important red flag that products aren’t moving as expected. With this feature, you get an email that has no attachment indicating no activity, so you can immediately address the issue.

4. Create Catalog Reports

As catalog reporting implies, this is the ability to print out a customized catalog, organized or ordered in any way, of all parts in a particular location. Many customers put these reports in three-ring binders and hang them on racks near the product rack.

That way, if there's a barcode that can't be scanned, someone can flip through the book, find it, and scan the barcode. This catalog can also be used as a marketing tool – companies can imprint their logo and product images on the pages, and take it to meetings with potential customers.

5. Cycle Counting

A lot of inventory, especially consigned inventory, has to be counted multiple times a year. But it’s unlikely all products must be counted on the same cycle. Our software allows you to define inventory categories and set individual counting cycles for each.

Our system then alerts your users of the parts you're counting this week. The following week, you'll get a list of parts to count in that timeframe. By the end of your 12-month period, you’ll have counted every part the desired number of times, based on the category.

6. Tool Tracking

Customers’ equipment is valuable, whether it’s a saw or a ladder or anything else. An important part of reigning in costs therefore is knowing where assets and tools are.

With eTurns’ tool tracking feature, if someone checks out a ladder and it doesn't come back, you can run a report that tells you who had this ladder last and when they took it, so you know where to start your search. This can be done remotely from the web app, the phone app or the tablet app. 

7. Tool/Asset Maintenance

Our feature called the asset module can help a user automatically schedule needed maintenance on equipment such as vehicles or tools that need periodic recalibration. It’s similar to the red light on your car’s dashboard that lights up and tells you when it’s time for an oil change, or other required maintenance.

8. Automated Order Processing

Many people aren't comfortable turning over all aspects of automated replenishment to technology. Fortunately, eTurns TrackStock is capable of alerting you when to re-order, placing that order for you, and scheduling recurring orders ahead of time.

eTurns customers who take advantage of this feature love it because no one has to pull transactions, create an order, and send it off to the supplier. And, it can all be scheduled ahead of time. That means if someone is out sick or on vacation, that order still gets placed. 

9. Batched and Consolidated Invoicing of Consigned Inventory

Consigning inventory is expensive enough, but sending a purchase order (PO) or invoice for every single pull of an item makes it prohibitive. eTurns’ TrackStock offers the flexibility to not only automatically track consumption and replenish consigned inventory but also to allow the customer or distributor to determine when and how often purchase orders or invoices will be sent. Batching and/or consolidating consigned “purchases for invoicing” saves both the distributor and end-customer enormously on procurement costs.

When managing consigned inventory with eTurns, there are three events taking place simultaneously:

1. Replenishment

2. Batching of consumption pulls

3. Consolidating all transactions for an item into one record

Here’s how it works: as the customer uses widgets, they scan the bins of material with the eTurns TrackStock phone app and the app reduces the quantity on hand (QOH) of the widget. Ultimately, the QOH for the widget will fall below a minimum and a “suggested order” will be created to get the widget back up to the maximum, which starts the replenishment process.  

Independently, the distributor and the customer can decide how often the consumption transactions are sent to the distributor to bill. Many times they are sent once per week instead of immediately as they occur.

If the consumption transactions are sent when they occur, the distributor’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system creates an invoice for each transaction, making the procurement process as expensive as it can be. If these can be “batched” to four times a month, the cost of procurement drops drastically.

The third process that can occur simultaneously is eTurns TrackStock’s capability to consolidate those batched consumption transactions. So, once a week for example, TrackStock will gather all of the consumption pulls that happened since the prior week and send only one transaction line for that widget for that week with the total quantity pulled. If there were 24 different widgets pulled during the week, then TrackStock will only send to the distributor 24 lines totaling all of the quantities pulled drastically reducing further the cost of procurement.

In the meantime, customers can capture detailed information about the pull transaction when they pull the widget.  These details remain available in TrackStock or a weekly report can be scheduled to send to the procurement department with all info. A summary report can also be created to validate the distributor invoiced the customer correctly, streamlining the procure-to-pay process.

By Donald Anderson

VP of Product Development

eTurns, Inc.