A simple, intuitive warehouse management program

LoMag warehouse management program is a tool created for the management of warehouses of small and medium sized enterprises. It ensures basic functionality necessary for the support of warehouse organisation. At the same time it is easy to use and reliable. It may be used on one computer or in a network.

Program functionality

LoMag warehouse management program enables intuitive preparation of the following warehouse documents:

GRN - Goods Received Note
GIN - Goods Issued Note
Return to supplier (Goods Received Note correction)
Return from recipient (Goods Issued Note correction)
Internal GIN - Internal Goods Issued Note
Internal GRN – Internal Goods Received Note
Correction
Discount
Interbranch Transfer
Inventory sheet
Inventory
Assembly (production)

Thanks to the use of modern Microsoft .NET technologies, the application allows for the storage and management of thousands of such documents. These documents are appropriately sorted and grouped, thanks to which, even if they are numerous, they are presented in an intelligible manner. All data, regarding a given warehouse may be printed or exported to other files (e.g. Excel or PDF).

One of the advantages of LoMag is the support of an unlimited number of warehouses. Those warehouses function completely independently. An unlimited number of warehouses may be created, edited and removed. Even with a lot of documents, including Interbranch transfers, you can remove the whole of the warehouse. It is possible to manage several shops or even enterprises on one computer. Of course there might be a situation in which a given warehouse is housing the same items as another warehouse. In this situation one needs to import the items from the first to the second warehouse. This is enabled by the Import items function.

Each item may be ascribed any unit of measurement, and it may be a part of any warehouse. The program supports basic units of measurement, such as kilos or pieces, but you may also create your own. It allows you also to group items.

It sometimes happens that an item is transferred from one warehouse to another, in view of, for example, making space. Naturally, one could use correction documents for that purpose, however, it could be inconvienient and constitute a source of errors. Therefore, we introduced interbranch transfer documents. In order to make the transfer, you have to point out the warehouse to which you wish to transfer given items. If the transferred items have not yet been added to the target warehouse, the program adds them automatically to the database.

Efficiency, stability and reliability

LoMag warehouse management employs modern database access - Microsoft SQL Server. It is one of the best and newest technologies, whose developers prioritised stability and failure-resistance. Combine this with skilful employment of the system's best features, and you get quick and reliable access to your data.

The employment of Microsoft technology is further justified if you consider the position of Microsoft on the market. Most computer users employ the software of this company. Therefore, our application has been fully designed, developed and tested basing on Microsoft software. Thanks to that, the program cooperates smoothly with the majority of popular systems. The data saved by the users may be easily processed by software such as MS Excel, MS Access and many others.

Operation on many computers

For many enterprises, cooperation between several computers connected with a network is crucial. If you have a big warehouse, you may even have over a dozen computers with the application installed. In view of maintaining data coherence, the individual instances of the program must communicate with each other. It has all been made possible by Microsoft SQL Server technology. One computer plays the role of the server, and the other ones are clients. The computer which plays the role of the server may have any given number of computers connected to it at any given time. All computers opearate one the same data.

Management of warehouse transfers

A well devised process of adding warehouse transfers

The basic task of LoMag warehouse management program is the management of warehouse transfers. Receipt or sale of items are examples of such transfers. Introducing information about any operation is very easy. Let's take, for example, receipts. In order to add data about this operation simply click an icon on the tool bar or choose an appropriate option from the Warehouse menu. The program will create a new Goods Received Note. After entering basic data such as the date, the hour and remarks, you have to establish the elements of the receipt. The program significantly facilites this process. It displays the current stock level of a given item and informs you what amount may be issued from the warehouse. It also helps you to determine the date of sale of the item, basing on the price of purchase and the margin. The margin is entered as a set value in the item list, or it is typed in manually each time. You can also download the sale prices, directly from the item list.

Each element comprises of the following fields: Item Name, Amount, Price, Value and Remarks. The remarks field is ascribed to each of the elements of the receipt, thanks to which you may describe various situations which may happen at the warehouse. When entering individual items of the receipt, the application informs about the value of the whole receipt. The name of the item may be entered manually, via a barcode reader or found basing on a search algorithm.

Once you add all the necessary data, you may start printing them or proceed to other activities in the program. The document is automatically saved in the database, so that you may come back to it at any given moment and, for instance, apply some corrections. Documents for sales, returns, corrections and discounts are handled in the same manner.

A GRN may be displayed or printed by clicking "Print GRN". Of course this pertains to all the documents. We have included in the program the possibility of multiple entry of the same item as a part of the same receipt. It may happen, for example, that some of the goods have a different prices than others. The GRN shall include all this information. If you wish to print a document grouping items from a given receipt, select "grouping items on documents" in options.

The program registers the amounts and the prices accurately to 7 decimal places, although, usually there is no need to display or print them with this level of precision. For example, prices are usually quoted accurately to two decimal places. There are cases, however, in which the prices and the values must be quoted more accurately. Instead of setting fixed rules for rounding off the numbers, we left this choice with the user. The user may change the settings to the desired accuracy for displaying and printing the amounts, prices and summaries. Thanks to that the program is more flexible.

Support of inventory sheets and discounts

The Warehouse Management Program enables you to generate inventory sheets, i.e. organised lists of items available in the warehouse. Such sheets are written basing on the actual stock levels, which may be different from what the receipts and other documents may suggest. You may generate an inventory basing on one or many inventory sheets. After entering an inventory sheet and generating an inventory, the data of the program is changed. The user is informed about the differences between the stock levels in the program and the actual stock levels of the warehouse. Correction documents generated automatically smooth out those differences.

Introducing discounts is an additional function. Discounts may modify not only prices, but also the amounts of individual items. The application takes into account, for example, the following situation: Ten multipacks of mineral water have been received. Two multipacks have been unpacked and the individual bottles are to be sold for a new price. After entering a price, the stock levels of item “mineral water multipack" will be decreased by 2, while the stock level for “mineral water bottle" will be increased by e.g.,16. Such a situation may be entered to the program thanks to the discount option. It is especially useful in dealing with everyday situations, which take place at the warehouse.

It sometimes happens at the warehouse that an item is issued internally in the enterprise. A simple example of that is as follows - a light bulb blows in the warehouse, which stores, among other things, light bulbs. There is no need to order light bulbs; one may simply take a lihgt bulb from the warehouse. Such an operation may be done through an Internal Issue Note. Internal Goods Received Note has exactly the opposite use.

Document numeration

Each document in the program has its own number. It may be entered manually or generated automatically. The automatic mechanism ensures the uniqueness of the number; so it is easy to find it later. The automatic numeration is executed basing on a template. A default template for a GRN is: PZ$$$$$$/yy - MAG. This template may be changed for any type of documents. It is created with the use of the following elements:

$$$$$$$ - denotes the relatively unique document number
******* - denotes the absolutely unique document number for the whole system
yy - the year of the document
mm - month
dd - day
MAG - warehouse name

IThat way you can create a mechanism for numbering documents, in accordance with the standards adopted at the company. The terms relatively and absolutely unique document number require explanation. A relatively unique document number ($) introduces a number dependant on other elements. In case of PZ$$$$$$/yy - MAG, the number it will depend on the year and the warehouse to which the document belongs. For example the first document will be called PZ000001/08 - Warehouse1, the second document will be called PZ000002/08 - Warehouse2, etc. If you add a document in another warehouse, the document will receive number PZ000001/08 - Warehouse2. The absolutely unique number (*) on the other hand replaces the star symbols with a unique number for the whole program, independent of the warehouse, the date, etc.

Additional columns

LoMag is used by various companies with very versatile warehouse management schemes. Depending on the character of enterprise's activity, the goods might be numbered and described in many different ways. Therefore, our warehouse management program included an option for creating your own attributes for individual items, thanks to which you can add additional columns with data adjusted to the needs of your company, both when working on the program and on the printouts.

To add additional dedicated columns you should open the Settings menu and select the "Dedicated fields" tab. These fields are divided into three groups: text data, numbers, and links to files or internet sites. The text fields can be used for additional descriptions of the item, in the number fields you can put numbers referring to a given item. Select appropriate attributes in an open tab and enter their names. Upon clicking OK the fields will be added to all windows of the program which modify or browse through the items. For the fields to be visible also on the reports, you have to modify the layout of the report, which will be described in the section entitled "Making reports".

Warehouse control

When warehouse transfer documents are added, the stock levels are simultaneously changed. The value of the individual assortments is calculated. The values are calculated basing not on the fixed price for a given item, but basing on the price quoted on the warehouse transfer documents. Apart from that discounts are taken into account, as well as inventories. There is also a possibility of correcting the already existing data, as well as preparing separate correction documents.