I was stunned when I was told that a competitor released an article claiming that you should never use excel for stock to manipulate details but the Stock Manager tool. My first thought was this is *NUTS* and my second is that it is another attack against us when I was asked. No, I was told, by one of their clients, it is in their newsletter too and you are not listed, see I will send it to you.
I couldn’t believe my eyes when I read it
We were not listed almost possibly as we have both the Stock Manager tool and the ability to export/import stock data through excel. So they probably know our users can do both. But my confusion grew as I read the newsletter article as I believe that one of the companies listed has a Stock Manager tool too as well as the ability to export/import stock data through excel. So I am not sure this is all about!
Having said this let me explain
A Stock Manager tool allows you in your point of sale software to manipulate your stock details, which is very handy if you have thousands of stock items. An example might be if a supplier costs that are supplied by a particular distributor to you needs to be increased by a percentage%. While updating the costs you can also tell the POS system to automatically update the retail price by increasing the retail price by a certain formula say by keeping the same margin, by a figure or making them 30% or whatever.... There are lots of options there. It also very good for changing in bulk stock descriptions so for 80% of the cases its great and there is no point in using excel.
But there is always the 20% when it is nice to have excel and sometimes in 10% of the cases, it is needed. Here are some examples.
* Some have no choice
Many suppliers today particularly small ones will issue, their catalogue in an excel format. So many people that do not have a choice. They must have an excel export/import facility.
* You have still more flexibility with a spreadsheet, for example, you can specify every item description that contains the word pack or PK which is between $10 and $15 in retail price and has a cost over $5 is to go up in retail price by 30 cents and 2%.
* Let’s look at another example:
Then there are people who handle gifts. What they do is download an excel spreadsheet for a location, then go over the items correcting and modifying descriptions and pricing details. They now want a quick and easy way of putting the figures back into their system. As there is no pattern or formula a Stock Manager tool although it can be used is not the quickest way.
* Here’s one company’s story:
Then there are people that have items that need some complex calculations for which excel is extremely useful for doing the calculations. Looking at a few excel spreadsheets that a cake shop that uses our software uses for a cheesecake there are 15 different ingredients listed, plus seven extras listed prep, gas, electricity, water, labour, slices and wastage. Most of these extras calculations are quite complex and require their own excel sheet to properly calculate the costs for a cake. Similarly, the spreadsheet for the brownies has 10 items and the doughnuts have 8 items. As these costs vary the owner of the shop tends to update these figures frequently and sometimes daily as a big baking on Friday has different figures then a Monday bake. Once he does this they require the facility that we have to update their prices through excel.
I am sure many of you will come up with examples where this sort of flexibility might be useful.
In a nutshell
If you do not need it, then with us you do not have to use it but if you require to use excel, well with us you can. You have the choice.
