Item Inventory

Counting item inventory can be a very large job, especially if you have many service vehicles. Having a data conversion would be a big help to bring your item quantities into EPASS. We know that's not always feasible though, so this section will cover how to get your item inventory ready to go live, whether you have a data conversion or not.

There are two things that can typically be converted for item inventory. The actual items (part #, description, pricing, etc), and the item quantities. You may be converting either one, both, or none. Let's look at each one:

• Items: Converting the item file can cut down on a lot of manual data entry. Every item that you have needs to be in EPASS, and if you already have an inventory system then those items should be there. Without an item conversion, you would have to Import Supplier Price Lists to get your items into EPASS and, while we highly recommend doing that (whether you convert items or not), it will not get every item into EPASS. Everyone has some old items that are no longer in the price lists and those will have to be manually created.
• Item Quantities: If your inventory is fairly accurate in your current system then we definitely recommend converting those quantities. That will save you from having to do a full count. If your only option is to do a full count, you can either hand write the item numbers and quantities, or you could enter them into Excel spreadsheets to be imported by an EPASS representative. This is also a good time to take a note of your bin locations, or set them up if you are not yet using them. If you are hand writing then make a note of the bin, and if you are using Excel then use a third column for the bin. EPASS has built in utilities to import the bin from an Excel spreadsheet.

Once the items and quantities have been brought into EPASS, you will want to consider Printing Labels. Labels are typically printed either for all inventory, or for only special order inventory. If you are only printing labels for special order inventory then you can just start printing them as you receive new inventory, but if you are going to print labels for all inventory then you may want to get everything labelled now. We know the going live process is a big job though, so if you don't have enough time for that, don't worry, you can print labels for an entire location at any time.

If you are using wireless inventory/barcoding then, once everything is labelled, you may want to do a physical count to give you a very accurate inventory. You could also do this without having everything labelled, but there are many manufacturer barcodes that don't match the actual item number so there is fair amount of updating of barcode numbers that needs to be done before you can do that. It is not recommended to try this with unlabeled inventory until after you are live with EPASS.

Starting with a clean inventory is important. Getting your item inventory into EPASS can be a big job though, so don't take on too much. Get your items and quantities in first, then as time allows work on labelling and setting up bins.