Inventory Help

[threadfx]

I'm looking for the"best" way to maintain my inventory count. I am developing a POS system for my retail store.

I have an inventory db as well as a line item db for individual sales.

What is the best approach to update the quantity in the inventory db from the line item quantity sold?

Thanks!

[LiveOak]

The best way is not to have an inventory total count as such. High end systems never debit inventory directly. They just enter a transaction in a file for each draw or stocking operation. This way you can always reconstruct inventory quantity, the worst that can happen is that an incorrect transaction is posted. If you store a single quantity number and change it incorrectly, there is no way to recover from the error, except to review all transactions elsewhere and do a physical count.

-bd

[Fitch]

I.e., relate your Products file to your Line Items and your Invoices to your Line Items.

Then you can add stock of a given item via the Products file, via a portal or a script that creates a new record in Line Items. You subtract stock the same way, but via the Invoices file. Each Line Item record has a positive or negative quantity, so you just add them up, either by summary fields in a Line Items report, or by your relationship from Products Sum(Line Items::Qty).