Managing Items

Items are things that the store sells to customers. Items have many properties are identified by a unique UPC. PLUs as well as both both EAN and UPC format barcodes are all considered UPCs for this purpose. The UPC identifies the item at check out.

Check Digits

Many types of barcodes include a check digit and most barcode reader hardware can be configured to either include or omit the check digit when scanning items. If the item UPCs entered into Fannie omit check digits then the hardware must also be configured to omit check digits and vice versa. Omitting check digits is the most common and best supported CORE configuration.

Categorizing Items

CORE organizes items into a three tier hierarchy of super departments, departments, and sub departments.

The highest tier, super departments, only contains departments. An item cannot be assigned directly to a super department; it must instead be assigned to a department that belongs to that super department. Super departments are primarily an organizational and reporting feature that act as a shorthand for referring to a set of related departments.

There are two quirks to be aware of with super departments. First, super department number zero is reserved for non-sale departments. Definitions may vary a bit but things accounting would not consider real sales such as issuing gift cards, taking donations, or making corrections could fit in super department zero. The second quirk is that a department may belong to more than one super department. This can be a useful feature for quick access to common reports, however in some circumstances secondary super departments are ignored. For example, if a department belongs to a super department "Deli" as well as a super department "Cheese", on a report of store-wide sales by super department only one of the two will appear to avoid counting those sales twice. By convention, the super department with the lowest number is shown.

The middle tier, departments, contains the largest number of settings. All items must be assigned to a department. Departments contain default settings for tax, foodstamp, and discount status. When an item is assigned to a department, the settings are automatically updated to the department's defaults. Departments also contain settings for margin that can be used to calculate suggested retail pricing based on item costs.

The department minimum and maximum settings pertain to open rings. If cashiers open ring an amount outside this range they will be prompted to confirm. The Sales Code setting is an optional, additional hierarchy. If the store's accounting software uses account numbers to categorize sales those numbers can be entered here. This setting is at the department tier rather than the super department tier since the finance people and the merchandising people may not want sales grouped the exact same way.

The lowest tier, sub departments, is also a per-item setting but unlike departments it is optional. Each sub department is assigned to a parent department. This level of categorization is strictly for narrowing down long reports and lists of items to find what you're looking for.

Tools for creating and editing all three are in Fannie's Item Maintenance menu. Note that departments must be created first. All super departments must contain at least one child department and all sub departments must belong to a parent department.

Basic Item Settings

The primary, single item editing interface is found under Fannie's Item Maintenance menu By UPC/SKU or Brand Prefix. To create a new item, enter its UPC. To edit an existing item, enter its UPC or description or use the drop down option to search by vendor SKU number or a brand's numeric UPC prefix.

At minimum, an item must have a department, price, and description. Settings for tax, foodstamp (FS), and discount are automatically derived based on the department setting but can be adjusted. Checking Scale means the item must be weighed at the register. Checking QtyFrc means the cashier will be prompted to enter a quantity. The Brand field is for internal reporting and searching. The Vendor field indicates which vendor the store normally purchases the item from. New vendors can be added to the list using the plus button. The vendors section contains further information about vendors.

Vendors

Vendors are the entities that the store purchases its items from. Vendors are also managed via Fannie's Item Maintenance menu. The vendor itself contains some optional fields for contact information as well as a field for shipping markup. If provided, this markup is used to calculate the effective, delivered cost of items from the vendor. The default shipping markup is zero.

Vendors also contain a catalog of items. The vendor's catalog is not the same as the store's items. The store likely does not carry every single item in given a vendor's catalog and the store likely purchases items from more than one vendor. Items in a given vendor catalog are uniquely identified by SKU rather than UPC because a vendor may have multiple purchasing options for the same UPC (e.g., different case sizes). Vendor catalog UPCs should match the UPCs for items the store sells. For any given store item UPC, each vendor catalog item with the same UPC represent a purchasing option. The store item's vendor setting indicates which vendor is normally used for that item. Each vendor's catalog may also be assigned a set of vendor-specific departments distinct from the store's departments. These vendor-specific departments are used for setting vendor-specific margin targets.

The easiest way to update a vendor catalog is by uploading a spreadsheet containing its item data.