Preliminary Receiving is just what the name implies--it is a system where items can be counted and entered before actually being received. This obviously is a great time-saver, since you can enter items into [i] Merchant very quickly and with minimal effort. Generally, you will use this program in conjunction with EDI ASN (Advanced Shipping) Files. If you have your EDI Parameters set up to process ASN files, said files will automatically be stored in [i] Merchant, and you can access them here in Preliminary Receiving and then receive the items into [i] Merchant using a special Receiving program used to process the data into regular Receiving entries.
You can also import files into Preliminary Receiving as well as create a Preliminary Receiving file manually. We will touch on those briefly at the end of this document.
To access the Preliminary Receiving module:
From the Main Menu, select Receiving-Preliminary Receiving. This calls up the Preliminary Receiving Find screen. From here, you can easily find the Preliminary Receiving sessions you need. A Preliminary Receiving session is defined as a single shipment--either an EDI shipment, a file import, or a newly created manual file. Within each session or shipment, multiple Carton IDs may exist. For example, if you received a single EDI shipment, that shipment may have contained multiple cartons of products. Each of those cartons will fall under the same Preliminary Receiving session.
Assuming you are searching for an EDI session, enter the search criteria on the Find screen, using standard Finder principles, and run your search. A list of all Preliminary Receiving sessions that matched your Search criteria will display in the grid at the bottom of the screen.
If you have the EDI cartons with you at the time, you can simply scan the label of one of the carton, and [i] Merchant will highlight the appropriate Preliminary Receiving session in the grid. If you want to view the Properties for the just-selected session, either double-click on it or, with the desired session highlighted, click on the Properties icon in the toolbar near the top of the screen. This will call up the Preliminary Receiving Properties window. The Properties window has two tabs near the top--Header and Products. When the window first opens, the Header tab is automatically selected. (If you can't scan an EDI carton to select a session in the grid, simply manually highlight one of the sessions on the list.)
Under the Header tab are the following field:
The "Session Name" field is a free-form field. Key in the session name for this Preliminary Receiving session. Select a name that makes sense to you.
The "Created" field will fill in automatically with the current day's date.
The "Complete" checkbox will be automatically checked once the session has been received in its entirety. (We will get to how you receive the products momentarily.) If it's not checked, that's a way for you to know immediately that not all items in the session have been received yet. You can also manually check this field if you want--you would do this if you wanted to ignore any unreceived items remaining in a particular session.
The "Entered By" field will fill in automatically with the name of the user who initialized this session.
The "Ship Date" will fill in with the current day's date, but it can be changed if desired.
The "Carton Count" and "Lines" fields automatically fill in with a zero. These can be changed manually.
The "File Name" field will fill in with the original path of the session you are working on.
The "Comment" field is optional and free-form. Key in anything here that might be helpful to you.
Once you are done filling out the Header field, click on the Product tab. On this screen, all products included in this Preliminary Receiving session are listed. You can view the specific information--and change it, if needed--for any product listed here by highlighting a product on the list and double-clicking on it or clicking on the Update button.
This will open the Preliminary Receiving Item window for the just-selected product. View the information here and make changes as needed, then click on the Apply button at the top of the window to Save the changes, or click on Cancel to back out without making any changes.
You can also add products manually to the session here, if needed.
Select a product using the Product field, or scan in a product. Once a product is chosen, the Preliminary Receiving Item window will appear. Key in the information, then Apply the changes. The product will be added to the session. You can manually add as many products as you need in this manner.
Okay, but how do you actually receive the items from a Preliminary Receiving session into [i] Merchant? It's easy.
At the Preliminary Receiving Find screen, run a search to display the Preliminary Receiving session(s) you want. And, as mentioned above, if you have an EDI carton from this session, simply scan the label on the carton, and [i] Merchant will automatically highlight the appropriate session on the grid. Or, simply highlight the desired session manually.
Once the desired session is highlighted, click on the Receive From File icon in the toolbar near the top of the screen. This opens the Receive From File window. This is where you will receive the items from the Preliminary Receiving session into your [i] Merchant system.
The items on this session will appear in the grid at the lower portion of the screen. Notice in the grid, the items are compared to the PO they are on, and the information is provided for you here. Items that do not match the PO information, or that are missing from the PO, will be highlighted.
You can receive items in four different ways, each method represented by the four tabs at the upper left portion of the screen.
"Receive All Items" does just what it says. It will receive all items from the Preliminary Session into [i] Merchant.
"Receive Items Where Quantity Matches" will only receive the items listed that match the concomitant information on the PO. Any of the items that do not match, or are not found on the PO, will not be received.
"Receive Selected Items" allows you to go through the list and highlight the items, one by one, that you wish to receive.
"Receive in Detail" allows you to receive a selected item using the Receiving Detail screen. This is useful when handling damaged items or items with discrepancies.
Choose whichever method makes the most sense to you.
The Select Carton button allows you to key in a specific carton number. Once you key the number in and click on "Select Carton," all items from that carton will be highlighted on the list.
You can set default values for Problem Codes here as well. They are split up into "Over" and "Short" fields, so you can set default values for both over- and short-shipped items.
In the "If New Receive Price is different from current" field, you can select one of several options. For an explanation of this field, please click here.
Key in a value in the Invoice Number field. The Invoice Date field will fill in with the current date, but you can change it if desired.
In the optional Receive Shipment field, either select an existing Receive Shipment record, or, more likely, create a new Receive Shipment record.
The "Update label settings" tab opens the "Settings for printing labels" window.
In the "Label printing mode" field, click on the arrow at the right of the field. A submenu appears. Choose "Print now" or "Save to batch."
In the other fields, select the printer you will use to print the labels, key in the number of copies, and select the label stock to use.
Notice, also, the "Customer Order labels only" check-box field. If you check the box here, only Customer Order labels will be created. If you leave the box unchecked, all labels will be created.
Click on the "Apply" button to accept the changes (or Cancel out of the window).
If you saved the labels to a batch, when you are ready to print them at a later point:
Click on the "Print batched labels" button or click on the Labels toolbar icon. The Printer Selections window appears. Review the information (such as which printer to print to, how many copies of each label to print, which label stock to use, and within the label stock field, how many individual labels exist within the batch) to see if it is correct. Make any necessary changes. When you are ready to print the labels, simply click on the Print button at the lower left of the Printer Selections window. (For information on how to create label templates, click here.) If you want to preview the label before printing it, simply click on the Preview button.
This is all there is to receiving items in from a Preliminary Receiving session. Repeat the process as needed for different sessions.
Back at the Preliminary Receiving Find screen, you can also create Preliminary Receiving sessions via a file import or manually. More than likely you won't need to do either. But let's briefly touch on both.
To import a session from a file, at the Preliminary Receiving Find screen:
Click on the Import File toolbar icon. The Preliminary Receiving Import window appears.
Click in the File Import field to select the desired file through standard Windows procedures. Once you select the file, the file pathname will display in the field.
In the Input File Format field, select whether the imported file is a Scanpal file or a delimited file.
If you are importing a delimited file, check the box next to the "Header Record is Included" field if the file you are importing has column headers and you want [i] Merchant to read and match them. (If you are importing a Scanpal file, the "Header Record Included" field will not appear.)
If you are importing a delimited file, in the Delimiter Used field, click on the down arrow at the right and select the delimiter used in the imported file (for example, if a .csv file, the delimiter would be a comma). (If you are importing a Scanpal file, the Delimeter Used field will not appear.)
Once everything is set, click on the Apply button at the bottom of the window. (Clicking on "Close" will exit you out of the window without proceeding.) This calls up the Preliminary Receiving Properties screen.
The Properties screen as accessed after importing a file is identical to the Properties screen as accessed through an EDI ASN file. With one significant exception--the "Products" tab does not initially display. But a Match Fields tab does.
Once you have set the Header fields, click on the Match Fields tab. Matching fields allows you to map the input file data to [i] Merchant.
At the left of the window, there is a column called "Field Name." The values underneath this are the [i] Merchant header names. Matching fields allows you to match the headers from the imported file with their [i] Merchant equivalents.
The rows under the "Field in File" column represent the header names in your imported file. They will all have a down arrow to the right of them. Click on this arrow, and from the list, select the name that best matches the [i] Merchant equivalent to the left of it.
The "Use Default Only" selection is an option for the following three rows--PO Number, Invoice Number, and Invoice Date. It refers to the third column--"Default." Whatever you select under "Default" for each of the three applicable rows will be that row's default value for every item imported from the file. For example, for "Invoice Number," let's say you key in a default value of 001. This means that every item from the import file will have a concomitant invoice number of 001, if you select "Use Default Only" for this row.
Once you've matched the fields, click on the Import toolbar icon at the top left of the screen to fill in the product data from the import file. Note that, after doing this, the Products tab now appears. (If any errors occurred during the import, a message will appear, letting you know. To view the errors, click on the "Errors" button located just above the toolbar.)
At this point, click on Save located just above the toolbar. The session is now saved, and can be accessed at any time through the Finder.
The last (and very unlikely) way to create a session is by using the New tab at the Preliminary Receiving Find screen.
When you click on New, the New Preliminary Receiving window appears, where you can key in a bit of information in the fields provided.
To proceed, click Next, and you will be taken to the Properties screen, where you will need to manually add items to the session.