Stock Control
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      Stock Control - Dispense Monitoring

      Overview

      This lesson details the Dispense Monitoring System; which is an interface to handle ingredients of cocktails. The lesson also covers setup process of the system

      Overview

      Dispense monitoring systems track the actual liquid poured out of the serving taps and compares that with the sales entered at the till. This is done "real time" and can show any disparity between entered sales and poured drinks. The BEpoz interface to these systems comprises of the sales being sent to their monitoring databases as they are received at the Server. Additionally, some dispense systems also support sending dispense flow data back to BEpoz so we can report it it also and optionally decrement the stock based on the actual drinks dispensed. A Dispense Summary report will be available if this is setup. The interface is done within Smartcontroller – not the individual tills. The connection to the interface must be available whenever sales are received by smartcontroller, as very little buffering is available. Each Product that is being monitored should have the "Flow Metered" flag turned on in its product maintenance screen. Only sales, refunds and losses of these products will be sent to the dispense system. Additionally they should be setup as mills

      As each transaction is received by Smartcontroller (Online, Standalone or when a till returns from Offline), It is sent to the dispense queue. Here, a different thread will extract any products setup as Flow metered and send to the dispense system. It will also check any ingredients of cocktails (like Beer Wastage products) and send them. Only Sales, Refunds and Stock Losses are sent across. When the transactions are sent, they need a "PLU Number" for individual product and size. To accomplish this, we append the size number (1-9) to the product's ExportCode1. Therefore if a products ExportCode1 is set to 10 then its PLU numbers are 101=Size 1, 102=Size 2, 103=Size 3 etc.

      The Dispense interface handles ingredients of cocktails. However, most dispense systems tend to only work with actual selling sizes (half pint, pint etc.) not arbitary 10 mills etc. Therefore, for each ingredient, the interface first checks if there is a product size already setup with mills either exactly equal or exactly divisible into the sold amout of mills and will use this size. If not, it will use the smallest size and send across the quantity either as a decimal, if it must be an integer, the nearest integer qty. Therefore, if using cocktails, it may be best to setup a size that is 5 mills or 10 mills for this purpose

      Prerequisites

      N/A

      To Setup a Dispense system

      • Create a new device under the workstation that is the Smartcontroller

      • Set this device to be a Dispense type and the correct Subtype

      • See the individual dispense system section for the the Device Settings

      • Identify the products that are to be flow metered and set the Flow Metered flag on each one

      • Set each product's 'Export Code 1' to a Base Number all the same length; this will have the size number appended to it to create the PLU Number that is sent(Otherwise ProductID will be used)

      • Create a Waste Beer product

        • Set the volume to be 1000 mills and leave the first size as 1 x item; this should have ingredients setup as the bulk beer that is poured

        • The ingredient quantities should be in the same ratio as the ratio of sales of each product

        • The ingredient Qty should add up to 1000 mills (If different bars have different sales ratios, multiple beer wastage products can be created)

      • The Dispense system will need to know certain information from BEpoz which can be extracted from the following reports

        • Store ID and Store Name for all Stores that will have a dispense system connection 

        • Name, Export Code1, and each Size Name and Mills for each Size

      Decrementing Stock from Dispense Data

      If the Dispense system supports sending the dispense data back to BEpoz, Operators can also elect to directly decrement the stock for these products based on the dispense data rather than the sales entered at the tills; and/or report the Cost and Profit based on the dispense data.

      There is a Global Flag called: Dispense Use Stock. If this is set, the tills sales will be processed as sales as usual, but the stock will not be decremented for the "Flow Metered" products. The stock for these products will be decremented by the dispense data received from the dispense system. This makes the stock more accurate and removes the direct need to enter wastage. Additionally, the profit reporting can directly reflect the true cost of the drinks that are poured. 

      Further to this end, there is another Global flag called: Dispense Report Cost. This flag controls whether the Period Summary Report and the Till Balance Report uses the Cost of Sale from the Tills only, or uses the cost of drinks dispensed for the Flow Metered products. The Profit Amount and Profit % fields are also affected accordingly. 
      Operators may change this flag as often as they wish. This flag is independent of the Dispense Use Stock flag. 
      Other Reports such as Till Summaries, Product Summaries have both "Cost of Sales" and "Cost of Sales (Disp)" fields available at all times. 
      Note: If the Dispense Use Stock is On (during Stocktakes), No dispense data will be read from the Dispense system, as the stock cannot be updated until after the Stocktake is completed. Hence the Cost of Sales and Profit data will be affected during these time