TIP: How To Not Order All Committed Parts?

[Platinum Jay]

Hi, I am new to the forum however, we have been using Mitchell for 2 1/2 yrs now & appear to use it to its full potential.... or so i think! we are currently on the 5.9 platform and are planning the 6.4SE upgrade at the end of the summer in order to adjust some pricing, etc. my question is concerning inventory... is there a way to turn off the committed parts part of the inventory? we are a smaller, high volume independent & do not currently have a parts person or parts room, so keeping track of inventory can be quite difficult at times. we have found that we do a lot of larger jobs & have a decent amount of carry over from time to time. it seems as though when we restock our inventory, using purchase orders on Monday & Wednesday mornings, it prompts us to order the committed parts when those parts may not be going on that particular vehicle for days. we would rather order the part when it is on the vehicle & the job is closed out. I understand the reason for having it & if we pulled the actual parts for each job when we sold it to the customer, it would not be as much of a concern, but because we leave the parts on the shelves until the tech needs & pulls them, we sometimes will have more parts than we have room for because the original parts are still on the shelf waiting to be installed. Hopefully this makes sense to you.....any help would be appreciated. Maybe even a little more clarity on the "mark all RO's as appproved/committed would help. maybe we need to change a few of our procedures!!

thanks for you time, Jay

[ricmorin]

Welcome to the forum!

You make perfect sense. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to turn that feature off. But I can offer some advice, since I'm in a similar situation.

I do a daily re-order. I have the reorder report printed along with the other end of day reports and the form is waiting for me in my dispatch bin first thing am. When I do a physical count prior to ordering, I note and usually do not order items merely committed, especially if I know it's a slow mover. On the report is a committed column, so it's easy to spot. Once I've determined what I don't want to order just yet, I simply delete them off each PO as I make them. Usually it's just one or two items.

[Platinum Jay]

thanks for the quick response,

when you say a reorder report, do you mean a "low inventory by vendor" report? or is there a better report for this? we try not to do a physical count becuase my office manager is usually the one to create the purchase orders via what the computer promts and she does not know what each part is or would be located. I do possibly have another person that could physically look before ordering, but the seems to be the older way of doing things! I do see the committed section on the low inventory report, however, every part on there has some committed so to manually check all the items on the list makes me feel like we should just be doing a manual count every day....thus, why do we have computers! haha...... just so you know as well... we have approx. $60k in inventory, so it can get pretty tough to have to do a manual count every day with all of the different parts & accessories.

Also, what does the "mark all RO's as approved/commited" check change in the system? when does this feature trigger a part to be committed & by turning this off, will it only commit parts on RO's that have been printed?

thank you for getting back to me, it is greatly appreciated. Jay

[ricmorin]

My pleasure. Glad to help.

First off, a part becomes committed when it is on an RO that has been printed. Marking them all ar printed automaticaly save you the step of printing them, that's all. So if you put a part on an RO, it'll be marked as committed. At this point your inventory will not be deducted. And yes, if you put a part on an RO that has not been printed, it will not commit it.

Once a part is confirmed, then the committed field goes to zero and your inventory goes down accordingly. There is a checkbox on the part record you may have seen. Also upon conversion to an Invoice, the software alerts you that all parts will be confirmed. I have my Service Advisor nightly go through all the open RO's and make sure that anything that is actually on a car is set to confirmed so my morning count will be accurate.

On physical count, I'm only counting the parts on the reorder list, not everything. It takes maybe 2 minutes, but it's worth it in my mind. Computers are only as good as the people inputting information, and people make mistakes. I correct those mistakes before I order. My orders are always accurate. I'm a stickler. I use two reports: Low Inventory by part number and Low Inventory by Vendor. The first one is where I do my counts and the second one is handy for picking the Vendor when reordering (we order everything online).

Locations: if you are not using locations, you might want to start. All my parts have a location and I've modified the Low Inventory by Part Number report to include location. When I do a count, I simply look at the location, walk over and there it is. (Not sure if Mitchell added this to the stock report or not yet, but I've suggested it.) My locations are in code: S1S2B is shelf unit 1, shelf 3, bin B. C4S2 would be cabinet 4 shelf 2. I have a map that indicates where all the storage units are for new hires.

Sorry about the blabber. This subject is right up my type A personality. It took me a while to come up with a process that works for us. Daily in about 7 minutes I have my reorder counted and ordered.

[Platinum Jay]

Thanks so much! we do have some parts locations noted down but not all. we have several procedures in place here as well, but we have not made up a map of parts locations as of yet. It is something that i have been toying with for some time now because we have 2 buildings side by side & limited space.... there is probabaly about 7 or 8 locations that we keep different parts due to space concerns. I greatly appreciate the time that you have taken to answer my questions. I believe that you have given me enough information to make some changes to hopefully minimize the inventory errors.

I hear you on the "Type-A" personality.....me too... i think i'm going to like this forum thing!!