Stock Groups

To access Stock Groups select Tables|Stock|Stock Groups from the main menu and press the Edit button on the group you wish to view in detail. Or from select View|Stock Groups from the Stock Control menu.

Stock groups are useful in assigning default characteristics to groups of products. It is also used by CAPITAL in order to group products into divisions for reporting. For example, you may wish to group products into categories in order to examine the sales or profit potential of 'radios' versus 'televisions', etc.

General Tab

Group Code

An 8 character alpha-numeric code. If you later change this code, all stock items in Stock Control will also be updated with the changed code.

It is recommended that you try to make all group codes of equal length if you will be mixing letters with numbers. For example, if you have ten product groups, such as GROUP1, GROUP2, etc., these should be entered as:

GROUP01

GROUP02

GROUP10

Not as GROUP1, GROUP2, GROUP10, etc.

This is because CAPITAL will treat GROUP10 as being greater than GROUP1 but less than GROUP2. (The number '1' is still lower than '2' because the computer is looking at GROUP10 as GROUP-1-0 not as 'GROUP 10'.) If this coding guideline is not followed you may have later difficulties working with Customer Special Pricing and group ranges.

Description

The name of the stock group.

Price Scale

Enter the Price Scale code assigned to stock items belonging to this stock group. The Price Scale is used to determine how price fields are updated when certain fields, such as cost fields, change in the system. For example, if you have 'list price' field, a Price Scale can be used to update the list price by a certain percentage mark-up when the cost price of an item changes.

For more information on this consult the topic: Price Scales.

Lowest Margin

Enter the lowest permitted margin, as a percentage, on stock items belonging to this group. For example, if 5% is entered, stock items that have less than a 5% sale margin will invoke a warning message. Leave this field blank to disable low margin warning messages for this group.

Even if a margin is specified, you will not receive a warning when:

The global stock warning message (via INSTALLATION Workshop) has been suppressed. Consult the topic: Alerts & Messages for further details.
The customer's Discount Formula has been set to "0" (zero). (This would be desirable if you need to transfer stock to an internal department or warehouse or location and don't wish to involve a sale charge.)
The sell price is zero.

Highest Margin

Enter the highest permitted margin, as a percentage, on stock items belonging to this group. Leave this field blank to disable the high margin warning message for this group. Specifying a high margin warning can sometimes help catch the invoicing of wrong or impossible amounts.

Margin checking does not apply if stock items are entered in 'hidden' invoice item mode.

Diminishing

Untick to make the stock group non-diminishing. Stock levels will not be reduced when the products linked to this group are then invoiced. This is useful when invoicing services such as labour. Stock items designated as non-diminishing do not appear on stock reorder reports or stocktake sheets, and are ignored by the Automatic Purchase Order System.

Only stock items newly created and assigned to a non-diminishing stock group are made non-diminishing. Existing stock items are not changed. You must change the diminish/non-diminish status of these items individually.

Comment

An optional note line may be entered here.

GL Set

Enter a general ledger set override code here if applicable, otherwise the default general ledger set will be used. This setting will be ignored if the stock item has a general ledger set assigned to it directly, or the general ledger is not active.

Changing the group behaviour does not affect the settings of individual stock items. When new products are added in Stock Control, those products inherit the default group settings. You may override many of these settings at the individual stock item level. For example, the tax rate of an item can be changed to '3' even if the group rate is '2' by specifying '3' in the Tax Category of the stock record.

Advanced Tab

Sales Target

Enter a yearly sales target for this product group if applicable. This amount is used by certain reports in CAPITAL to produce an actual sales versus budget/sales target comparison.

Commission

The product commission as a percentage for this stock group.

Allow Discount

If this field is unticked automatically assigned discounts will not be issued to this stock group. i.e., freight charges are not normally discounted. The default is a meaning 'allow discount'.

This setting has no affect on rules entered in the Customer Special Pricing Table which ignore this setting.

Tax Category

Click on the to select a tax rate from the Tax Table. (The Tax Table is set up in INSTALLATION Workshop. To access, start INSTALLATION Workshop and select Install|Taxes|Tax Table.)

Acceptable codes are numbers between 1 and 9999. Zero (0) is always tax free. If left empty no tax will be calculated for regular stock items unless a default tax rate has been specified in INSTALLATION Workshop.

STOCK KITS: If the tax rate is set to zero (0) the tax of each individual component will be used to determine the tax rate applicable. This option should not be used with GST.

Hire Tax

Enter a tax rate between 1 and 9999 or 0 (which is always tax free) based on the Tax Table in INSTALLATION Workshop, for hire tax/stamp duty. This rate is only applied when a group of goods is hired through the Hire Manager. You may also override the default hire rate at the time of hire item entry.

Costing Type

The costing method for this item to be used by the purchase order system. Using this option, it is possible to control the costing method of stock items by individual group. Normally one or more costing methods are established via INSTALLATION Workshop for your entire company inventory. You may, however, have a specialised requirement to cost different groups of stock items by different costing methods.

Select from the drop down list. Options include:

Fixed
Cost prices for stock items assigned to the stock group do not change when new stock items are delivered or receipted. (Fixed costing may be appropriate if the stock items assigned to this group are based on a standard cost.)
Last Cost
The latest cost price replaces any existing prices based on the most recent cost price from delivered stock for items belonging to this group.
Average Cost
The average cost price is calculated for stock items assigned to this group, when new items are delivered.

The stock price field set to 'cost in store' (CIS) is then updated, if applicable.

Because CAPITAL supports the ability to cost a stock item by fixed or standard cost, last cost and average cost simultaneously, there is generally little need to set-up different costing methods by group any more. The costing type is therefore usually left set to 'fixed' and the appropriate costing parameters established during system installation. The Costing Type feature is primarily now only retained to support backward compatibility with earlier versions of CAPITAL Office.

Hints & Tips

Remember that the mark-up is the percentage increase on top of cost. The margin is the percentage portion of the sale price.
If you later change the stock group code, all stock items in Stock Control assigned to this stock group change along with it.

Unique Stock Tracing Component Only

Unique Stock Tracing

You may assign unique stock item properties by group. Each time you create a new stock record and assign it to a group, the properties you have specified for the group will be inherited by the stock item.

For more information on unique stock item properties see: Unique stock trace.

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