Aidmatrix SCM: Online Warehouse

Stay up to date on the latest developments in humanitarian relief.

SCM - Online Warehouse

Online Warehouse

The Aidmatrix Network® Online Warehouse Plus+ Module is an online application used to manage the inventory of humanitarian relief warehouses. It works well with other modules to provide simple end-to-end inventory management of donated and purchased goods. It uses best practices from the for-profit world for on-demand inventory control, while being tailored to fit the specific needs and nomenclature of humanitarian relief in the nonprofit world. The Plus+ features are listed below.

View the Standard Features

Use Flex Fields to Customize to Your Workflow
These custom, user-defined fields enable you to capture information that is critical and unique to your organization. Capture your non-standard details on each ship and/or receive. Specify the quantity and type of flex fields you need. Determine the way you want to structure responses by designating the field type: text area, date field, numeric field, dropdown list, and more. Then, apply those fields as attributes of the product, recipient or inventory information or add attributes to the receipts and shipments for more robust reporting options.

Localize Pages with International Options
Customize the labeling and structure of the data fields to ensure the proper attributes are captured in the local standard, for example: monetary unit and system of weights and measures. A global base currency is chosen for enterprise purposes. From there, each location can pick a default currency for activity and can override the currency (and provide a conversion rate) per transaction, as needed. Functionality is adjustable per your direction.

The local (any currency) and headquarters’ default unit value of all items are tracked on receipt into the warehouse. As the item is managed by the warehouse, this value is continuously tracked. All reports (current inventory, transaction summary, etc.) show the unit value of the items involved. This enables you to quickly track the value of the items in the warehouse: received, shipped, etc. This reporting can be done in either currency.

Work Offline when Internet Access Is an Issue
The offline mode offers greater flexibility when working in remote or disaster-stricken areas where consistent Internet connectivity can be an issue. We offer the same application and database to be run locally on a Windows XP or Windows 7 PC. This enables you to synchronize periodically with an online copy of the database and application using the Microsoft SQL Merge Replication feature. It even comes with a easy-to-use wizard installer for loading your PC so you are up and running in no time.

Know Your Impact with Custom Reporting
We can build custom reports for your organization and make them “canned” reports in your system. This gives you the custom data views you need and provides you with the metrics to clearly see the impact you are making on your key performance indicators.

Make it Easy with Shipping and Receiving Wizards
These two wizards help walk you through the easy steps. The Shipping Wizard helps you ship multiple items to a single recipient. The Receiving Wizard enables you to receive multiple line items into inventory from a single supplier or donor. In addition, you can choose the option to customize the look and feel of the document that accompanies your products when you ship them.

Create Tiered-Security Access Roles
You have much flexibility in setting user access roles from read-only through full administration. This includes single warehouse and multi-warehouses roles. A Warehouse Recipient Role is available to enable agencies to view and order warehouse items through the Online Ordering module. These roles help distinguish between warehouse managers and standard users/volunteers. In addition, the use of an authorization code at the individual transaction level enables the admin to grant partial edit access to a user for specific items without having to give them the complete security access of the manager role.

Keep Inventory Quality High

Lot / Batch Code Tracking: This enables you to know what is received and shipped by lot / batch and the value of those goods. You can configure the system to support recalls by lot / batch for quality control. In addition, this helps you know the value of your current inventory as well as the value of the goods shipped to each recipient.

Expiration Date Support: This enables a warehouse to track the expiration date of an item when shipped, stored and received. This ensures that only non-expired or "good" items will be processed.

Expiration Threshold Support: This enables a warehouse to set a minimal number of days before expiry in which a good can still be shipped. Warehouse operators customize the setting for their environment to ensure that no item will expire while in shipping.

Expiration Warning: Your warehouse operator can set an expiration warning value so when an item gets within that many days of expiring, the operator is notified. This enables the operator to take every action possible to ship that item prior to expiry and maximize efficiency and minimize shrinkage.

Modified FIFO (First In First Out) Support: Supports FIFO and other inventory management policies. Users can be automatically prompted to process all transactions in a FIFO manner to maximize efficiency and accountability. The warehouse manager can override this if an item is more appropriate to ship sooner (expires sooner, allocated to a different program, etc).

Enterprise Reporting:For users with multiple warehouses: you can easily run reports to see the inventory in all or some of your warehouses and subset this by category and keyword. This enables warehouse managers to more easily share inventory between multiple warehouses.

Leverage Master Data Elements in Multi-Warehouse Environments
The system enables you to set up master configuration data in one warehouse and then share it with other warehouses – for example categories, units of measure, and loss reason codes. This can save time and centralize the quality control.

The system also enables you to prevent updates to any cross-referenced master data fields. However this is not required. If your environment is such that master configuration is different due to unique types of warehouses (e.g. one distributes food and another distributes disaster supplies) then you can enable each warehouse to set their own master configuration data. It is your choice.

Integrate Online Ordering & Gifts-In-Kind Donations Management
The Online Warehouse Plus+ module can communicate with the In-Kind Donations Management Module so that when a donation offer is accepted, there is an option to create a “Pre-Receive” item in the inventory of the warehouse system so the warehouse team knows an item is coming. This saves valuable time on the administrators’ parts with instant notifications and improves data quality by reducing the opportunity for data entry error.

The Online Warehouse Plus+ module can also communicate directly with the Online Ordering module so that partner agencies can see real-time views of the inventory and place orders against that inventory. The inventory displayed to the agencies is directed by the warehouse administrator who has the discretion to display partial views, summary views or total views of the inventory available for order.

Optional Features:

Product is available in a completely translated Spanish version: includes screens, help text, error messages and more.

The Future Shipment Inventory Reservation feature ensures that when inventory is pre-shipped (shipped with a future date and time) it will not appear in the inventory tables in the system. This means you can create a shipment in advance and the stock allocated to that shipment is reserved on the system preventing duplicate orders from being placed against the same inventory items.

The Future Shipment Date Validation feature checks that scheduled shipments are set for no more than 30 days in the future to ensure accuracy.