Although it is an extra step when ordering, it's recommended that all inventory be received against a purchase order entered into RICS. This will allow your store to be able to look up receiving records in RICS when paying invoices to ensure you're only paying for what was received. It also allows you to quickly see what you should expect to be arriving in your store in the near future, as well as investigate if you think you may be having consistent issues with a particular vendor.

Purchase orders are most useful when entered in prior to actually receiving the product.

However, if a purchase order was not entered in prior to receiving the shipment, you can use the Change Purchase Order function to quickly build the PO to still have a record when paying invoices.

Please see the Creating & Receiving Purchase Orders SOP for more detailed instructions.

Important Receiving FYIs

• Be sure to never use the "Receive Full PO" button and to scan every item, unless the PO was built using Change Purchase Order. Not doing so means you won't catch any mis-ships or short ships, which will cause inventory issues.

• When scanning product, ensure you're keeping an eye on the computer screen and triple check you're scanning into the correct field. Before receiving scanned items, look through your pending scans and ensure you didn't accidentally scan a UPC into the cost field or quantity field. If you receive a pop up stating "You have entered an excessive cost value, please review before continuing," it is likely you did scan the UPC in the cost field - please be sure to fix that value.

• If you're having trouble receiving (nothing happens when you click "Save Scanned Items"), it's likely a result of your RICS username & password being stored in Google Chrome. You can unsave it in your browser settings, and I would recommend doing so, as a lot of issues can stem from this.

• After you've finished receiving, be sure to click "Close PO" at the bottom of the screen. An Alert Center dialogue box will pop up and ask you if you'd like to Backorder or Cancel any remaining units, and when in doubt, always default to Backorder. This will allow you to easily reopen the PO if you get another shipment, but will not affect your on order quantities when looking at the stock status report.

Cycle counts are the best way to "reset" your inventory regularly, since nobody can expect inventory to always be 100% correct, even with all of the best practices in place. Cycle counts may seem time consuming, but the more often they're completed, the faster it gets. It's recommended that you set a regular cadence or schedule for cycle counts. EX. Footwear, socks, insoles, and electronics once per month. Apparel once per quarter. All other accessories twice a year.

Important Cycle Count FYIs

• Schedule cycle counts before or after store hours, or when you're doing very little business. Product going out the door can easily mess up your count if you're not making adjustments when someone buys something you've already scanned.

• Scan every sized unit to avoid accidentally counting a bunch of medium sized socks as a small.

• If you have multiple people conducting the cycle count, ensure they're all logged in under their own individual RICS login. Additionally, make sure everyone is working on the same cycle count - you can't have someone working on socks while someone else works on footwear, as you're all counting into the same "bucket."

• Please be very careful during the Enter Zero Counts step, and carefully review this section of the SOP. You can wipe out your entire store's inventory if you do this step incorrectly.

• When doing cycle counts on specific classes, it's important to know what products in your store fall under each class so you know what does and does not need to be included. Please download the "CYCLE COUNTS - Verifying Products in a Class" SOP on the SOP Documents tab for instructions on how to pull a list of on hand items by category for your store.

Your non-sellable bin is product that is not in your inventory because it needs to be sent back to the vendor, donated, or discarded. It's important to keep up on this regularly (usually a monthly cadence).

Important Non-Sellable FYIs

• Each individual batch should link to its own specific RMA#. Therefore, if sending back for credit, it should be separated by vendor and by product type.

• If adding product to non-sellable through the back office, you'll get an error message if your inventory is incorrect and you're trying to remove more units than RICS says you have. In this instance, open up a new tab and fix your inventory manually using Receive Without PO.

• Make sure your staff knows where to put returned product based on what they marked it as at the POS (sellable versus non-sellable) to avoid non-sellable product landing back on the shelf or sellable product getting mixed into the non-sellable bin. What's on your non-sellable shelf should correspond to your non-batched items in your non-sellable bin.

• Be sure to complete RMA batches once the product has been returned to vendor so you have an accurate look of what's still in your store at all times.