Stock and cylinders
A cylinder is not sold, it is rotated. So stock is always two numbers: how many full, how many empty, and a yard that knows its total but not its fulls knows nothing it can send a van out with.
Where everything is
One table: a row per product, a column per place, sizes grouped under their gas type. Every figure is full and empty, side by side.
- Each yard, what is standing there now.
- On vans, everything on the fleet, broken out per vehicle, with a van out on a round saying so because its figures are moving while you look.
- With customers, what went out less what came back. For most yards this is the biggest pile they own.
- Promised, spoken for on orders taken and not yet delivered.
- Free to sell, full stock less what is promised. The number that answers "can I take this order".
Click a product to see the movements behind it: delivered, collected, loaded, coloured by kind, so a figure you do not believe can be traced rather than argued with.
Nobody types the day's movements in
The round already knows what it carried, what went through each door and what came home, so the ledger follows it. Loading a van moves stock from the yard to the vehicle. A delivery moves it from the vehicle to the customer. Empties handed back move the other way. A collection from the yard comes off the yard. The ledger is a record of what happened rather than something somebody keys in afterwards.
Being told before you run out
Set the figure you want warning at against a product, and owners and admins get an email the morning it reaches it, listing everything that is low. It is judged on what is free to sell rather than what is in the rack: forty cylinders with thirty-eight promised to tomorrow's orders is two, and the warning says so. The email is not repeated for a week while stock stays low, so it stays worth reading.
Deposits and rent, which are different things
The trade charges for the cylinder as well as the gas, and does it two ways.
- A deposit is money held against the cylinder and given back when the cylinder is. It goes on the order the cylinder went out on, and comes back as a credit on an invoice when the cylinder returns.
- Rent is charged for as long as they keep it, and goes on the customer's period invoice rather than on an order.
Rent worked out from what was actually held
Rent is for the days a cylinder was held, not for the period. Bottle walks the movements on that customer's account, what went out and when and what came back and when, and adds up cylinder-days. Three cylinders all week is twenty-one. One handed back on Wednesday stops costing on Wednesday. Sizes of one gas type are added together, so two 19kg and a 47kg are three cylinders of rent, at the rent for that gas type.
A customer holding rented cylinders who is not on a cycle that can carry rent is flagged on their record, rather than quietly never being charged.
Who is holding what
Every customer's record says what of yours they have, by gas type, and what that is costing them in rent or holding in deposits. It is the answer to the call that starts "how many of ours has the Crown got?".
What happens next
Rent and deposit credits appear on the period invoice. What is free to sell is what taking an order is checked against.