Departments are general groupings of products which have certain features in common. Every product belongs to a department.

How many departments and the way in which items are categorised to fit into the departments is a matter for store management to decide.

In general the products within a department should:-

• have the same rate of retail tax applied.
• be a category of goods which management would like to know grouped sales figures and profit.
• have similar profit margins
• not have perishable and non-perishable items in the same department. For example, you would not put fresh bread in the same department as tinned beans.
• have stock handled in a similar manner. For example, you will never track the quantity on hand for services you provide such as consulting time, fitting services, freight. These services should be placed in a different department to bottled drinks where you probably will want to track the quantity on hand.
• It is best to implement Stock Control one department at a time. It is usually too much work to implement stock control on everything at once. Keeping this in mind can help to logically categorise which departments to use.

Restaurants
In a restaurant implementation, it is a good idea if there is a separate department for each "Page" on the printed menu that customers use to order. PocketPos uses the departments as the first "category" on then Sell Menu and then the items in that department as the next level menu choice.

For example, if there is a page on the restaurant menu called "Appetisers", then you should create a department of the same name, and put the items on that page of the menu into the "Appetisers" department.

When a waiter was taking the order from the customer, they would tap the "Sell" menu and a submenu of the departments (or pages of the printed menu) would appear. When the waiter tapped the Appetisers the items in that department would appear.

Even if you do not plan to use Pocket PC's running PocketPos, this is a good way of categorising departments in a restaurant.

Imported Stock Files
If you have a stock file from a main supplier that you plan to import into SELLmatix, then it is likely that this stock file already has department information. In these cases, it is best to stick with the existing departments, though some of these files are extremely detailed and you may wish to use a subset.

Strategy
Start entering the obvious departments into SELLmatix Control. Don't try and make an exhaustive list of every possible department now. That won't happen because there will always be other departments that you will need to add later. You can enter and edit department records from the Edit Menu of SELLmatix Control. The following links provide information on:-

Selecting Records

Department Maintenance

Suggestions
For each product there are some fields that can use a department default instead of setting that flag on an item by item basis. We suggest that wherever possible you use the department default because then you can change that flag once in the department record instead of changing this flag for every item in that department.

Three of these fields are:-

• Inventory Items by default. We strongly suggest that you leave this item Unchecked in the beginning. If this flag is set, and stock receipts are not entered, the quantity on hand will still reduce for each item sold and large negative numbers will accumulate. Later, when you are ready to track stock for this department you can change this setting.
• Prices include Tax by default. We suggest that this button is always checked, and that the prices you enter for each item should be calculated so that they include any applicable tax. We suggest using this method even where the rate of tax charged is zero. If this flag is set, the price SELLmatix uses when an item is sold is the price entered in the product record. If this flag is not set, then the price charged is the amount in the product record, plus the applicable amount of tax.
• Show on Sell Menu. We suggest that this flag be set for all departments which contain goods that are not barcode scanned, regardless of whether you plan to use the Sell Menu or PocketPos, because if this flag is set and you change your mind later, the change will be easy to implement rather than needing to be changed for each item.

If you haven't already done so, why not activate SELLmatix now and start enjoying the benefits of the system now. With SELLmatix, you don't have to pay for everything up front. You can implement the system in stages adding parts as you go from the savings you make. As little as $30 gets you started. No risk. No long term commitment. Activate Now!

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