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When unpacking and shelving products, you may not always know which vendor they came from. In these cases, you can assign just one vendor’s product to the count sheet location—ideally the vendor whose products were received most recently. This ensures your inventory valuation reflects the most current pricing.
To maintain accurate On Hand values, you should create a location for any additional vendors. This is often referred to as a ghost location, which is a placeholder for products not actively counted. Assigning products to ghost locations allows you to zero them out before starting a new count. To learn how to automatically zero out your on hand before taking a count, refer to this article.
Example Scenario: Hunt’s Tomato Sauce
Let's say you purchase Hunt’s tomato sauce by the case, sometimes from Sysco, sometimes from GFS. Each new invoice updates the ingredient’s price. However, when stocking shelves, you may not know which cans came from which vendor.
When you count inventory, you’re counting all cans, regardless of vendor. As long as the most recent vendor’s product is assigned to a counted location, your On Hand value will reflect the correct price.
Why Ghost Locations Are Necessary
Between your last count and the current one, you may have received invoices from both Sysco and GFS. If only Sysco’s product is assigned to the counted location, and you zero out your inventory, the GFS product will still retain its previous On Hand value.
To prevent this:
- Create a ghost location and assign the GFS product to it.
- When you take the count and zero out all inventory, the GFS product will be reset to zero.
- This is acceptable because your count of Sysco’s product still reflects the total number of cans.
Between the last count and this most recent count you may have received invoices from both Sysco and GFS. If you only have Sysco as the vendor in the location where you store the cans and then you zero out your counts you will still have an On Hand for the GFS cans from their last invoice.
Switching Vendors
If you begin purchasing the product from GFS instead of Sysco:
- Assign the GFS product to the counted location.
- Move the Sysco product to the ghost location.
This ensures:
- Your inventory reflects the newest price.
- Any previously received Sysco goods are zeroed out.
- Your count still reflects the total quantity of Hunt’s tomato sauce.