INTRODUCTION

Stock Management system is a software which is widely used by retailers,

shopkeepers, manufacturing units and other merchants across different businesses.
It is used for managing stock of products in their warehouse or in the shops.
Gone are those days when a shop owner used to manage all his sales and accounts
on paper. This job is now performed with these management tools which not only
record the sales but also notify the retailer about the items low in stock.

You must have heard of the Retail Giant Wal-Mart. Have you ever wondered how
such big companies know about:
 Which products are available in stock or when to reorder a particular
product?
 How do they know that a particular product’s stock is finished?
 Which products sales have been high or which products had low sales?
The answer is simple- They use an automated system which helps them in
managing their stocks. Stock Management system helps a retailer or shopkeeper in
minimizing their stocks in accordance with the sales.

How this system Works

So now let me tell you how the system works. We will understand this with an
example of a retailer selling items to its customer as an example. Suppose you are
shopping in a mart. Now when you have picked up the items you intend to buy,
you will go to the billing point. Here the sales person will scan the bar code of each
of the item you have picked up. Now the software will interpret the bar code of
each of the item and match it with those available in the database of the system. By
this procedure the Manager can track the sales of the items from its shop. The
system now gives a clear picture to the manager about the total sales and items
available in the stock. It tells him/her the quantities present on shelves or in
warehouse. So now the manager can decide that which items have sufficient stock
or which items needs reordering. The reordering of items is also provided by the
Stock Management System. It has an interface to communicate with vendors
providing the required goods. The order is placed and payment is done with the use
of Internet.Now let me tell you what happens when the reordered items reach the
warehouse. The item is added into the warehouse by reading its bar code through a
bar-code scanner and its quantity is updated into the system. If any new item is
ordered then the details of the new product is added in the system. Its barcode and
quantity is added in the system. This bar code stored in the system is matched at
the time of billing to update the items in stock.
Now let me tell you about the features of this software. There are main 4 modules
in the Stock Management system. They are:

 Product Management
 Purchase Management
 Sales Management
 User Management

Before discussing these modules in detail I would like to tell you that Stock
Management System can have vast number of functionalities. Each organization
has different set of requirements. That’s why a company using this software can
have different features from another company using it.

PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
This module is used to manage the items being stocked in warehouse or in the
mart. So let us dig deeper and look into the features of this module.

Add Product
This sub-module is used for adding new products to the system. It will require
some basic details like Product Category, Product Name, cost price, selling price,
its quantity.
We can have other additional features like product image, supplier’s name and its
bar code. One other interesting feature this system can have is an alert
system. You can set a particular quantity for each item. Now a notification or alert
will be given to the user if a particular item’s quantity gets below the set quantity.
This will help the user in getting notifications of the items getting low in stock.
List Product
This sub-module lists all the items present in the database of the Stock
Management System. It will have options to edit the details of each item or delete a
particular item from the list.

Print Bar Code

Another feature which is widely used these days by the merchants in their Stock
management is generating a bar code and printing its copies so that it can be pasted
on the items. This increases efficiency and encourages automation.

PURCHASE MANAGEMENT

This module is used to manage all purchases done by the retailer. It helps the
retailer in maintaining the records of all its purchases from different suppliers.

Add Order
It is used by the manager to add an order into the system. It require details like
items ordered and their quantities, date of ordering, suppliers details, total cost. It
will also have a feature of current status of the order which will have options like
Ordered, Pending and Received. It can have an additional feature of importing
order details from a csv or excel file.

List Orders
This feature is used to display all the orders made by the merchant. It displays all
the details like date of ordering, supplier details, payment status, order
status. There will be a option to view details of each order or to download those
orders in pdf file format.
Add Other Expenditures
The company makes purchases of not only the items it sells but other items as well.
Suppose in a store an air conditioner has broken down and it needs to be replaced.
So the owner buys a new air conditioner. This purchase is also funded by the store
and will add to its expense list. This was just an example, but there are many of
these types of expenses made by the companies. These expenses are added in this
interface.

Expenditures
This interface will show the expenditures of the company from ordering different
items. It will also have expenditures of the company apart from these orders. It will
have filtering option like Total expenditures of Last week or Last Month.

SALES MANAGEMENT

Sell Items
This option is available to the sales persons who are at the point of sale. Point of
sale is the place where billing and other transactions are done. So here bar code of
each product is read using a bar code scanner and billing of the total items is done.
After the billing the quantities of each item bought by the customer is also
deducted from the available stock. The main benefit Stock Management system
provides here is that the tasks performed here is all automated. sales persons just
need to scan the bar code of the items being purchased and all other calculations
will be performed by the system.

List Sales
This option, as the name suggests shows all the sales made by the retailer. It shows
details like date, time, total bill, payment status, view bill.
Home Deliveries
This option will vary from company to company and we can say that it will only be
used by those retailers which have option of home delivery. It will show the details
of customer, his/her address, payment status, date, time, option to view bill.

Return of Items
Now there might be situations when a customer has to return items bought from
the store. For these situations only the system provides interface to return items.
This will make sure the returned items quantity is updated in its stock.

USER MANAGEMENT
Before discussing the sub-modules of this Module let me tell you the users of
Stock Management System. It is required here to understand the functionalities of
this module. We will discuss these users in detail later in this post. The users are
Admin, Manager, Sales staff, Purchasing Staff. This module is only available to
the Admin or Owner of the company.

Add Users
This option is used by the Admin to add new Users into the system. It will ask for
all the details of the user like his/her name, email id, phone number, gender. The
admin will have the option to set the type of User. The Admin have to select that
whether the new user created will be a Admin, Manager, Sales staff or Purchasing
staff. The admin also have to set login credentials of the new user. For that a
unique username and password will be set. After the new user account is
successfully created, that user will be notified by email.
List Users
This option will show the admin all the users using the system. This will show all
the basic details of the user with its date of creation and last login time. It will also
have an option to view all login details of each user. Other important feature in this
module is to Activate or deactivate users account. So the admin has option to
deactivate the account of any user. After which that particular user won’t be able to
login into his account.

Add Suppliers
This option will help the company keep a record of suppliers by adding their
details to the system. The admin will have to enter details like Name, Address,
contact number and email Id.

List Suppliers
It will list all the suppliers whose record is available in the database of the Stock
Management System. It will also have an option to view all the dealings with that
particular supplier. Similarly there can be options like Add Customers and List
customers which help companies to maintain a record of their customers. So these
were the modules of the Stock Management System. Now we will discuss about all
the users of this system and their roles as told earlier.

USERS OF STOCK MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Admin
Admin is basically the master controller of the Stock Management System. He has
the rights to manage all the modules of the system. He can add users, delete users,
check the total sales in a particular month, check the pending orders, cancel a order
and all the other functionalities present in the Stock management system. In short
we can say that the admin has total command over the system. Generally there is
only one admin, but admin has the right to give any other user the admin rights.
Apart from admin all other users will have limited access to the system.

Manager
This user will have limited access. There can be many type of manager in a big
organization like sales manager, product manager. So each manager will have its
own set of rights. Product manager will only have access to Product management
module whereas sales manager will have access rights to sales management
module.

Sales Staff
These are the staff which will do the billing at the point of sales. So this type of
user will have access to Sell Items and do the billing work of customers.

Purchasing Staff
This type of user will only have access to Purchase management module of the
Stock management system. They can make orders, check previous orders and add
other expenditures. According to the needs of an organization, there can be other
users as well. Stock management system is a more of a need based system. Each
company can have different requirements and that’s why there is a variety of this
software available in the industry.

Risks
One of the major risks covered by this application is theft breaks synchronization
between the inventory and the database. The information could be generated by
the data stored in this application. The confidence level of trusting data generated
depends on the accuracy of the restocking procedure. Therefore, we are facing a
risk of reckless stock manager who could detriment the accuracy of the data. As of
the reliability of the SSL encryption, a resolution for this could be by developing
SSL and digital certificate policy and configuration guidelines. In addition, giving
a choice to the user to set the minimum level of SSL used by not violating the
policy should convince them the trustworthiness of the application.
Another risk is the competition from other Point of Service software. There are
several large competitors in this field including a solution from Microsoft;
however, all of these tend to be expensive. Inventory Management System will be
a low cost solution mainly targeted at smaller businesses while including the
possibility of later expansion.

Objectives
The main goal of Inventory Management System is to ensure consistent
availability of supplies for consumers. Thus, Inventory Management System is
directed toward owners of small to large stores and stock managers who are
responsible of maintaining sufficient goods on hand in a retail or manufacturing
business. It can scale from a single computer running both client and server
software up to multiple stores and warehouses.