COGS-Well System Navigation
Overview:
The purpose of this article is to familiarize you with the navigation menu features and options in COGS-Well.
We also have a training video on System Navigation so if you prefer to watch videos then please click this link to the System Navigation training video.
Main Menu Bar:
Below is the Main Menu Bar that displays at the top of your COGS-Well display. A system administrator will see all the available Feature Menus (Inventory, Recipes & Sales, etc.) as well as every feature on that menu that has been enabled in your Company Settings. Other system users will only see the menus and features they have been authorized to access by an administrator.
Inventory: The Inventory Menu is where the entry of transactions, worksheets, reports, listings, and setup features related to inventory are accessed:
Recipes & Sales: The Recipes & Sales Menu is where entering transactions, worksheets, and reports. listings and setup features are accessed:
Financial: The Financial Menu will not display unless you have subscribed to an add-on product called "POS+". COGS-Well can import POS financial totals ((sales, payment, taxes, comps, discounts, and statistical totals) from your Point of Sale, and they can be mapped to GL Accounts for sales journal reporting and exporting to your General Ledger.
Company: The Company Menu is only available to a system administrator. This is where the features and options in your system are set up. GL Accounts, Users, and Sites are also set up here:
Tools: The Tools Menu is also only available to a system administrator. This is where your other system interfaces are set up and maintained. There are also specialized tools for making the maintenance of your COGS-Well system faster or easier. COGS-Well Technical Support typically manages the Collection, Mapping, and POS Setup features for you.
Accounting: The Accounting Menu is also only available to a system administrator and this menu only displays if COGS-Well Technical Support has set up exports for you to your accounting system. You can use this menu to initiate your accounting exports.
Log Out: This is a way to log out and log back into the system quickly. You would use this if you have credentials for more than one login.
Help: Our Help and Learning Center is extensive. It contains hundreds of articles (at least one to cover every feature, report, or worksheet in our software. There are also articles to help with Getting Started and Frequently Asked Questions. There are also Training Videos.
Added Navigation Menu (the "Process Menu"):
The Process Menu provides an added option for navigation to the Main Menu. The Process Menu simplifies navigation by putting features for a process such as counting inventory, in the same menu option.
Most Users find the Process Menu a little easier to learn and use. In addition to being organized around common processes, the sub-menus are more compact and they only go one-level deep.
The Process Menu is displayed vertically on the left side of the Dashboard. Like the Main Menu, it will automatically configure to only include features enabled in your Company Settings, and only the features for an assigned User Level. An example of the Process Menu is shown below:
On the Process Menu, all the features associated with a process like counting inventory such as the worksheet, entry, and reports are provided on the sub-menu. To provide an example, the sub-menus for "Count" and "Order are shown below:
By using the Process Menu, a User can use a common sub-menu to access all features necessary to complete a process. On the Main Menu, however, a User would first navigate to Worksheets, then to Entry, and then to Reports in the Inventory Main Menu to complete a process like inventory counts.
Special Buttons on the Main Menu Bar:
Star Button: Clicking this Star Button (highlighted in red above) will create a bookmark for the feature that you have accessed from the Main Menu at the time you click it. A bookmark can be assigned to any feature, worksheet, listing, or report in COGS-Well.
Once you bookmark a feature, it will show up in a selection window whenever you click on the Star Button. You can then select a bookmarked feature to navigate directly to that feature (an example is below example:
Company or Site Login: The Company or Site Login works for System Administrators or Users who are given access to more than one Site. A Site in COGS-Well is an entity where you wish to control and isolate inventory usage separately such as a restaurant, commissary, or warehouse.
This display above shows the name of the Company or Site that you are logged into. Clicking the drop-down button on the right will display your Company and the Sites you have set up in your database. You can then highlight and select your company or the site you wish to log into.
Some of our customers have multiple companies set up in COGS-Well. If you have more than one company, then you can click on the COGS-Well logo on the far right of the Main Menu Bar to get a display of your companies. You can then select to navigate to the company you desire.
Open Multiple Features Concurrently: COGS-Well has a unique capability for a cloud software system that will allow you to open up to 10 features concurrently (entry features, reports, worksheets, or listings). So if you are in the middle of entering an inventory count, and you need to look at an inventory item, you can open the inventory item setup feature concurrently (below is an example):
In the above example, we have opened three features (Count Inventory, Inventory Items, and Recipe Items). The open features are each listed on a tab to the right of the dashboard tab. To move from one feature to another you can simply click on the tab for the feature you wish to access. You can open up to 10 tabs and you can go back and forth between open tabs as frequently as you desire.
Close Open Tabs: The X button will close all of the features (tabs) that you have open concurrently. This button exists to save the effort of accessing each open feature and then selecting to close it. If you click the X button (shown below) it will ask you to save any unsaved changes and then close all open tabs.
Dashboard:
The Dashboard remains open at all times. It is the default selection when you first log into COGS-Well. Once you navigate to other Menus or features, a tab will always stay open on the top left of your Dashboard. You can click on the Dashboard tab to return to it. Below is an example of the Dashboard:
The Dashboard is designed to provide Alerts, report important transaction activity, and report sales and theoretical costs. Different users may see different dashboards depending on how the system administrator sets up the user.
You will also see a different Dashboard when you are logged into your Company versus a Site. Please click this link for a detailed article on the Dashboard.
Main Menus - Sub Menus:
The Main Menus are on the Main Menu Bar. Each Menu has a drop-down that will display a Sub-Menu. An example showing the Inventory Sub-Menu is below:
Navigating Sub-Menus: You can mouse over or arrow down to highlight your desired option. Then click on that option to access it. When an option has an arrow to its right ">", this means that there is another sub-menu of options. In the example below, Inventory>Entry has been highlighted:
Entry Features: The Inventory and the Recipe & Sales Main Menus have an Entry option. Entry Options are used to enter or view transactions. You can see an example of transaction entry options for Inventory in the above example. Recipe & Sales has options for entering or viewing the Sales Mix, Production, and Waste.
Worksheets: The Inventory and the Recipe & Sales Main Menus have a Worksheet option. Worksheets are utilized to facilitate transaction entry. Examples are the inventory count worksheet, the ordering worksheet, and the waste worksheet.
Listings: The Inventory, Recipe & Sales, and Company Main Menus have a Listings option. Listings are utilized to display or report setup information in your database. Examples are Inventory Items, Vendors, GL Accounts, and Recipe Items.
Reports: The Inventory, Recipe & Sales, and Financial Main Menus have a Reports option. Report options are utilized to display or print results. Examples are inventory count extensions, inventory usage, transfers, the sales mix, theoretical cost of sales, cost variances, item cost trends, etc.
Setup: The Inventory, Recipe & Sales, Financial, and Company Main Menus have a Setup option. Setup options are utilized to create, view, or change data in your system. Examples are inventory items, recipe items, inventory, and recipe categories and departments, storage locations, users, and sites.
Maintenance: The Inventory, Recipe & Sales, Company, and Tools Main Menus all have a Maintenance option. Maintenance options are utilized to change data in your system that only needs occasional adjustment. Examples are assigning inventory or recipe items to a new site, merging items, or overriding GL Accounts.
Reporting Options:
COG-Well provides flexible reporting via report parameters as well as a variety of tools, buttons, and other reporting options. Reporting options are provided for printing or displaying reports, listings, and worksheets.
Many reports include "drill-down" options to get more detail about a value. It is worth becoming familiar with as many of the report options as you can as using them can open the door to even more good information. Please click this link for more information on Report Options. There is also a help and learning center article for each report that will explain the parameter options in detail.
Grids:
COGS-Well uses Grids to display Entry Transactions (like transfer activity), Items that have been Set Up (like Inventory Items), and Data Entry (like entering inventory items counts). An example of a Setup Grid for Recipe Items is below:
COGS-Well's Grids provide tools for adding, filtering, finding, and sorting information on the grids. Please click this link to Grid Tools - FAQs for more information.
Summary:
Navigation in COGS-Well is simple. However, there can be a lot of features, reports, worksheets, and listings to navigate through if you are an administrator. The Company Menu is where you can control the number of features and the options you use for those features via Company Settings.
When a User is not configured to be a System Administrator, their navigation options will simplify significantly. Also, User Menus can be configured and assigned to Users to further simplify their navigation options or system access. There is also a feature to Exclude Features from Sites for Users who are only given access to a Site.
We also have a training video on System Navigation so if you prefer to watch videos then please click this link to the System Navigation training video.