Cost Alerts Report
Overview:
The Cost Alerts Report captures changes in the cost of an inventory item that exceeds your cost alert trigger percentage. The report will show the prior vendor cost and the most recent vendor cost and calculate the difference in dollars and as a percentage. An example of the report is shown below:
Things to know!
- You will be notified of Cost Alerts on your Dashboard under alerts. This report will only be accessible and visible to users who are given access to this report.
- Cost Alerts are based on "Trigger Percentages". A Trigger Percentage is the percentage change amount that you have flagged for wanting to receive an Alert.
- A global (applies to all inventory items) Trigger Percentage can be set up in Company Settings. You can also set up different trigger percentages for the items in Inventory Departments or Inventory Categories.
- You can set up an inventory item to have a unique cost alert trigger percentage.
- The Cost Alert History Days will look at new invoice prices for the number of days you define as history days and compare them to historical prices. What you define in Company Settings will be the default (applies to all inventory items), but you can override the default when you run the report.
- The report can include or exclude inventory items that you do not count (such as a mop).
- Please note that this report will show cost alerts that exceed the trigger percentage for both increases or decreases in costs.
- For more information on Cost Alerts, please see this article in our FAQs: What are Cost Alerts?
Report Parameters
To Run a Cost Alerts Report, use the Sidebar to navigate to the Receive menu option and then select the Cost Alerts Report from the submenu. Upon selection, a Report Parameters screen like the one below will display:
Effective Date: From the drop-down calendar, select a date that you wish to use for the current vendor costs for the inventory items. Typically, this is the current date.
Vendor: If you want to run the report for a specific vendor, then use the drop-down to select the vendor.
Include Never Counted Items: If you want to include items that you have flagged as not counted items (such as a mop), then put a checkmark in this box. Otherwise, never-counted items will not be included.
Cost Alert History Days: This is how far back in your receiving history the report will look back for new vendor costs to compare to prior history. This field defaults to what has been set up in your Company Settings, but it can be changed.
Group Details By: The options are "Item" or "Site". If you have multiple sites, then selecting by Item will not items across all of your sites and report alerts that do not isolate the site. If you select "by Site", then the item detail for each site will be reported.
Run Report: Once you have selected your report parameters, click the Run Report button to list the report.
Cost Alerts Report:
Selecting to Run the Cost Alerts Report will display a report similar to the below:
The above Cost Alerts report shows all inventory items that exceed the trigger cost alert percentage (both increases and decreases).
Report Information: Item Name, Pack Size, Last Receipt, and Prior Receipt information is displayed. Prior receipt data is only looking back at the number of history days that were selected on the report parameters. The difference is reported as a dollar amount and as a percentage change.
Report Options: For a description of the toolbar provided at the top of the report, please see "Report Options" for help. Report Options link.