Excel spreadsheet quickbooks, send bulk mail excel spreadsheet, reformat excel spreadsheet, year plan excel spreadsheet, excel spreadsheet surgery cost, software vending machine, convert excel spreadsheet label, convert excel spreadsheet standalone application, multi level marketing pay plans excel spreadsheet, parse word document. The business problem I addressed with this project was how to track and analyze sales at a vending machine that my Dad and I operate. We own a snack and drink vending machine, and I stock it, set prices, collect money, and choose which products will be sold. 3+ vending machine inventory spreadsheet pratiko January 7, 2018 inventory spreadsheet No Comments vending machine inventory spreadsheet.Blank-Stock-Inventory-Control-Template.jpg.
The quest for the right vending management system doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
Technology is an ever-moving target these days in convenience services. One of the technologies I get asked about quite often is my favorite vending management system (VMS). Because I am not tied to any one VMS company, answering this question is complicated. There are several great VMS companies who have worked hard to build a complete and all-around system. The successful VMS companies are the ones who listen to their customers for feedback, so they can understand and build the software to fit the customer instead of the customer to fit the software.There are some one-stop-shop software providers who have a solution for all things industry wide, and there are some that do certain things very well for operators, but there are holes in the software for manual entry. To assist in selection, here are some out-of-the-ordinary points to consider when choosing a VMS provider.
Prekitting ability
Live data
You will want to check the uptime of their servers. Have they ever gone “down,” which could put your company at risk for financial ruin and data loss?
Vending Machine Inventory Excel Spreadsheet
Power Platform Solution – Inventory Management
While Electrolock was researching different options for creating their own solution for managing inventory online, they decided to hire Confluent, a Microsoft Gold Partner. Together they successfully rolled out a Power Platform solution used by Electrolock and their customers for Inventory Management.
Vending Machine Inventory Excel Problems
Power Apps canvas app used for inventory management
The Inventory App is a Power Apps canvas app with data stored in Microsoft Dataverse. The app is used by Electrolock’s customer, who requires parts to fix electric motors. The app is used on mobile tablets on the manufacturing floor. All parts are given on consignment to the customer and stay on Electrolock’s books until the customer creates a PO for a specific job or jobs. Electrolock invoices the customer based on the jobs attached to the PO. The customer uses the app to track all parts “picked” from inventory and used for a specific job, and to close jobs every two weeks so that Electrolock can invoice the customer. The size of parts varies from being as little as nuts and bolts to as big as a suitcase. The smaller parts are stored in vending machines and the bigger parts are stored in big bins on the manufacturing floor.
For a clearer idea of how the app works for a customer of Electrolock in the electric motor industry, consider the steps of a worker on the ground floor who starts a job and needs parts to fix an electric motor.
They use the app to:
Create a job and add job line items for each part.
Easily add line items: the app includes a field that allows the user to search for item parts using either the item number or item description.
Enter a “Lot” number that indicates which production batch a part belongs to and the quantity of the item taken. The Lot can be used later for pinpointing the manufacturing date of a part if it is faulty or causes problems.
The customer then goes to the floor and picks the parts from the bins or vending machines. They continue to add inventory in the app as they complete the job to fix the electric motor.
Power Apps canvas app screen for adding items to a job
After couple weeks, the customer performs a “reconciliation” process by validating the count of inventory used and returning any unused parts. The app allows the supplier to return all items that were not used and auto-calculates the total parts used in the job.
At this point, a manager from the customer’s team needs to check that the items used have been correctly entered and creates a Purchase Order (PO) for all the jobs in that time period. The manager uses a model-driven app to create a PO. They assign all the jobs to that PO, thus grouping them together to get a total dollar amount of the PO.
Model-driven app used to manages the active purchase orders
The last step in the model-driven app from the customer side is to run a Power Automate flow that transmits the PO. The flow sends an email with an attached CSV file that consolidates all the parts used on various jobs by item number, quantity used, and total amount per item.
Left: Flow that transmits PO from consolidating all the parts used by the job; Right: Email with an attached CSV file generated by the flow.
The CSV file is transmitted via Power Automate by invoking a FetchXML HTTP request to Microsoft Dataverse, and then converting that response into a CSV table. From the CSV, a file is created and stored in SharePoint, and the Dataverse record is updated to show the transmission of the PO data is complete.
The model-driven app is also used to manage inventory. “Transfers” represent the inventory sent from Electrolock to the client. They can use the Power Apps canvas app to receive inventory which has been created in the model-driven app. Electrolock uses Power Query to retrieve data from Dataverse to currently manage its inventory. Soon, an integration between Dynamics AX and Dataverse will be established to handle transfers.
Solution Architecture
The Inventory Management solution involved Power Apps and Power Automate. Both canvas and model-driven apps were used for their unique strengths. A flow completed the communication of purchase orders. All of the parts relied on Microsoft Dataverse as the underlying data source.
Impact and benefits
Some of the key benefits of the Power Platform solution are as follows:
Simple and automated system used by floor technicians to record inventory used on projects
Easy for technicians to enter parts used as they work with mobile devices on the floor
Timely, accurate and relevant data – reducing the amount of manual entry and rework
Seamless reconciling process – listing inventory, drafting PO, sending invoice
Easy for Electrolock to track the inventory that is sent to the customer with the model-driven app
Reporting – PO Report for Jobs and inventory used, On-hand Inventory so customer knows what is in the warehouse, and the replenishment report which shows which items need restocking.
About the partner
Confluent, a Microsoft Gold Partner, started their Power Platform journey as an early adopter in 2015 and to date have built more than 300 solutions across 100 midsize and enterprise customers. They focus on delivering cloud-based business application solutions on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. For them, the combination of Office 365, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI has allowed companies of all sizes the ability to afford a digital transformation initiative. They have leveraged these tools combined with Microsoft Dataverse to solve a myriad of problems, such as process automation, project management, and field service. It is through delivering an App in a Day workshop at a Microsoft Technology Center that Electrolock learned about Confluent.