This tutorial will guide you through the basic approach and principles of OK-Inventory software operations.

After reading this tutorial it will only take 15 minutes of work with demo database to be able to apply the software to the conditions of your company and use all of its potential.

Start the software and open demo database. When a start-up screen appears, under "parameters" choose "Demo Databse" from the database list

Click OK and you will see the main window of the software:

During the initial stages of work you will need just two tabs: "Documents" and "Directories"

Important thing to remember: any operations affecting business activity of your company (conditions of stock, financial figures, balances with business partners etc) is carried out through "Documents" category.

For example, goods receiving is performed through "Goods Receive Slip", and if you have paid for the goods to your supplier, you will need to create a document called "Outgoing payment" etc.

When a document is being created, the database will keep the data about its originator user, editor and other important information related to the document. That is why it is impossible to make any hidden changes to the database, such as adjusment of supplier balances, goods quantities at warehouse etc. software administrator will always be able to trace it back to the user who made the changes

Documents processing in OK-Inventory is a very flexible system which can be adjusted to accommodate the requirements of the company of any size and type.

Under "Directories" you will find all reference information on your company. You may find here lists of the products you carry, your suppliers and customers lists, payroll, list of warehouses and bank accouts, cash registers, currencies, etc.

For most cases you will only require goods and business partners directories.

Let's start with the basic business operations. You will see how fast, easy and convenient the managing your business will become.

The tutorial parts are the following:

1. Product purchases

2. Payments to suppliers

3. Product shipments to customers

4. Receiving of funds from customers

5. Work with accounts (invoices) and reservation of product for customers

6. General descriptions of all software documents and their purpose.

Everything is very simple. There are supporting documents in the software for all of the above actions. You will use about the same approach and user interface to work with all of these documents.

In the software window click the "Documents" tab. Un the tree pane on your left you will see document categories. Choose "Goods receiept slip".

The list of the documents in the database will appear on the right and at the bottom of the screen you will see detailed information on each of the documents. You can select single or multiple documents in the list. Just click now on any one of them to see the details in the bottom pane.

If you want to create a new document, click on "+"(plus) button over the list of document or press "Insert" key on the keyborad. The same principle will work for all document lists in the system.

You need to create a "Goods Receipt Slip" (see image below)

There are many useful fields in this form, but for the first time you will only select a supplier and add at least one product to your purchasing list.

Important note: In this and following images we intentionally brulled out the areas of screeshot that we do not need for this tutorial only.

To select a supplier you may either start entering its name in he field and the software will automatically prompt you for the closest match from the database.

For more visual (but slightly slower) method, click on the button to the right of the text field.

You can manage here the list of all business partners in the database. Select the one you require. If it's not on the list, click "+" to add a new supplier to the database.

Now you are ready to add a product. In the middle of the main form click "Add" button (it's the big green button as seen on the picture 4) to bring up the form to add another product item to our newly created Goods Receipt Slip.

Here you need to do generally three things: select goods, specify goods quantity and purchasing price. After that you will be able to add it to the Goods Receipt Slip.

The detailed steps are:

Step 1

To select product click on the button to the right of the field "Name". You will see the database of all products and will be able to select the one you need from the list.

Alternatively, in the "Name" field you may start entering the name of the product and the software will prompt you for the best match from the database. You may also change search options above that field. If you specify "bar-code search" in the "Search options" section, you'll be able to look for bar-code data either entered from your keyboard or bar-code scanner. The software will find a match and put it in the "Name" field.

Step 2

Select or check validity of the warehouse (or store) to which those goods will arrive.

You can select the right one from the drop-down list or click on button beside it and the warehouse contents window will appear

Click on tab at the top if it not selected. In the tree on your left select "Warehouses (all)" and the software will show stock available at all warehouses of your company.

You can see all the current stock items and a lot of relevant information for them.

Step 3

Enter the quantity. Note the fields group at the right side that display remaining amount of this product at the warehouses

Step 4

Enter incoming price (the price by which you purchased those goods, per item or so). The two price fields differs if the Tax rate (marked 5 on the picture) is not zero. So the upper price is with tax added and the lower field is without this tax accounted.

That's all. Now just click "OK" button at the bottom of this form to finally add new item to the document

Having learned how to select business partners and products from directories, you may proceed with creation and editing other document types using the same principles.

Now you need to save your Goods Receipt Slip document. Click on the "OK" button. The product that you've added to the document now added to your stock. You can see it under the tab.

Note: When you save your Goods Receipt Slip, account balance with your supplier will decrease by the amount on this Goods Receipt Slip. This is the amount you are owing to your supplier for this purchase.

To make a payment to your supplier for the goods you received or about to receive you need to create a document called "Outgoing payment"

Click on the "Documents" tab and select "Outgoing payments" in the tree on the left. Click on button at the top instrumental panel

A form for outgoing payments will appear.

At the top section you should check first that date and time is correct. You can add documents with any time you wish. This is very powerful feature, so you may add some forgotten or reworked document with past time and they will affect immediately the state of warehouses and/or fiancial ballance. If the document will be entered with future time it will not be accounted till it time comes. This is another matter to check as you or someone can enter wrong date/time and place such document in oblivion.

These are just precautions as Ok-Inventory automatically sets date and time to current for new documents or items, but preserves the time for already saved documents which is being edited, so you will not lose a precious data anyway.

Now you select which payments type it is by selecting the one from the list. You can populate this list with additional or your own non-standard types as you wish.

Select the "Cash book" on the right. You can have multiple real or virtual cash books in OK-Inventory, so it is easy to differentiate finansial streams in your daily business.

And for the last for this section you'll select "Expenses item" from the drop-down list. It is also a convenient way to make various payment not to fall into one big pile which is difficult to manage and monitor.

In this section you need to select a business partner or "Payee" as it listed here using the same process as with Goods Receipt Slip (see above).

Here is another powerful feature of OK-Inventory software which enables tracking of who of your employees is responsible for processing this payment and any financial relations with your business partner.

In this case we do it from the Administrator's account, so any on can be placed into this field, but when the document being created by the person with limited rights the name of this employee automatically goes here, so you can check "who and when" anytime.

Here you specify payment amount. If your business operates on international basis you can also use another currency of your choice here. The exchange rate is essentially needed for correct financial balance reporting.

On the right you can specify either VAT is include in the amount or not.

After saving this document, the account balance with your supplier will increase. If payment amount was equal to the amount on the Goods Receipt Slip, the resulting balance will be zero. If payment amount is less, you are  owing the difference to the supplier and vice versa, if the amount is greater than on Goods Receipt Slip, your supplier will owe you.

The information on amounts owed and owing on all business partners is contained under tab.

Product shipments to customers is performed through the document called "Goods Dispatch Slip" or "Sales"

This document is created in the same way as "Goods Receipt Slip" document. You need to select your customer, add product which is being shipped to the list. The difference from Goods Receipt Slip is that you can add only those product(s) which is available at your warehouse, as you won't be able to sell something you don't have.

You will see the "Add Item" form to add products to the Goods Dispatch Slip:

First you need to type product name or select it from the product directory ().

The software will show for this product all the information necessary to make amount or pricing decisions on the fly. This includes stock availability, reserve, purchasing prices etc.

Next you set the quantity, pricing category for automatic price calculation or price itself for a special occasion.

At last you can look at the bottom of the form to check the summary for incorrect data and then fix it if needed.

Click "OK" and you see your item added to the "Goods Dispatch Slip" now.

When you save "Goods Dispatch Slip", the product will be consumed from your warehouse and your account balance with the customer will increase, i.e. the customer now owes you the total amount in the Goods Dispatch Slip.

Receiving funds for goods or services from customers is performed through "Incoming payments". The process is pretty the same as described lately in "2. Making payments to suppliers", so just check again there for the main guidance.

For the difference add your customer to the field "payer" and specify payment amount.

Shipping process can be simplified even further. When you create or edit a "Goods Dispatch Slip", you may not the small section on the right side of the form.

It is quick payment creation feature. Just check "Paid" and enter all necessary data (which is by the way is essentials from payment document forms) to automatically create a payment form for this slip so you don't have to go through the hassle of creating a separate payment document manually and associate it with this Goods Dispatch Slip.

The quick payment document section.

And the same principle will work for both product sales and purchases.

A document "Invoice" is required for invoicing customers and reservation of products at warehouse for a specific customer.

Open tab, select "Invoices" and click on button.

In the main section on the left of invoice document form you need to select a customer in the field "Customer" and possibly set an expiration date after which this invoice will be presented with "outdated" status.
It is likely that some prices may change drastically while the customer is slowly processing your advance payment request, so you will not face the situation where precious goods or services is being sold underpriced or even without any profit possible.

Next you add a product(s) or service(s) to the documents. It is very similar to adding items into Goods Receipt Slips or Goods Dispatch Slips which we discussed before, so we will not waste your time copying the same description again.

When you save this document, all selected products will be reserved at your warehouses (you may check your "Warehouses" tab to see the reserved products), it means you will not be able to sell this products to anybody else, which will help you avoid confusion with other customers. When the invoice has expired, the reserve will be cleared and the products will be restocked at the warehouse.

Your invoice will appear on the list of invoices in the database. If you right-click on this document you will see a drop-down menu, shown in the picture below.

If you need to print out your invoice for the customer, select "Print / Print Preview"

If the invoice has recently been paid and you didn't added that payment into software yet, select "Add payment per invoice". The software will automatically create a new "Incoming payment" document and will plug in all the required customer information and payment amount.

To be able to ship the product per invoice you need to select "Ship all products". The software will automatically create a Goods Dispatch Slip with all customer and product information based on this Invoice so you won't have to do anything manually.

You can also do partial shipments. To do that select the invoice of your choice. Below the list of invoice documents you will see a list of items in this invoice document. You should select the ( Items) tab if needed.

Select the products you wish to ship. You need to hold down "Ctrl" button and click the required lines with your mouse.

Right-click on selected lines and choose "Ship items" as shown in the picture.

The software will automatically create a Goods Dispatch Slip for the selected products from this invoice. You won't have to enter the same information twice. This is also the general approach used for the rest of the documents in the OK-Inventory software.

We suggest that you always use additional functions under the right-click menu. You will always find almost everything you need in this menu.

For example, you can customize the columns in any document list or "warehouse" tab if you want to display or remove additional information

Select "Set up columns". You may try this for both document and products at warehouses. You will see the form where you can check the required fields and change their order

Sales and purchases of goods and services:

1. Goods receipt slip - it's a main document by which you register received from your supplier goods to the warehouse. The goods are grouped in the warehouse by lots which makes possible to sell oldest packs of goods first or in case of food supplies you can prioritize the freshest products.
This document will change the balance with your supplier (debting your account)

2. Goods Dispatch Slip - it's also a main document that specifies what goods or services was or will be shipped from the warehouse to your customers.
You are only allowed to ship the product currently available at your warehouse and from a specific lot.
This document will change the balance with your customer (crediting your account).

3. Invoice - this document allows the user to create a document for customer prepayment and/or reserve goods for a certain period of time. This will not change your balance with the customer. Using a mouse right-click on the document in list you can create a Goods Dispatch Slip or a payment.

4. Memorandum - informational document to accompany goods in transit.

5. Returns to suppliers - this document serves to return broken or otherwise inappropriate goods back to a supplier

6. Returns from customers - this document serves to register the returning for example broken goods from your customers.

7. Customer orders - informational document which allows you to receive orders from customers and plan to sell products currently not at warehouse. Does not change your account balance with the customer. After the order is submitted you may print out an invoice for the customer, receive payment, create Goods Receipt Slip and dispatch slip when shipping products to customers. All documents are created using right-click menu.

8. Supply orders - this is an informational document to generate orders to your suppliers. It does not change account balances with your supplier.

9. Purchase agreement - information document to keep track of the contracts. It is similar to a supplier order but has all the fields to store the information on the agreement (contract).

10. Sales agreement - information document to keep track of the contracts. It is similar to a customer order but has all the fields to store the information about the agreement (contract).

11. Price lists - allows the user to generate multiple price lists for any type of products and services. There is an option to add your own fields and automate creation of price lists based on the balances at warehouse.

Finances:

12. Incoming payment - this document is required to keep track of all incoming payments of any type and currency originated from your business partners. It will change your balances with this business partner (crediting your account).

13. Outgoing payment - this document is used for any outgoing payments of any type and currency to your business partners. It will change your balances with this business partner (debting your account).

14. Additional expenses - a very convenient and important document to keep track of you additional business expenses. It will not change your balances with business partners. This document is good for small expenses for a more flexible accounting system to avoid creating outgoing payment documents so that you don't have to create another Goods Receipt Slip for the same amount from the same business partner to keep the balance with him.

15. Financial operations - this very powerful document allows for transfering funds between accounts and cash registers, cashing the funds with writing off interest for additional expenses, currency conversions and balance corrections in both for your accounts and cash registers

Warehouse operation and inventory:

16. Transfer slip -  using this document you will be able to transfer goods between your warehouses. There is even an option to choose products from a specific lot for a transfer.

17. Goods balances entry - this document allows you to add goods to your warehouse. It is not tied to any of your suppliers and is intended mostly for the warehouse inventory or in the beginning of a recount when it is necessary to enter the goods balances at warehouses.

18. Write-off statement - this document allows the user to write broken, expired or missing items off from the warehouse. It is used while doing inventories and does not affect any of your business partners.

19. Inventory Form - an information document which is created during warehouse inventory. You will need to enter physical quantities of goods and it will show the variance between physical stock and information stored in OK-Inventory's database. This document will not change your stock. To make a stock adjustment you need to right click on this form and use inventory adjustment forms such as "Goods write-off" or "Goods balances entry".