Updating Sales Stock Pricing

Manufacturers will from time to time publish new price lists. If you are a reseller of a given manufacturer it can be a lot of work to update all the various different prices held within TBS (such as your buying price, your selling price etc)

Luckily with the aid of the Import Data function, we can make new price lists a much more painless operation to update

In order to determine the best way to update your sales stock prices, you should first determine which fields within TBS you need to update

This can include (but is not limited to) the default rental price, the default sales price, a specific Price Type price or the Sales Stock buying price - note standard fields like replacement cost or buy in price can be dealt with as part of the 'normal' import mechanism

A standard style import layout must be created in the your Import Data list (an administrators function) which matches the column layout of the manufacturers price list (see the Import Data page for details on this) - and further, the price list must be saved as a tab delimited file (if you don't know how to do that, seek professional help !!) where you may optionally have a column titles line as the first line but then only data lines underneath that - so remove all blank lines

Technical note : in your Import Data layout, the primary table should be set as the Stock Descriptions table - this therefore allows you to determine against which Stock Description field you wish to match the incoming data - this is ideally the situation where you would be utilising a match against your 'Stock Description (Mfrs)' where you have previously entered the exact description as used by the manufacturer here against your various description entries - you can include other stock description columns for updating during this import such as Replacement cost, Buy In Cost etc which will simply be updated as per a normal import data routine

If updating - for example - your sales price, ensure you have added a column from the Stock Prices table, if updating your sales stock buying price ensure you have a column from the Sales Stock table - in this specific routine (and the purpose of running this as a special routine) is that when TBS encounters such specific table information, it will find the appropriate entry to update which matches the department selected and so on.....the routine will verify that the correct columns have been entered prior to updating the information however !

In order to run the sales stock price update, go to the Stock / Stock Types screen, and from the Special menu of the Stock Types list, choose the option : Update Prices Using Import File :

This will firstly ask you to choose the import 'layout' which you have created which matches your import file :

Select as appropriate ! You are then asked to select the internal department (if you have more than one) whose prices you wish to update - note : if you need to update more than one department, the routine must be run multiple times - if you only have one department you will not be shown this step :

Next you are shown a screen to choose which of the various principal price fields you are wanting to update in this run :

The wording is explicit as to your choices here !!! Note : this method will ONLY update prices which are already set as 'Default' prices - it cannot update non-default prices..... After making your choice, we are then shown the standard Import Data file import screen which determines how your import file is to be presented :

Note : in this routine (as implied by its name) we are ONLY updating prices and do not insert any new information so the top question in this screen is redundant and can be ignored for this method only ! If there are any new stock descriptions in your import which do not match any existing Stock Descriptions (which one determined by your import layout) those lines will be ignored in the import......

Then, as with all normal Import Data routines, you are shown the first few lines of your import file in order for you to verify that the data matches the columns you have given - and if all is well, you can then proceed to update your data

If any lines of your import fail to match an existing stock description entry, you are shown a list of these at the end of the import - take care not to rush past this point as the data is not saved anywhere - this list is your only reference to lines not imported !!!

Final hint : with all import routines, we suggest creating a single row import file first to test out your import layouts etc - and if that updates the fields you think it is supposed to - then run your full import file afterwards !!!!