Reference: Crops
From PlantX.net
Overview
PlantX.net uses crops to organize inventory into seasonal and functional groups. Separating inventory into seasonal crops gives PlantX.net the ability to control past, present and future supplies and sales. Crops can also be used to split inventory supplies into functional groups, such as liners, specimen or flowers.
Crops tend to reflect the sales cycle which is typically seasonal. Seasonal crops are usually given names like Spring '07 or Fall '08. Short-cycle crops like flowers can have names like April 01/07, April 15/07 or May '07. Organizing your inventory into manageable crops gives you control over both short-term and long-term sales cycles.
For better reporting, crops can be used to segregate inventory supplies into separate functional products like Liners '08, Specimen '08 or Annuals '09. Although you can use catalog attributes to organize and report on inventory, it may be beneficial to further subdivide supplies into functional groups, such as liners, specimen trees, or flowering plants. The principal motivation for functional crops is to track profitability of each farm function separately. A clear sign that crops should be divided by function is if separate orders are created for each.
Edit crops by selecting Action | Maintain | Crops from the main menu.
Properties
- Name
- The name of the crop. It is recommend that the name be a combination of crop type and time period , like Spring 2005, Liners '08, May Annuals '07, etc. Since crops represent a set of inventory supplies that are sold during a given period, it is recommended the name include that period.
- Available Date
- This is a date that should reflect when the inventory supplies recorded as part of the crop should be listed in the catalog. This date is used to keep crops in sorted order when listed on the screen.
- Report Title
- The Report Title has two purposes. As the name implies, it is used as a title for availability reports. Sometimes the Name given to the crop can be cryptic (like May 01 07) and will have little meaning to your customers when printed on a report. Use the Report Title to give crops a customer friendly name.
- Availability reports will combine crops with the same Report Title. During the growing season, you may have weekly crops for plants, typically flowers, that are ready for sale each week. Keeping weekly crops improves control over inventory but creates a large number of columns on the multi-crop reports. To reduce the number of columns and effectively summarize closely related crops, assign the related crops identical report titles.
- Show on Web
- Crops marked Show on the Web will appear on your website. Use this property to include or exclude the supply stock amounts that are part of the crop.
- Show on Availability (Supply Reports)
- When an supply report, like an "availability report" is printed this option determines if a crop should be included by default. This is a convenience option, since it can be overridden when selecting options to print supply reports.
- Archive
- When a crop is completely sold or is essentially no longer of interest, rather than delete valuable history data, use the archive option. The archive option effectively hides the crop, preventing it from showing during program operations. The archive property is not permanent, and clearing the archive property will effectively restore visibility of the crop.
