Managing inventory can be a complex task and ALERE Inventory comes with the tools to equip you to more than meet those challenges.

For starters average, standard, LIFO and FIFO inventory valuations are all supported.

Many companies have inventory that must be tightly controlled either for tracking purposes or because of shelf life.

In ALERE Inventory each item can be tracked by lot number and serial number. Lots can be assigned expiration dates and once those dates are passed you can choose to mark that item as "expired" and not useable or as "degraded" which will make the stock still available but with a warning before they are issued.

You can also require lots to be inspected with a status of Uninspected, Passed or Failed. Lots that fail can be prevented from shipping or being used.

Some companies manage stock that is made the same way and shares the same costs. The only thing that differentiates the items are their traits. For example, T-shirts may have different styles, sizes and colors. In ALERE these item traits can be defined by you and can be different for each item. An item can have up to three unique traits.

Commonly, large inventories reside in multiple locations. In ALERE you can have as many stock locations as you need. Each stock location can be further broken down into stores and, within stores, there can be bins.

Each inventory location can separately track on hand values, stocking and selling units of measure with conversion factors, safety stock, lead time, minimum order and order increments.

Items in inventory can have two images associated with them. These images can be pictures supplied by a vendor or even a picture taken by a digital camera. Storing these images in inventory, along with extensive descriptions, can provide support for your company web site.

Often inventory items have supporting documents such as engineering drawings, MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets), Technical documents or even vendor web site catalogs associated with them. As can be seen in the screen picture to the right, file hyperlinks and even web site links can be easily inserted into memo fields to help you tie all the relevant information together into one location.

 Do you have items that can be ordered from several different suppliers each having their own part number? How about customers that like to use their own part numbers when ordering? ALERE Inventory has a Customer tab and a Supplier tab where any part number may be cross referenced to your own internal part number. Cross referenced part numbers may be used to enter sales orders or create purchase orders.

Companies with multiple locations often need to move inventory between those locations. In ALERE you can use a transfer orders to create a list of inventory items to move, print a pick ticket, and ship those items. The same order is then used to receive those items at another location, check them in with a receiving ticket, and place them into inventory. One document provides complete control over the entire process.

Companies that have a high volume of orders to ship or to receive will appreciate ALERE Inventory's ability to mass receive or mass ship orders. A shipping screen allows you to review a list of orders ready to ship and quickly mark them all for shipment or selectively choose which ones to release. A receiving screen does the same for purchase orders that are ready to receive.

ALERE supports physical inventory counts by printing inventory sheets to assist in the process. The results are easy to input back into inventory.

Day-to-day inventory adjustments such as loss due to breakage or customer returns are smoothly accomplished.

Understanding inventory activity is a key part of ALERE Inventory. An "Activity" tab on each item screen shows all the movement for that item along with the reasons.

In general, past inventory movement can be reviewed on a "Log of Activity" screen with drill down to the source documents. Anticipated inventory movement, such as incoming purchase orders or unshipped sales orders, can be viewed on the "Future Activity" screen with drill down to the source documents.

An "As of Inventory Balance" report can calculate inventory values based on the average cost for any date requested, a specific warehouse location, a range of items, product class or even an item type.

ALERE Inventory meets today's business requirements for a broad range of companies facing complex inventory challenges.