What runs out before the next delivery? Asking the stock room

A stock room runs on a handful of questions asked every day, usually of a spreadsheet somebody exported last week. What is about to run out. What is about to go off. What we are waiting on, and whether we paid what we agreed. Each has an answer in Rutba Inventory already; the job of an assistant is to ask the right screens in the right order and say what they said.

“What runs out before Thursday’s delivery?”

A store manager on Tuesday. The assistant reads the replenishment suggestions — every item that has crossed its reorder point, most short first — and the summary of stock by branch, with transfers between branches by state.

GET /reorder-policies/suggestions
GET /stock-levels/summary

The suggestions are worked out at the moment you ask rather than stored overnight, so the answer reflects the sale rung up ten minutes ago. It names the items most short first and at which branch, beside the transfers the summary counts — which is where the conversation about ordering or waiting starts.

“What expires this month, and did we over-buy it?”

GET /stock-items/expiring?days=30
GET /stock-items/stock-health

The first call lists units in stock that expire inside the window, soonest first. The second answers the more useful question behind it: of the stock received in a period, how much is still on the shelf and how much sold, product by product. Stock that expires because it sells slowly and stock that expires because somebody ordered three times the usual are different problems, and only one of them is solved by a promotion.

“Were we billed at the contract price?”

A buyer checking a supplier before the quarterly review. The assistant reads the price the contract set for that product on the date of the order, the supplier’s profile — its contracts, its requisitions, and the scorecard Quality keeps on it — and what has been received from it:

GET /pc-contracts/price?product={product}&supplier={supplier}&on={orderDate}
GET /pc-suppliers/{supplier}
GET /pc-receipts?supplier={supplier}

The contract price is asked for on the date of the order, not today. A price list that changed last month is exactly how an overcharge hides: compare the invoice with today’s price and everything looks right. If the buyer also holds a role in Books, the assistant can put the supplier’s bill beside the order and the delivery; if not, it says that part is outside what they can see.

“What is waiting on me?”

GET /pc-requisitions/approvals/mine
GET /pc-requisitions/budget/{budgetLine}

An approver gets the requisitions waiting on them — by their own name or by a role they hold — and, for each, the budget line it would spend from: what Books says the budget is, and what has already been requested, approved and committed against it. Approving is still a click the approver makes. The assistant just stops them approving the fourth request against a budget the first three already spent.

“What is our stock worth?” — asked twice

The valuation report — stock at cost, by branch — is restricted to managers and administrators, because cost prices are commercially sensitive and a till is operated by a lot of people.

GET /stock-items/valuation

Ask it as the store manager and the answer is the valuation by branch, with its source. Ask it as a cashier and the answer is that they do not have access, and that an administrator is who to ask. Same question, same assistant, two different answers — because it asks as the person, and has no account of its own.

Where it hands back to a person

• Ordering. “Raise requisitions for everything below its reorder point” is a job, not an answer. It becomes a plan with one request per requisition, which a person approves before any of it runs.
• Adjusting stock. A count correction changes what the business says it owns; it is a change, and changes are plans.
• Deleting anything. A product, a stock item, a supplier — deletion has no undo, and it is on the short list of things the assistant will never be allowed to do.