ANTE User Manual

Assets & Inventory FAQ

Short answers to the questions that come up most often when working with items, warehouses, stock, purchasing, deliveries, and equipment. Each answer points to the page that covers the topic in full. For a tour of the whole module, start with the Assets Module overview.

Items and the Catalog

What is the difference between the All Items tab and the Variations tab?

They are two views of the same catalog on the Items page. All Items lists only your parent items, so it is the quicker view for looking something up. Variations lists every stock-keeping unit — parents and their individual variations side by side — with a Variation For column showing which parent each variation belongs to. Variations are created inside the item form itself; there is no separate screen for adding one. See All Items and Variations.

When should I set something up as a service instead of a regular item?

Use a service whenever you are selling work rather than a physical product — labour, a delivery fee, an installation charge. A service is non-inventoried: it has no stock, no buying price, no unit of measure, and no accounting overrides, and selling it never touches inventory. In POS a service card shows Service instead of a stock count and is always available to sell, though a cart made up entirely of services cannot use the Delivery order type. Create one with Add Service on the Items page — see Services.

Why can't I add this item to an item group?

An item group bundles existing inventoried items into a single sellable item, so three kinds of entry are blocked: another item group (groups cannot be nested), a service item (shown greyed out as Service in the search results, because services carry no stock), and an item that is already in the group (marked Added). Note also that an item belonging to a group cannot be deleted while it is a member. See Groups.

I deleted an item by mistake — can I get it back?

Yes. Deleting an item is a soft delete: it moves to the Deleted tab on the Items page rather than disappearing, and it can be restored from there. Deleted items still count in the Deleted Items summary card. Deleting a parent item removes its variations along with it, so restoring the parent is the way to bring those back too. See Deleted Items.

Warehouses and Stock

Which warehouse type should I choose?

There are four, and they all live on the same Warehouse list — you switch between them with the filter chips rather than separate screens. Company is your permanent, company-owned storage and the only type that accepts manual stock requests. Project ties stock to a specific project and requires both a location and a project when you create it. In Transit is a staging location for goods moving between warehouses, chosen when a delivery advances to For Delivery. Temporary covers short-lived sites such as events or overflow storage. Every type needs a name and a capacity; only Company and Project ask for a location. See Company Warehouse, Project Warehouse, In Transit, and Temporary Warehouse.

How do I load the stock we already have into a new warehouse?

Use Beginning Balance rather than recording movements one by one. It is a spreadsheet-style screen listing every inventoried item: pick the target warehouse, enter an opening Quantity and Unit Cost for each item you hold, and save them all together as that warehouse's opening balance. Entering a quantity above zero includes the row automatically, and the memo you set labels the record in the warehouse's transaction history. Service items do not appear here because they carry no stock. See Beginning Balance.

Where did the direct transfer, refill, and write-off buttons go?

They were replaced by approval-gated workflows. Click New Stock Request on the Warehouse page or on a company warehouse's detail page and pick Stock Transfer (move stock between warehouses), Stock Adjustment (true the system up to a physical count), or Goods Receiving (log a receipt that did not come through a purchase order). Each one follows the same shape: a maker step collects the request, an approval step reviews it, and a read-only posting step moves the stock. In a Goods Receiving run only the lines marked Pass at the QC step are stocked; failed lines stay on the document as a record of what was rejected. See Warehouse Workflows.

Warning

Stock only moves when the final posting step is completed — nothing changes while a request is being filled in or is waiting for approval. Once a step has posted it cannot be reopened or undone; correct it by starting a new run.

Where do I see how much of an item we hold across every warehouse?

On the All Inventory page. It lists each item once with its total stock and a badge showing how many warehouses hold it; expanding a row breaks that total down per warehouse, with a type badge and a link into each warehouse's detail page. It is a read-only overview — make changes from the item or warehouse pages it links to. See All Inventory.

Purchasing and Suppliers

How does a purchase request turn into a purchase order?

A purchase request is a workflow, not a single form. When you click + New Request you choose a template — Procurement SOP (the default, which runs through supplier sourcing, comparative analysis, PO generation, and a final payment request) or Standard Procurement (which adds a materials-approval stage and stops once the PO is issued). The first step opens straight away for you to enter the tax type, destination warehouse, delivery date, and items. From there the request moves stage by stage, and the canvassing and supplier-selection steps carry the awarded items and winning supplier into the purchase order automatically. See Purchase Requests, Canvassing, and Purchase Orders.

Why is the Done Canvassing button disabled?

Because you have not attached enough suppliers yet. Canvassing requires at least your company's configured Minimum Canvass Suppliers before it can be finished — the default is two, and an administrator can set it anywhere from one to five in Company Information. Up to five suppliers can be compared at once. If a supplier is not in the system yet, use Or create a new supplier inside the Add Supplier dialog instead of leaving canvassing to add them. See Canvassing and Suppliers.

Do I need to create a payment request for each purchase order?

No. Every purchase order automatically gets its own Request for Payment in Treasury, with the order's supplier as payee, the order total as the amount, and the PO number recorded on it. The order's detail page shows a View Payment Request button once the request exists. Releasing that request is what pays the order and moves its status from Open toward Partially Paid or Paid, and it also stops the order being paid twice. See Purchase Orders.

Where did My Purchase Requests go?

Filing and tracking your own requests moved out of Assets and into the Request Panel widget on your Dashboard — switch its Filings / Requests toggle to Requests. Old links and bookmarks now land there with the Requests source already selected, and Discard is now called Archive. The full procurement pipeline still lives on the Purchasing page for the staff who manage it. See My Purchase Requests and Dashboard → Request Panel.

Deliveries, Orders, and Equipment

How does a delivery get from Pending to Done?

The Deliveries page splits deliveries across tabs by status. Incoming goods sit on Pending until someone receives them; outgoing ones sit on Truck Load and advance one stage at a time — For Securing, For Packing, For Loading, For Delivery, Out for Delivery — with each row's button labelled with the next stage. Moving from For Loading to For Delivery is the one stage that asks for something extra: you must pick the in-transit warehouse the goods are staged in. A delivery reaches Done once every item has been received into the destination warehouse, and both Done and Canceled are read-only history. See Pending Receive and Truck Load.

Tip

If you pack the same combination of items repeatedly, save it as a packing standard and apply it to a delivery to generate the packages automatically.

Where do Sales Orders come from, and why is the total net of VAT?

A Sales Order is never created from the Sales Order screen itself. It is materialized when someone locks in the Create Sales Order step of an Order Fulfillment run, carrying over the client, items, and prices from that order's quotation. This is the B2B order confirmation, distinct from a counter sale rung up in POS. The grand total is the net amount because tax is decided once, later, on the invoice — the Create Invoice step raises the invoice in Treasury, marks the sales order Completed, and shows the VAT and tax-inclusive total back on it. See Sales Order.

How do I get a repair started on a piece of equipment?

Repairs are raised from a part, not from the equipment record. Open the part, choose Issue Repair from its Actions menu, tick the items that need replacing with their quantities, and click Issue Job Order. The job order then advances through Pending Repair → Under Repair → Repair Confirmation → Done using the button on its detail page, and the Repair Pipeline strip shows how many sit at each stage. If the part has no items on it yet, add them with Add Item first — the repair form only offers items already attached to the part. See Equipment.

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