Stock

A cylinder is not sold, it is rotated. A full one goes out, an empty comes back, the empty goes off to be refilled and returns full. So stock here is always two numbers per product: how many full, how many empty. A yard that knows it has two hundred cylinders and not how many are full knows nothing it can send a van out with.

The page

Along the top, four totals: full in your yards, empty in your yards, on vans, and with customers, and whether anything is running low.

Below them is one table: a row per product, a column per place, with sizes grouped under their gas type and a line for each gas type giving its totals. Every figure is two numbers, full in green and then empty in grey, because a cylinder is rotated rather than sold and a yard that knows its total but not its fulls knows nothing it can send a van out with.

Column	What it is
Each yard	What is standing in that yard now
On vans	Everything on the fleet. Show each van breaks it out, and a van out on a round says so, because its figures are moving while you look
With customers	Cylinders your customers are holding: what went out to them, less what came back. For most yards this is the biggest pile they own
All yours	The yards and the vans together
Promised	Spoken for: on orders taken and not yet delivered or collected
Free to sell	Full stock less what is promised. The number that answers “can I take this order”
Tell me at	The figure you want to be warned at, measured against what is free to sell

A row tagged Low has dropped to its figure, and its free to sell shows in red. That is judged on what is free to sell, not on what is in the yard: forty cylinders in the rack with thirty-eight promised to tomorrow’s orders is two you can sell, and the warning says so. Click a product’s name to see the movements behind it and nothing else. Recent movements are coloured by kind, delivered, collected, loaded and so on, and page ten at a time.

It follows the round

Nobody types the day’s movements in. The round already knows what it carried, what went through each door and when it came home, so the ledger follows it:

• Somebody collects from the yard. An order taken for collection and marked collected. The stock leaves the yard and the customer is holding it, exactly as if a van had taken it. See Orders.
• The van leaves the yard. The driver is asked what is actually on it, spares included, before they can set off, and that count comes off the yard and onto the vehicle. Not the plan: the plan never loaded a van. Where the office sets a round out itself, the plan is used.
• The driver tops up. More put on partway round, from the yard or a supplier, is added to what the van is carrying and comes off the yard the same way as the morning’s load.
• A drop is written up. What actually came off the van goes to the customer, and whatever empties they handed back come on. Said nothing about empties, what the order expected back is used: a swap, capped at what the customer had, unless the office said otherwise when taking it.
• Undoing a drop takes its movements with it. A van never says it is carrying gas it has already delivered.
• The round is finished. Whatever is still aboard goes back into the yard it ends at: the fulls nobody wanted and the empties collected on the way.

Recording stock by hand

Record stock on the Stock page covers everything a round does not record. Choose what you are recording, then fill in one row per product. Everything on the sheet saves together: if it fails, nothing is saved.

The sheet works like the spreadsheet you might already count into. Arrow keys and Enter move down the column, Tab moves across, and typing on a cell overwrites it without clicking into it first. A column of numbers copied out of Excel pastes straight in, one row per product.

• Delivery in from your supplier. Stock coming in to you: the full cylinders your supplier dropped off, and any empties they took away, typed in. Tick They took the same number of empties as they left fulls for a straight swap and the empties fill in to match.
• Stocktake. Enter what you counted, full and empty. The current figure is shown beside each product. Only the difference is recorded. Leave a product blank if you did not count it.
• Damaged cylinders. Cylinders you are taking out of use. They are removed from the yard.

Add a note, such as the delivery note number or who did the count. It is saved on every line.

Every movement records where the stock came from and where it went, including stocktake changes. That way every figure can be traced back.

The report

Reports, at the top of the Stock page, shows three tables for the last week, 4 weeks, 3 months or 12 months:

• Stock in and out. Per product: delivered by your supplier, delivered to customers, empties returned, collected by your supplier, damaged, and stocktake changes. Loading and unloading vans is not counted.
• Cylinders with customers. Every customer holding your cylinders, longest first, with how long. Click a name to open the customer.
• Van loading by driver. For each driver: rounds driven, how many had the load confirmed, cylinders planned, cylinders loaded, and full cylinders brought back.

Owners and admins only.

The workings

Levels are summed from the movements rather than kept alongside them. A running total and a list of movements are two things that can disagree, and when they do the total is the one people believe and the list is the one that is right. One source, always.

Recent movements at the foot of the page lists them newest first, so a figure nobody expected can be read back to the moment it changed, and to whoever changed it.

Stock is the office’s. A driver sees their own round and what is on it, not what every yard holds.

Low stock alerts

Click the figure under Tell me at, type a new one, press Enter. That is the whole of it: it is one number about one product, so it lives next to that product rather than on a settings page of its own.

Owners and admins get an email the morning full stock reaches it, listing everything that is low. The email is not repeated for a week while stock stays low. Once stock is topped up, the next drop sends a new one. Set it to 0 to turn the alert off.

A minimum for one yard is checked against that yard. A minimum for the whole business is checked against everything, including stock on vans.

Charging for the cylinder

The trade charges for the cylinder as well as the gas in it, and does it two ways. A deposit is money held against the cylinder and given back when the cylinder is: forty pounds to hold it, forty pounds returned. A hire is rent for as long as they keep it, three pounds a week for a year if that is how long they keep it.

Set it up under Products: Add a product, then Deposits and cylinder charges, and pick the gas type it is for. Every size of that gas type carries it.

When it goes on an order

What is charged for is how many more cylinders of that gas type they will have after the order: what is going out, less what is coming back on the same visit. Sizes of one gas type count together.

• A new account taking three, with nothing to collect, is charged three.
• The same account taking three and handing three back is charged nothing.
• One taking five and handing three back is charged two.
• One taking a 47kg and handing back a 19kg of the same gas type is charged nothing: it is a swap.

An order that already carries the charge is left alone. A shop that adds its own deposit line has already asked for the money, and asking twice is how a customer stops shopping with you.

Getting the deposit back

A door that hands back more cylinders than it takes has returned some, and the deposit on each of them is owed. Bottle works out how many of each gas type came back over and above what went out, prices them at what that customer paid for the deposit, and puts the total on the order that was being delivered as a refund due. It is on the office’s list the same morning, and Mark refunded clears it once the money has gone back, the same as any other refund.

An exchange, one back for one out, owes nothing. Most doors are exchanges.

Whether this happens is yours to choose, under Business settings › Invoices › Deposits on returned cylinders. Refund when they come back works as above. Refund only when asked takes the cylinders off the customer’s count and leaves the deposit alone, for businesses that hold deposits until the customer asks for them back.

Who is holding what

The customer’s page lists the cylinders they have of yours, grouped by gas type with the sizes underneath, and when the oldest of them went out. It is worked out from the movements, out to them less back from them, so it is right without anybody keeping a second list. It is kept whether or not you charge a deposit or rent.

A deposit line is money, not a cylinder. It never appears on a van, and it is never counted as stock.

The rent they are running at

On Stock, the With customers card opens Cylinders out and rent, for owners and admins. It is not what has been invoiced, which lags behind: it is what the cylinders your customers hold today are worth a month, at the rents set on your gas types and sizes now.

• Rent running now: the monthly total, and how many cylinders and customers it comes from.
• Being charged: the part on customers invoiced weekly, monthly or quarterly, which goes on their invoices.
• Not being charged: rent on cylinders held by customers invoiced per delivery, who pay no rent. Change how they are invoiced to start charging it.

Below that, the same by gas type, and every customer holding rented cylinders, most rent first, with how their rent is invoiced. Figures are before VAT, and daily and weekly rents are turned into a month so they add up. It assumes what is held today is held all month.