Batches, Serial Numbers and Sets: Knowing Exactly What You Have

Most shops know how many of something they have. Far fewer know which ones.

That sounds like a small difference until the day a customer brings back a bad packet, or claims a warranty on a phone, or you need to know whether the bread on the shelf was baked yesterday or last week. Three features in Jokoor answer that question. Here is what each one is for, who actually needs it, and exactly which buttons to press.

1. Batch tracking, for anything with an expiry or a bad delivery

Who needs it: bakeries, water bottlers, pharmacies, cosmetics shops, food importers. Anyone whose stock goes off, or arrives in lots that can differ from each other.

The problem it solves: a customer complains that a packet tasted wrong. Without batches, you have no way to tell whether that was one bad packet or five hundred. The only safe response is to pull everything off the shelf, which is enormously expensive for a problem that might have affected one morning's production.

What you get: every delivery or production run carries its own batch number and expiry date. You sell the oldest stock first, you can see what is about to expire before it does, and if one lot turns out to be bad you know precisely which one and where it went.

How to switch it on

1. Open Settings, then Inventory.
2. Under Advanced Tracking, tick Enable batch tracking.
3. Press Save Changes.
4. Open any product that needs it and tick Enable batch tracking for this product. You do this per product, because tracking batches on bottled water makes sense and tracking them on a plastic chair does not.

From then on, when you receive that product or produce it, Jokoor asks for the batch number and the date. When you sell it, it knows which batch went out.

2. Serial numbers, for anything you will argue about later

Who needs it: phone shops, electronics, generator and solar dealers, computer shops. Anything sold one at a time with a warranty attached.

The problem it solves: a customer walks in six months later with a phone and a warranty claim. Is it the phone you sold him? Did you sell it at all? On what date, and to whom? Without serial numbers this is a conversation about memory and trust, and it usually ends with somebody unhappy.

What you get: each individual unit is tracked from the day it arrives to the day it leaves, tied to the customer who bought it. Warranty questions answer themselves. So does the more awkward question of whether a unit that turned up somewhere else was ever yours.

How to switch it on

1. Open Settings, then Inventory.
2. Under Advanced Tracking, tick Enable serial number tracking.
3. Press Save Changes.
4. Switch it on for the specific products that need it, the same way as batches.

A word of warning from experience: only turn this on for things that genuinely need it. Serial numbers mean somebody types a number for every single unit that moves. That is worth it for a laptop. It is not worth it for a packet of biscuits.

3. Sets and assemblies, for anything made of other things

This one covers two different situations, and choosing the wrong one causes real problems later. Jokoor asks you which it is when you create the assembly.

Sold as a set

A gift hamper. A combo meal. A promotional pack of three items tied together. You never make these in advance and you never keep them on a shelf as a single thing. They exist only at the moment of sale.

When you sell one, the parts come out of stock. Sell one hamper containing a bottle of oil, a bag of rice and a tin of milk, and all three drop by one. The hamper itself is never counted as stock, because it was never really a thing until somebody bought it.

Made in advance

Bread made from flour, sugar and yeast. Yogurt made from milk and culture. Bottled water made from preforms, caps and treated water.

Here you genuinely make the thing before anyone buys it. The raw materials come out of stock when you produce, and the finished item goes into stock as something you can count on a shelf and sell like any other product.

The difference matters. A bakery that sets up bread as a set would find the flour only leaving stock when a loaf sells, which tells them nothing about what they actually baked this morning.

How to create one

1. Open Settings, then Inventory, and under Advanced Tracking tick Enable assemblies. Save.
2. Assemblies and Production now appear under Inventory in your menu.
3. Go to Assemblies and press Add.
4. Choose the Type: sold as a set, or made in advance.
5. Pick the product this assembly produces.
6. Add the components and the quantity of each, for one finished unit.
7. Press Create Assembly.

Making a batch

For anything made in advance, this is where you record production.

1. Go to Production and start a new run.
2. Pick the assembly and enter how many you are making.
3. Jokoor shows what materials that needs and what you actually have, and marks anything short.
4. Save it as a draft. You can do this even when you are short, which is useful for working out what to buy.
5. When you have the materials, press Submit. The raw materials come out of stock and the finished goods go in.

If you try to submit a run you do not have the materials for, Jokoor stops you and tells you exactly what is short and by how much. Something like: not enough Flour, you need 50 kg and have 32 kg. You can then buy what you need and come back to it.

A submitted run cannot be edited, only cancelled. That is deliberate. A production record that can be quietly changed after the fact is not a record of anything.

Which of these do you actually need?

Do not switch on all three because they are there. Each one adds a step to somebody's day, and a feature that makes your staff slower without solving a real problem will simply be worked around.

Start with the one that costs you money today. If you have thrown away expired stock this year, start with batches. If you have argued with a customer about a warranty, start with serial numbers. If you make something out of something else and you do not really know what a unit costs you, start with assemblies.

Then add the next one when it earns its place.