StockItem Index

Please use our Tips and Tricks page for understanding how the SkySuite portal works and how to navigate faster and easier.

Stock Item Summary

Stock Item creation can vary airline to airline so this page will detail the basic overview of stock item creation; for airline specific setup please refer to documentation which would have been supplied to your airline.

Stock Items within SkySuite are the products you order from suppliers, distribute and use onboard your fleet of aircraft, catering units or in lounges / stationery locations. Because of this these items require detailed setup to ensure the smooth operation of ordering and distributing the item into your network as well as loading it into the aircraft stowages.

Once items are created only certain fields will be editable, so please ensure that the data entered is correct, if you experience any issues while setting up items please contact the SkySuite support via the ticketing system (located in the drop down of your user profile). Even less fields are editable once an active becomes active and transactions (receipts and issues) are generated against the item. For example once there are transactions you will not be able to edit the stocking unit as to do so would compromise the transactional and financial data against that item. It is therefore very important that all stock item master data is thoroughly validated before an item is advanced from "Provisional" Status

Setup of New Stock Items

To start the process of creating a stock item within SkySuite you will need to navigate to the main 'Stock Item' page in SkySuite, here you will be able to view and edit existing items or create a new one. In some airlines the creation of items is done in the airline master data system and the details are then sent via interface to SkySuite. Usually items created via an EDI interfaces will initially have a "Provisional" status because not all the information needed by SkySuite is available in the Interface. To complete the set up and set the Item to "Current" status you should click on the pencil/edit icon . For Airlines where there is no interface for the creation part parts, to create the new stock item click the add icon ;

Once clicked the following page will be displayed, the meaning of each field is detailed below.

Note: As you can see some fields are optional but these do depend on whether your Airline requires them so please check before leaving them blank.

Explanation of Fields

• Item Code – This is the Stock Items SKU, this must match the warehouses and the Airline's financial system item code setup. The Item code can be Alpha/Numeric and have up to a maximum of 20 characters.

• Item Description – A brief description of what the item is for ease of searching, identifying etc. Note: Maximum characters that can be used is 50.

• Technical Description – A detailed description of the item which could include manufacturing information and/or technical specifications. An unlimited amount of text can be entered here.

• Search Code – This is a Search code that can be used to ease searching for the item in SkySuite, up to a maximum of 20 characters be used.

• Item Status – This will be defaulted to 'Provisional' during setup, and it is not possible to edit until the item is fully set up. Later when you move the status from 'Provisional' to 'Current', the system will check and ensure that all mandatory information for the item has been entered, if this is not the case you cannot change the status from 'Provisional'. Whilst in a 'Provisional' status the item cannot be ordered or used. An item can also have a status "Phase Out" or "Obsolete". If an item is marked as "Obsolete" it means that it can no longer be ordered on a requisition by a Station nor can it be ordered from a Supplier with a Purchase Order. You can still have inventory of an Obsolete item and it can still be counted by stations or returned from stations or transferred between warehouses. If an item is marked as "Phase Out" you will not be able to raise any purchase orders to bring in additional inventory from a supplier but stations will be able to order it depending on the cutover options.

• Cutover Options – This will only be visible if the item status is "Phase Out" or at least one of the ItemWarehouse level status' are "Phase Out".

• "Hard" cutover means that this item is no longer used once the phase out date is reached and this applies to all stations irrespective if there is still stock available when the phase out date is reached. Effectively once the phase out date is reached the item will be Obsolete.
• "Soft cutover means that this item will continue to be used until all stock is depleted and this is not specific to the station. Once all stock is depleted it will become "Obsolete"
• "Mixed" cutover means that this item is a mixture of hard and soft cutover and that at a station level you define which stations have a hard cutover and which ones have a soft cutover.

• No-Fly Item – Used by some airlines this identifies items which are required onboard and if not the flight is grounded thus maintaining sufficient inventory levels of this item are paramount.

• Item Group – The main group the item identifies under, these could be Alcohol, Chinaware etc. The Item Groups are generic and maintained by SkylogistiX and are not airline specific and cannot therefore be amended by you.

• Item Category – More detailed than the 'Item Group', these categories are defined by your airline (Item Categories Setup) and could be used in any way the Airline see fit. They can be used to group/sort and report on items.

• Item Class – Another airline specific field which can be defined by your airline and could be used in any way the Airline see fit. They can be used to group/sort and report on items.

• Item Type – Another airline specific field which can be defined by your airline and could be used in any way the Airline see fit. They can be used to group/sort and report on items.

• Item Loading Group – This is to used by some airlines to split outbound orders for customs reasons or to split outbound container loading into different groups/types of materials.

• Disposable – Set to 'Yes' if the item can only be used one time and is either fully consumed or needs to be be thrown away after use? Set to 'No' if the item is Rotable and can be used more than once, for example some chinaware, glassware, metal cutlery or technical equipment such as trolleys/carts, Drawers etc.

  > Number of Uses - If you selected 'No' for "Disposable" then you will need to identify how many times you expect that the item can be used before it is too worn or damaged and needs to be scrapped.

• Perishible – The shelf life of the product, note that this is not just food or drink this could be items such as toothpastes.

  > Shelf Life (Days) - If you selected 'Yes' for "Perishible" then you will need to identify how long the item can be kept for before it reaches its expiry date and is no longer safe to use.

• Climate Requirements – Items requiring no special temperature control when stored should be set to 'Regular' otherwise set to 'Freezer' or 'Refrigerated'

• Country of Origin – The country that the item was manufactured in, note this may be used by your airline for proforma invoices and other customs documentation thus it is required to be accurate otherwise shipments may get delayed due to customs holding the import. This is the original country of manufacture and not the country where the goods are shipped from.

• Stock Unit – This is the base unit of measure for the item. All reports and transactions will be recorded in this unit.

• Loading Unit – When loaded onto the aircraft which unit of measure is the item identified as. This can be different to the stocking Unit. For example most USA based airlines have a stocking unit of 'Case' but their flight loading quantities and specifications are in 'Eaches'.

  > Conversion Factor - This is the conversion factor from the specified stocking to loading unit you have selected for forecasting purposes. 

• Stocking Unit Weight – The weight of one stocking unit of the item. If the stocking unit is a 'Case' or other unit that includes outer packaging then this weight is the gross weight including the weight of the packaging.

  > Weight Unit - The unit weight used e.g. KG or LB.

• Free Of Charge – This is used to denote that the item is Free of Charge and therefore no costs are expected in any financial interfaces to the Airline.

• GL Account Category – GL (General ledger) Account Categories are used when there are interfaces between SkySuite and the Airline’s financial systems. The GL Account Category maps to the GL Account code in the airlines system to which transactions for that GL Category of item should be posted. Please follow this link for more information about GL Account Categories.

• Item Cost – The cost of the item (Note: This price will be used in purchase orders if a contract price is not defined) and will also be used for all GL transactions posted to the Airlines financial systems. Depending on the Airline Attributes defined in SkySuite this cost can be updated, every time new inventory is received, based on a recalculated weighted average.

  > Currency - The currency in which the item cost is expressed. This is not necessarily the currency in which the item is purchased. The currency recorded here will be the currency in which transactions posted to the Airlines's GL system will be made.

• Buyer – Responsible user that negotiates contracts (procurement activity) for this item.

• Material Controller – Responsible user that manages the inventory level and raises purchase orders for this item.

• Bonded – Identifies whether the item is held under bond in the distribution centres..

• Item Replaces – If this item is new and will completely replace an already existing item you can select it here. This will have an impact on certain forecasting/reports based on historical data as SkySuite is able to look at the consumption of the preceding item to determine/assess the forecast for this item if it relatively new and doesn't have a large or any transaction history of its own. In addition whenever an item is ordered in a requisition the system will check to see if there is still inventory of the preceding item and if there is it may switch the requisition/order to use the old item. In determining whether to switch or not SkySuite will also take into account the cutover options for the preceded item. If this is a hard cutover then the requisition order will be switched until the phase out date is reached but once the phase out date has been reached it will no longer be switched irrespective of the inventory level left against the preceded item. If it is a soft cutover the item will be switched until all the stock of the preceded item is depleted. You can also have a mixed scenario where the Hard vs Soft cutover is defined at the station level.

Submitting the new Stock Item

Once all the above fields are filled in correctly you can then save the item, any fields that were not filled in by accident but are mandatory will be flagged to you when attempting to save, but if successful the following will be displayed;

When saved the item still cannot be used for planning as additional data is required which will be presented once the 'Save' button is clicked.

Additional Setup

Item Packs

Item packs define how the stock item is packed by the supplier and shipped to your stations or warehouses, setting this data up enables SkySuite to take the measurements and weights to calculate order weights and size when mixed with other items.

Depending on what 'Stock Unit' you selected in the above 'Explanation of Fields' section this will be pre-populated as the first record (Level 1) as shown in the screenshot above.

To add the remaining packs simply click the add icon and fill in the required data, for a detailed break down on how item packs work please see the Item Packs Wiki page here.

• Item Pack Structure – Depending on how the airline purchases and distributes items they could have multiple pack combinations, this dropdown enables you to distinguish between them. It is possible that the same item is being procured from different suppliers, and pack structures are different per supplier. In that case you could use Structure A for the default supplier and B for the alternative supplier.

• Lower Level Qty – This is the quantity in the pack size below this i.e. an each (a single unit) would have a lower level quantity of 1 but for a case it could be 12 because 12 eaches create a case. Then for a pallet the lower level quantity might only be 10 as it is the number of cases in the pallet, not the number of eaches.

• Default For Issue - Only one of the item packs can be the default for issuing stock to a destination thus when orders are raised the quantity requested in Stocking Units would be rounded to this pack size.

• Pack Weight - The weight of the pack including packaging.

• Pack Volume - For airlines using metric system the preferred unit of measure to be used is CM, US based airlines will most likely use inches. Pack dimensions are required to be filled in so a cubic volume is calculated.

Please see below example of a complete item pack setup;

Note: The blue pin icon can be used to quickly change the 'default for issue', the red cross will remove that certain pack level and the pencil icon lets you edit the existing record.

Item Warehouses

The ItemWarehouse table defines the warehouses in which that item can be stored, every item must have at least one ItemWarehouse record but can have more. Until at least one ItemWarehouse records exists for the Item you will not be able to change the Status from 'Provisional'. To create a new ItemWarehouse record press the Add icon

The image above shows the fields requiring more data,

• Warehouse – The relevant warehouse where stock will be held. You will need to make multiple records if the stock is stored at more than one warehouse.

• Direct Delivery – Set to 'Yes' if stock is usually delivered to this warehouse directly from the supplier, if the Warehouse is usually replenished from another warehouse then set this field to 'No'.

> Parent Warehouse Code - If stock is not delivered directly to this warehouse and instead it is first delivered to a consolidation point or another warehouse then you will need to select the parent warehouse. For warehouses that are flagged as Direct delivered from teh Supplier then this field will not be visible.

• Security Stock (Days) – Minimum number of days of stock required at the warehouse, also know as buffer or safety stock.

• Is the Item Contracted – Is the item associated with a contractm, set to no if the item can be freely ordered without a PO Contract in place.

• Minimum Order Quantity – Minimum amount of stock that can be ordered from the Supplier is a single Purchase Order.

• Economic Order Quantity – The ideal order quantity that should be purchased to minimize inventory costs such as holding costs, shortage costs, and order costs. This then becomes the round up/down integer when stock is ordered.

• Targeted Days Between Orders – If a supplier delivers regularly then this field can be populated with the optimum or desired days between each order.

• No Days Total Lead Time – The time taken from the supplier to the warehouse, this is the total lead time (Manufacture plus transport) and is used as a default for planning if individual manufacture and transport lead times are not defined against the ItemSupplier or PO Contract..

• Item Status – Separate status to the stock item status but cannot be updated until setup is complete.

• Buyer – Same as the stock item setup but allows you to set a different buyer per warehouse.

• Material Controller – Same as the stock item setup but allows you to set a different planner per warehouse.

• Warehouse Demand Forecast Source – This is for defining which forecast source will be used in the MRP routines for the item at this specific warehouse, there are three options which will greatly affect planning if the wrong one is selected so please ensure you select the one that is most appropriate for this item/warehouse and your Airline set up.

• Auto-Calculated demand forecast based on historical transactions - As per the name this option uses historic transactions to calculate how much stock is required for the future.

• LogistiX Flight Schedule Network Analysis - The state of the art forecast algorithm developed by SkyLogistiX which takes your airlines flight schedule, passenger numbers, bill of material data and other complex data to accurately predict how much stock is required tfor the future.

• Third Party forecast loaded and editable by user via the portal - A manually crafted forecast can be created in Excel or any other 3rd party system capable to produce CSV file and then that file is uploaded into SkySuite for the item to forward plan.

Once all these fields are populated it can be saved and you can move onto the ItemSupplier setup.

Item Suppliers

Next is to setup the supplier that deliver stock of this item to either a warehouse or directly to a station, simply navigate to the 'Supplier' tab and click to create a new record.

• Supplier – Suppliers for your airline should be setup prior to an item being created so can be selected from the pop up.

• Supplier's Item Number – Your supplier may have a separate internal code for this item and if enetered here would be referenced on purchase order documents for supplier ease.

• Manufacturer – The manufacturer of the item might not be the supplier, who may instead just be a broker, thus for customs reasons the manufacturer should be selected.

• Manufacturing Lead Time (Days) – The number of days required by the supplier to completely manufacture this item from start to finish.

• Over-Receipt Threshold – Depending on if over receipting is enable for your airline then this threshold enables you to provide a maximum amount that can be over receipted.

• Supplier Held Buffer Stock – Your airline may have agreed with a vendor to hold in the supplier premises a specific number of units for this item as an emergency backup if required urgently.

• Current – Depending on whether the item is currently being supplied by this supplier it should be selected whether it is an active link or not.

Once this is filled out and saved, you are then required to complete further setup in the 'Item Suppliers' page for the record that now exists. Navigate to 'Reference Data' -> 'Stock Item' -> 'Item Suppliers' and search for your item and supplier combination, and click the pencil edit button.

Please follow the Item Supplier setup page here for a complete guide on this.

Images

SkySuite allows you to upload multiple pictures of your item, this can help identify stock for caterers in the 'Item Catalogue' page. To upload an image simply click the new record button and select a picture from your PC, you can then provide a description for the picture, and also set it to be the default if you are uploading multiple images.

Customs Data

As the name suggest this data is used to fulfill requirements from customs autorities, and for airlines generating the proforma invoice in Skylog, the information would be used. you are able to confirm which exercise type the item falls under (if any).

• Excise Type – The tax type that is associated with the item, you will need to select the most relevant from the drop down.

• Alcohol % – Percentage of alcohol per single item.

• Sugar % – Percentage of sugar per single item.

• Sugar Weight – Weight of sugar per single item.

• Items Per Unit – The amount of items/components that are associated with the item.

• Item Size – Size of the item that could be relevant with customs authorities.

• Commodity Code – This would be a tax code associated with the item, most airlines record here the HS (Harmonized System code)

• Additional Customs Info – If there is any additional information that customs may require you can detail it here.

Once complete you can click save and the item is ready to be activated.

Activating the Stock Item

Now you have setup all the data associated with the stock item in SkySuite you will need to set the relevant status, if the item is not yet in circulation or does not need to be ordered from a supplier yet the status can stay as 'Provisional', but if the item needs to be purchased and/or distributed within the network immediately you need to set the status to 'Active'.

Note: There are two other statuses which are covered below in "Updating a Stock Item"

Updating a Stock Item

Once an item is active you can still update most information for that item, as and when data is required to be updated due to different circumstances.

One of these circumstances could be that the item is not going to be ordered anymore and will be replaced with another item, in this case if you still have stock at your warehouse to distribute but do not want to purchase more of it from a supplier you can set the status to 'Phase Out', but once the stock has run out at the warehouse and is not being used anywhere in the network you can set the status to 'Obsolete'.