Caskets, Vaults, Urns, Alternative Containers and other inventory are entered in the INVENTORY area of MiMS. The Inventory area of MiMS is located at the MAIN MENU. Once completed, this information will be used to print your Casket, Outer Container and Urn Price Lists and Price Cards. These lists will be used for selecting items on your Statement of Goods and Services. Inventory can be tracked and analyzed in a number of different ways.
Entering Inventory
From the MAIN MENU, click INVENTORY to enter inventory information.
If it is your first time in the Inventory area you will need to make sure the check box for “Show All suppliers” is checked until you are finished entering in all of the inventory items. See Show All Suppliers for more details on the Show All Suppliers button. Any time in the future that you come back into inventory to add in new products you will first want to click the “Save-Next” button before entering in any new items.
The information on your inventory items is spread between three tabs in the INVENTORY screen:
- Tab 1 - General Information
- Tab 2 - Web Information
- Tab 3 - Inventory Levels
Tab 1 - General Information
Category Name: Click the drop-down arrow and click the category of product you are entering (e.g., Casket, Vault, Urn, etc), or just start typing and the rest of the words will fill in automatically.
Sub Category: Is used to help sub categorize any inventory item further as desired. Primary use for this is to help with selecting the correct inventory item in Financial Information.
Product ID: This space is used to store the Product ID of the product. This will be especially important for importing inventory.
Date Entered: Allows you to enter the date that you put the product into MiMS.
Supplier: Allows you to enter the Supplier that the product is purchased from.
**The Suppliers in the supplier drop-down are filtered based on if Supplier has been assigned to at least 1 product of the selected Product Name.
Product Name: Enter this the way you want it to print on your Itemization form and the Product Price List.
Description-1 or Kind of Wood: For metal caskets, use the type of metal and finish the way you want it to print on the Casket Price List, e.g., 18-gauge steel/blue scratched finish. For woods, use a description such as "Solid Oak with Natural Finish." When used for vaults, this description could be "Reinforced concrete."
Description-2 or Interior: With caskets this should be for interiors. For vaults it could describe the interior liner if appropriate.
Kind of Metal: For itemization form (e.g., Steel, Copper).
Weight of Gauge: Type gauge or weight of metal (e.g., 18 or 48 oz.).
Unit Price: Wholesale price (you may want to include tax).
Markup: If you enter a percent, the system will figure the retail price. You may elect to not use this, or overwrite the price.
Retail Price: Enter the retail price here or, if you use the markup, the system will enter it for you.
Price Date: Enter the date this price is effective here.
Tab 2 – Web Information
**The web information tab is no longer in use, information on this tab will no longer send to websites.
Tab 3 – Inventory Levels
Quantity per Unit: For caskets, urns and vaults this would equal 1. For memorial folders or prayer cards this could equal 50 or 100. Use whatever number constitutes one selling unit.
Units in Stock: Enter the number of units in stock when you make your initial entry.
Units on Order: The number of units on order when you make your initial entry.
Reorder Level: The number of units at which you need to reorder when you make your initial entry.
Units Sold: Where the numbers of units sold is stored.
Inventory Display Button
This button takes you to the MiMS Display Room.
The MiMS Inventory Display Room is the show room built into MiMS. Other then the button in the inventory screen, the display room can also be accessed under the MIMS menu.
The Inventory Display Room is divided into 3 areas:
Selection Area: The Selection area is the entire top part of the Display room. The area is where you can choose which items will display and change from 1 item to another.
Description Area: This area takes up the bottom left side of the Display Room and gives information about the selected inventory Item.
Photo Display: The Photo Display takes up the largest section of the Display Room taking up the bottom right area. As long as a photo of the inventory item has been added into MiMS it will display in this area.
Show Supplier / Show Category / Show Product Buttons
These 3 drop-downs located in the upper left of the inventory area are used for selecting any existing inventory product to modify.
These 3 drop-downs are also used for sorting out the selections of inventory items that display in datasheet view of the inventory located under the “Show All” button.
Show All Button
This button, like the Show All buttons in the Setup area of MiMS, is where it takes you to a datasheet view of all the data in the inventory.
Show Discontinued Button
By default MiMS hides all discontinued inventory items from view. The Show Discontinue check is designed to allow you to see those products that have been discontinued.
Show All Suppliers Button
By default MiMS filters the Suppliers drop-down to only show suppliers with products added matching the selected Category Name chosen. The Show All Suppliers check box is designed to remove this filter making all suppliers available to choose from.
This box is normally only needed when products are being added for the first time for a supplier.
Show Room Check Box Button
The Show Room check box is what allows you to note which inventory items are to be included in your MiMS Display Room.
Discontinued Check Box Button
The Discontinued check box is to allow you to check which inventory items are discontinued without actually having to delete them out of your system
Creating Price Lists
- On your MiMS Menu Bar, click Documents then Invoices, Statements & Price Lists.
- You can then either select Casket Price List or Outer Container Price List to open those directly, or Price Lists & Cards to show a list of other price lists and cards.
By doing this, you have just created your Casket Price List. You may now print one original
Price List out by clicking the Print button on the toolbar. If you would like to print more than one of these, choose Print from the File menu. For Number of Copies, change the "1" to the desired number of originals that you would like to print, and then click OK.
In order for your funeral home information to appear correctly on the price list go into the Funeral Homes Setup and click on Show All, select your Funeral Home and click Form View. With your funeral home displayed click on the “Set as Default” button. If you want to include a manager, go to Directors Setup, click on Show All if name already entered otherwise enter it now and then click on “Set as Manager” button.
Since these price lists can be regenerated at any time, it is recommended that you exit without saving this information. So when you close out of MS Word will give you a message window asking, "Do you want to save the changes you made to Catalog 1(or 2…)?", Click No.
At this point if you wish to load price lists for any other inventory items like urns, or vaults just follow the same steps listed in the above example for loading a casket price list, just changing what document you choose to load.
Updating Inventory Prices
There are a couple ways to update inventory prices in MiMS.
First is to manually change the prices by hand by loading each inventory item into the form view and changing the price or changing the price in the datasheet view.
Second is to use the inventory importing utility. The Inventory Importing both updates existing products in MiMS and adds new products into the system.
The Inventory Import is a two in one feature. It will both update an existing inventory item and add new inventory items into MiMS. The Inventory Importing feature is located under the Data Management Side menu of the Utilities Menu.
- First is the Select File window. This window is where you choose the Price you wish to use for updating\add data into the inventory, select which of the worksheets in the excel file the data is on, and select which Supplier in MiMS the imported data is related too.
- The next window is the Column Mapping Window. The Column Mapping window is where you decide which areas in the excel file are related to the MiMS inventory and which key item(s) are used for comparing against.
**Any items that are marked as KEY items must match exactly for the system to recognize them as existing items and update them. - Next is the Select Data window where you choose which columns of data in the excel file are to be imported into MiMS for updating/adding.
- The final window is the Launch window. When the Finish button is clicked on this window MiMS will proceed to do all the comparison and update/add items in the inventory.
Merchandise Retail Pricing Utility
The Merchandise Retail Pricing Utility is designed to help automate updating the pricing of several inventory items at 1 time.
**Before using the Merchandise Retail Pricing Utility BACKUP your MiMS data. In the event that this does not work correctly, you will want to restore your data back to before running this utility.
Access to this utility is located under the Utilities Menu.
- Click on Utilities and then Open Merchandise Retail Price Utility.
- Select either ALL manufactures or one specific manufacturer's retail prices that you want to update and click “Next”.
- Select the Categories that you want to update.
- Click “Next”, the following screen (Markup screen) initially displays the lowest and highest costs of the items from the selected manufacturer and categories.
- Change the Highest Cost to a lower value but greater than the Lowest Cost.
- Enter the percentage you want to markup a product range. (200 will double the cost, 300 will triple the cost, etc.)
- If you want to round the retail price: change the Round to Nearest drop-down to the value you want to the retail price rounded to.
- (Ex. $1 - before rounding $1,234.45, after rounding will become $1,234.00 before rounding $1,234.54, after rounding will become $1,235.00 $45/$95 - before rounding $1,234.45, after rounding will become $1,245.00)
- Click the Set button. The information you entered will be entered into the list and the Lowest and Highest values will change in preparation of your next price range.
- Repeat Steps 5-8 until all price ranges you want are set. (Any items cost that is not between the set price ranges will be ignored.)
- Click on the Finish button. You will then be asked if you want to save the Update List. You will then be prompted to enter a name for the list and save it.
- You will be told that the prices have been updated.