Merchandise Hierarchy

Merchandise Hierarchy

Introduction

iVend retail enables a retailer to analyse their sales data through various tools.
By using Merchandise Hierarchies, the retailer can easily organse their products and items in various categories and sub-categories, that further helps them to gain deeper insights into their sales data for the categories through various dashboards.
The above flow diagram illustrates an example of a Merchandise Hierarchy, where Apparel is divided into categories and subcategories of Men’s and Women’s clothing.
In iVend Retail you can define hierarchies for up to 15 levels.
We will see with an example, how we can effectively use this feature.
To access Merchandise Hierarchy, open the iVend Management Console and go to:
Operations > Inventory > Merchandise Hierarchy

Here you can see a few Hierarchies that have already been defined in the system. To understand this better, we will create a new Merchandise Hierarchy.
Click the [F3 New] button.

1. Enter in the Id and Description as – see our example below:

2. In our example, we will create four (4) levels for our Hierarchy. You can go up to 15 levels. Also check the box, Is Enabled.
3. Click on the [Add Root Node] button, on the bottom left corner of the screen.


4. A root node will be added, name it as “Apparel”

5. Now select the root node “Apparel” and click the [Add Child Node] button. This will add a child node to the root node “Apparel”. Name the new child node as “Men’s”. Similarly, you can add another child node and name it as “Women”, then another and name it, “Kid’s Wear”.

6. Now you can add more child nodes to each of three child nodes that we have just created, by selecting each one in turn and clicking on the [Add Child Node] button. You can continue adding levels in this way up to 15 levels.
7. Name the new child nodes at the new levels as we see in the following screen image below.

8. Here is an additional screen image for our kid’s category. Name all the child nodes as you see in the image below.

9. Please note that all the levels should be check marked to ensure that they are enabled.
10. When finished building the levels, Click [Ok] to save the changes made to the new Merchandise Hierarchy and close the screen. Exit out to the menu.
11. We have now just completed creating our new Merchandise Hierarchy for Apparel.
Assigning a Merchandise Hierarchy to Products
Now, let us assign the new Merchandise Hierarchy to a few products so that we can build some sales insights to evaluate this feature.
Go to: Operations > Inventory > Products

1. On the Product Search screen, in the Search Criteria, click on the radio button in the Product Group field and select Apparel.

2. Click the [Ok] button. Now press the [F1 Search] button on the bottom left corner of the screen.
3. In our example, we are using DemoStack data, therefore we have ample products under the Product Group of Apparel to work with.

4. Select the first product that we see in the search results, 100102 and press the [F4 Edit] button to enter into edit mode. This will open the product and on the bottom ribbon of the screen, we see a button called [Merchandise Hierarchy].

5. Click on [Merchandise Hierarchy].

6. At bottom left of the screen, click on the [Add] button.

7. Select our newly created hierarchy from the list of already available hierarchies, Apparel.
8. Double click on Apparel

9. On the hierarchy detail menu available, click the radio button . The Hierarchy tree will appear.
10. In the tree that appears, select a suitable ‘End Node’ appropriate for the product, which in this case is T-Shirts:
Apparel > Men’s > Top > T-Shirts

11. Please note that you cannot select a root node, you have to select the last child node in the tree, that is appropriate to the product. Click [Ok] to confirm and exit.
12. Similarly, follow our example and assign a few more products to different End Nodes, appropriate to their respective categories.
13. Save all changes and exit out to the menu.
Selling Products at the POS that are linked to the Apparel Merchandise Hierarchy
Now let us perform some transactions at the POS with the products that we have associated with the Apparel Merchandise Hierarchy.
1. Open iVend POS and add some products to the Sale Transaction that we know are associated with the Apparel Merchandise Hierarchy.

2. After loading the products, process the payment to complete the transaction – simply click on the [Cash] button on the top left corner of the POS screen to collect the payment. Note that we are using the Apparel POS Design that comes as a standard template with iVend Retail.
3. In our example, we have added all of the products that we assigned to our Apparel Merchandise Hierarchy in a single transaction for the purposes of expediting the explanation of the processes involved.

4. Click [Ok] and Complete to finish processing the transaction.
Merchandise Hierarchy Reports Dashboard
Now, let us see the Merchandise Reports Dashboard.
Open the Management Console and go to: Reports > Dashboards> Merchandise Sales
You can see a Dashboard with a selection of Merchandise Hierarchies in the various panes, such as Apparel, Footwear and Watches.
You can expand the categories further to see detailed data from each category and subcategory.
This is how a retailer can benefit with the detailed insights of sales data provided through the Merchandise Hierarchy feature.
A single product can be assigned to more than one Merchandise Hierarchy if desired.


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