Items

Items is where you keep one record for each thing your company buys, stocks or sells: the parts on a service truck, the pipe and tubing your installers cut, the tools your technicians carry, and the service work you bill for. Propane delivered into customer tanks is the one exception: it is priced per gallon on each delivery ticket (see Deliveries), not taken from an item's stock. The propane you buy from a terminal can still be a part counted in gallons, as the Purchasing guide explains. Purchase orders, invoices, inventory counts and price lists all point back to these records, so setting an item up once keeps every later screen consistent.

What you see

Opening Items from the sidebar lands on Parts. The left-hand menu has four groups:

• Items: Parts, Materials, Tools, Consumables and Services. Each is its own list with its own guide.
• Change Notices: Change Notices, plus two setup lists, Change Notice Types and Change Notice Actions.
• Material Properties: Dimensions, Finishes, Grades, Shapes, Substances and Types, the lookup lists that describe a material.
• Configure: Item Groups and Units.

The setup lists under Material Properties and Configure appear only for employees.

How to choose the right kind of item when you add something new

Every item has a type, and the type decides which screens it gets:

How to read the settings every item shares when you fill in a new item

• Unit of Measure: the unit you stock and count the item in, such as each (EA), gallons (GL) or pounds (LB).
• Tracking Type: Inventory counts quantities on hand; Non-Inventory is bought and sold but never counted; Serial keeps one record per unit, useful for tanks or meters that carry a serial number; Batch keeps one record per lot.
• Replenishment System: Buy means you get it from a supplier. Make and Buy and Make remain from the manufacturing screens this system was built from; AimRack no longer has the production screens that build items, so a propane company sets every item to Buy.
• Default Method Type: what an order line does by default: Pull from Inventory takes it from stock, Purchase to Order buys it for that order. Make to Order also remains from manufacturing and has no production screen behind it.
• Item Group: groups items for accounting, so sales and purchases of a group post to the same accounts. Groups are set up under Configure → Item Groups.

How to find and change many items at once when a list gets long

1. Open the list (for example Parts) and use the search box or the column filters.
2. Save a filter you use often as a view; saved views appear under the list's name in the left-hand menu.
3. Select several items with the checkboxes, then choose Update to set the Item Group, Default Method Type, Replenishment or Tracking Type for all of them together.
4. Use the column toggle to show hidden columns such as Manufacturer Part Number, Supplier Part Numbers or Created By, and export the list when you need it in a spreadsheet.

How to keep the lookup lists tidy when you first set up

1. Configure → Units: add every unit you sell or stock in, each with a short Code and a name, before creating items that use it.
2. Configure → Item Groups: add a group for each way your bookkeeper wants sales and purchases to post, with a Name and a Description.
3. Material Properties: add the substances (copper, polyethylene, black iron), the shapes (tubing, pipe) and the sizes your installers use, so every material is described the same way. The Materials guide explains how these lists depend on each other.
4. Change Notice Types and Change Notice Actions: only needed if you use change notices; see Change notices.

Where this fits

Items feed nearly every other part of AimRack. A part you buy appears on purchase orders and is received through receipts into inventory. Its sale price and customer part numbers are used on sales orders and sales invoices. Its Item Group decides how those documents post in accounting.