Overriding a usage quantity or exempting a month enables the purchasing department to prevent an unusually high or low sales month from skewing the average monthly usage, an important quantity that helps determine when to replenish products. The overrides and exemptions are often set up for seasonal items.
For example, if usage for a product is greater during the winter months of December through February, you can override the November usage quantity so that you have enough in stock for the anticipated December orders. Likewise, in March, you may want to exempt the usage quantities for November, December, January, and February so that the average March usage quantity is based on average off-season usage.
The Usage screen on the Product Management tab is where you set up and maintain usage exceptions.
Usage overrides and exemptions are set up at the warehouse product level, not at the global product level. It is not possible to set up any usage overrides or exemptions at the global product level.
Note: As an alternative to setting up usage exceptions individually for products, you may want to set up ROP models for various product lines. ROP models enable you to specify settings for calculation of average monthly usage. For more information, refer to Set up or modify an average monthly usage calculation for an ROP model.
Select the warehouse product on the Product Lookup screen of the Product Management tab if you have not already done so. (For instructions on how to do this, refer to Select a product.)
On the Product Management tab, click the Usage button. The Usage screen appears.
Select the appropriate month in the Usage listing.
To override the actual usage quantity with a more typical quantity, type the override quantity in the Current Year Override Qty field or the Last Year Override Qty field, as appropriate. The quantity you type in this field is used instead of the actual usage quantity in the system's built-in inventory replenishment calculations for the selected month of the appropriate year. Note that this number does not change the actual usage; it only changes the calculation of the monthly usage average.
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To exempt the month's quantity (that is, to have it skipped in the average monthly usage calculations), select the Current Year Exempt Date check box or the Last Year Exempt Date check box for this date. The default date is the current date. The date shown indicates when the month was marked exempt from the usage calculations.
Note: You can type a quantity in the Current Year Override Qty field or specify the month as exempt in the Current Year Exempt Date field; you cannot do both. Likewise, you can type a quantity in the Last Year Override Qty field or specify the month as exempt in the Last Year Exempt Date field.
Click the Add button. The usage information is added to the Usage listing.
Click the Accept button to save your changes.