As we continue to look at Odoo applications that will be valuable in our process of setting up a new food service industry business, we find ourselves needing an all-in-one solution for our inventory process.

We have previously looked at using Point of Sale, Purchase, and Manufacturing (click those links to read our previous articles and view our videos showing off a bit of what Odoo can do), and today we are looking at the Inventory application.

Most businesses need a way to track what they have in stock. Not only what is in stock, but also an easy way to view incoming receipts and outgoing deliveries, and where these items come from and are stored. As a small restaurant, we would also need a viable solution for tracking best-by and expiration dates so that we only use the best possible ingredients in our food as well as to stay on the right side of the law when it comes to food safety guidelines. Odoo has got us covered.

Now, we at Hibou have some great devs on our team to handle customizations you may need, but we are going to look primarily at stock Odoo, what you get out of the box and ready to go. 

We've got the ability to set up parent/child locations within our warehouse. That is to say, in our kitchen we have our coolers, our dry pantry, our freezer. Using Odoo's Putaway Rules, items can quickly and easily be taken from their received location and placed in their proper space. Sure, moving those items physically is easy. The bonus of using Odoo's Inventory application is that we can look up any product we use or serve, and with just a few clicks of our mouse, view its entire history. When a certain lot of beef was delivered, where it is stored, how much we paid for it and from which vendor. It's order and delivery dates, it's ordered and delivered quantities, and how much we currently have on hand. Further, we can set a minimum threshold on an item so that when an item's stock level drops to a pre-determined amount, a purchase or manufacturing order can automatically be kicked off to make sure you never run out of that item. 

We can use the Lots and Serials function to assign numbers to each delivery. Let's say we receive a delivery of milk. We can enter that milk's existing lot or serial number or we can make up our own using the date of delivery as the lot number. With this method, we can get alerts telling us when that milk is best used by, or when it is past its use-by date and then perform what is called a Scrap Operation to discard that milk so that it won't accidentally be served to our customers. A benefit of the Scrap Operation? We can set it up to hit an accounting journal so that money lost from our inventory is kept track of to keep our books accurate. 

In Inventory, we can set up Barcodes (another easy to use Odoo app) so that we can reorder items quickly by scanning an item. Barcodes can also be used in performing those Scrap Operations or Inventory Adjustments. We can turn on Consignment options or enable Subcontracting if we sell some delicious baked goods from a local bakery. There is so much that can be achieved in this one application that works beautifully alongside other Odoo applications like Sales, Purchase, Accounting, the list goes on and on.

Let's take a peek at how some of these things work in action!

I'm only scratching the surface here, but fear not! We offer hands-on training to teach you to use the tools that Odoo gives us. You can schedule an appointment and set up a time to explain your unique business needs or ask for a quick demo of Odoo's apps. We also have Inventory documents in our ever-growing library of documentation, where we post Odoo version-specific explanations and workflows of the many components to many Odoo applications. If that still isn't enough, we also offer Courses!