Inventory Alerts:
Since the number of inventory items in your database can get very large and distributed into many groups, the task of checking for reorder status or missing data would be unmanageable if you had to do it by browsing items in the Inventory Editor one at a time. The Inventory Alert utility was created to make this task much easier and fully automated, giving you ten different kinds of alerts to choose from. These alerts are broken down into two basic types: inventory quantity checks and incomplete data entry checks.

Inventory alerts can be performed on single groups or on the entire collection of all inventory groups, an option which is controlled by the drop-down list of group names at the top of the listing. Alerts can also be filtered by manufacturer type, which would be useful if you were planning to reorder from a specific manufacturer and wanted to find all items in need of re-ordering for that supplier alone.
Once you have selected the inventory group to search and set the manufacturer filter as desired, use the alert type list to choose the category of alerts you are looking for. When any of the drop-down lists are changed, the alert list will be refreshed. You can also force the alert search to update the list by clicking the Refresh button.

Inventory Exceeded- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Inventory count is less than zero.

Inventory Empty- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Inventory count is equal to zero.

Restock Alert- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Inventory count is less than or equal to the Reorder Threshold for that item.

Missing Price Data- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Selling Price field is equal to zero. Missing price data will effect the accuracy of show cost reports and inventory value reports, so this alert can help find incomplete data.

Missing Cost Data- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Purchase Cost field is equal to zero.

Missing Prefire Data- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Prefire Time field is equal to zero, except in the cases where the prefire time is supposed to be zero such as gerbs, strobe pots mines etc. Because prefire times are critical to choreography and the proper simulation of effects in general, this alert can help find missing data before it turns up in a show.

Missing Distance Data- this alert will be flagged for each item where the Setback Distance field is equal to zero. If you plan on using safety reports, then the setback distance will need to be specified for each item in the inventory.

Missing Weight Data- this alert will be flagged for each item where either the Explosive Weight or Gross Weight fields are equal to zero. If you plan on using safety reports, then these two fields will need to be specified for each item in the inventory.

Effect Not Assigned- this alert will be flagged for each item that has not been mapped to an effect in the effect library. Inventory items not mapped to an effect will not fire anything on screen during a simulation. Unassigned effects most commonly result from inventory imports from other scripting software, after which the user has the task of assigning an effect to each item resulting from the import.

Rack Shortage- this alert is used to detect when one or more shows that overlap over a common date range will require more racks than you have in stock. The alerts are grouped by date ranges, under which one or more shortages are listed for each rack size that has run short. This alert can be very helpful around busy seasons like the 4th of July, when many shows fired on overlapping dates can run your rack stock empty. The shortage calculations are based on the guns per rack and number of racks in stock, which are specified from the Mortar Stock screen described on the next page.