Adding Consumables and Setting Email Alerts

This articles guides Order Administrators on how to build their Consumable Inventory on the Facilitron Work Order System and set up low inventory email alerts.

Accessing Consumable Inventory and Adding Inventory

Consumable Inventory is purchased in bulk by the district and disbursed to the sites, as needed, for operations. Items might include plywood, cleaning materials, nuts, bolts etc. 

To access your Consumable inventory list, go to Assets > Inventory - Consumables > Consumable Inventory

Consumable Inventory can also be uploaded to Works with a formatted Excel spreadsheet template. This is provided for proper formatting and can be found by clicking the vertical ellipses in the upper right corner > clicking Import Data > on the subsequent page, clicking IMPORT EQUIPMENT > then selecting Consumables Excel Spreadsheet Template to download the template.

After building your spreadsheet, drag the file or choose it from your computer into the page above, click Preview Import and then Submit.

Adding a Single Consumable

To add a single Consumable, go to Assets > Inventory - Consumables > Consumable Inventory. Then, click the blue Add New button at the bottom of the page.

The page will refresh, and the form below will appear to add a new consumable to the system:

1. Type: The consumable types can be added by going to Assets > Inventory - Consumables > Consumable Settings and clicking the blue Add New Type button. In the future, this link will be a blue + Add New button in the upper right corner.
2. Supplier: In the future, this section will be labeled Supplier/Contractor. As such, you can list the supplier or contractor related to the consumable.
3. Order Qty: Attaching quantities to consumables enables you to track amounts of consumables in individual, packet, or case quantities. Therefore, if you order nuts in bags of 300, and you typically order 3 bags at a time, you may enter 900 or 3.
4. Trade Specific Use: Select a pre-configured trade to identify which group of workers typically uses this consumable. To create a new trade, go to Manage > Website Configuration > Trades.
5. Manufacturer: Select this to identify which manufacturer created the consumable. To add a new manufacturer, go to Assets > Inventory - Assets > Manufacturers.
6. Default Budget for Work Orders: Use this option in a chargeback scenario. An example of this would be an accounting office of education that charges back the schools individually for all services rendered. Each time this happens, a budget number is created and attributed to that school or asset. Therefore, all work orders for that school or asset will default to the default budget. A common example is when the maintenance department may oftenhave a deferred maintenance budget for equipment repairs. This default budget is commonly used for that. To set up a new budget, go to Manage > Website Configuration > Budget Accounts > select the blue + Add New button to add. 
7. Inventory Pool: Every tool room has different pools that may be organized by number, department names, trade names, etc. The purpose for this is to classify tools for use by specific groups. For example, there might be one pool for just the electricians' tools, and another for HVAC tools. These different pools may be created to separate those assets, and to only allow the assets of a designated pool to be checked out for use by members of that pool. To add a new inventory pool, go to Assets > Inventory - Assets > Asset Pools & Pool Types. An example of a pool would be HVAC, and an example of a type would be Hand Tools.

Setting Up Email Alerts

You can set up email alerts by going to Manage > Manage Alerts > Low Consumable Inventory Alerts. 

On the subsequent Low Inventory Alerts page, click the blue + Add Alert button in the upper right corner. As shown in the image below, either select all consumables, or deselect the all consumable types option and choose individual consumables. Select the recipient of the alerts from the Email Recipient dropdown, then click the blue Add Alert button.

After clicking Add Alert, you will be brought back to the Low Inventory Alerts page (where you originally clicked the + Add Alert button). On this page, you can filter through the list of alerts by the recipient’s email address, or by a specific consumable if viewing all consumables is not desired.