John,

> I am developing retail Point of Sales System. I have a question that, How should I manage stock. Should I keep my stock status base on invoice basis or summary basis
>

We do have a very complex POS-System for the clothes-sector (shirts, dresses, trousers...) witch is still growing every day.
The system is designed for Firms with more than one shops and the customers
send goods from one shop to the other and back all the time.

What we actually do is: both.

First we do track and keep every single incoming and outgoing receit/Invoice as well as all the movements between the different shops.

Secondly we do have a summary-table having one record per Article-Color-House-Combination showing the actual status (how many have been delivered, how many sold...) without the need of collecting the data.

In my oppinion it is absolutely necessary to keep all invoices etc. so that You will be able to reconstruct the summary - table if it gets corrupted.

In our first times when we startet the programe we more than ones did have bugs in the updating-procedures for the summary table. Sometimes they came out after a few months. If in this situation You don't have the detailed records at hand, You are in a hole lot of trouble.

One more reason to keep all the details is that You are (at least a little) prepared for futur needs. If You customer comes to You and asks "can You tell me which stock I did have by the end of June 2001 and if You can, would you please so kind and compare this to June 2000", you will need all the single details.


Greetings from Berlin

Frank Dietrich