Discovery Planner
The Discovery Planner is a tool designed to help your manage your inventory by merchandise class. It allows you to load a Discovery assortment off of Acenet for any merchandise class number, adjust mins for the items you need to order, and automatically discontinue any items that are in the merchandise class but not in the Discovery assortment.
This process requires several steps: finding and exporting the appropriate Discovery assortment, importing it into the Discovery Planner, and then updating any changes you have made into Cougar Mountain.
Finding and Exporting a Discovery Assortment from Acenet
To find a Discovery Assortment and export it to your hard drive, follow the steps below.
- Open Internet Explorer and navigate to Acenet (located at http:\\www.acehardware-acenet.com)
- Login to Acenet using your username and password.
- From the Ordering / Invoicing menu at the top of the window choose Ordering > Discovery > and then the category that the assortment you wish to export is in.
- A Choose Order Type window should appear. Make sure that the Discovery Column is selected and click OK to continue.
- The Category Management Hardware Department Page should appear. If you would like, you can review your figures for this department. Click Continue when you are ready to proceed.
- The Discovery Create Order page will appear. You can change the current department using the Department drop down menu.
- From the Merchandise Class menu, select the merchandise class you wish to export. The table will fill with records from the selected merchandise class. Lines highlighted in yellow are items that are in your current Discovery Assortment Level (Convenience, Neighborhood, Super).
Note: While you can change the default Discovery Assortment Level for each category on Acenet (by going to Ordering > Discovery > Change Discovery Format), you can access all three assortment levels in the Discovery Planner, regardless of your Acenet settings.
- When you are ready to export the assortment, click the blue Export link located on the top right of the table.
- A Save File As: window will appear. Save the file some where easy to locate like “My Documents” or the desktop.
- The file has now been exported. See below for steps on importing the file into the Discovery Planner.
Importing a Discovery Assortment into the Discovery Planner
Once you have exported the Assortment table from Acenet, you are ready to import it into the Discovery planner. Open the Discovery Planner by selecting it from the Tools menu. Click the Import button in the lower left-hand corner of the window. Use the Import Discovery Assortment Wizard to walk though importing the file.
Using Discovery Planner
Now that you have the assortment imported into the Planner you must choose and assortment level by clicking Convenience, Neighborhood, or Super. Each level contains a different (but often similar) assortment of items, all based on store size.
Once you have set your Assortment Level, you can begin reviewing the assortment. Adjust mins and default mins to order products you don’t have or need more of. Be sure to do this AFTER you generate your Min/Maxs in Inventory Control or else your changes could get over written.
The most powerful feature of the Discovery Planner is the ability to discontinue all items that have that same merchandise class but aren’t in the discovery assortment. This is a great merchandising tool, but be careful: look over the items that will be discontinued (marked with a asterisk [*]) and make sure you want the item(s) to be discontinued. Otherwise you might discontinue an item you want to keep ordering. To prevent an item from being discontinued or updated, delete it from the table.
When the Discovery Planner discontinues and item, it used the discontinued code DD (Discontinued by Discovery). For more information on discontinued code, click the link below.
Updating a Discovery Assortment
Once you have finished looking over the assortment, adjusts mins and default mins, and deleted items, you need to update the changes into Cougar Mountain. Click the Update button in the lower right hand corner of the window. This will update the mins and default mins to your changes, update all items not in the assortment with the same merchandise class number to discontinued code “DD”, and remove and discontinued codes on items that are in the assortment.