Getting Started with the New Item Review

The New Vendor Item Review is a key tool for making MarginEdge work for you! It provides an easy snapshot of all new Vendor Items so you can spot check our work. When you purchase a new item (or an item you've ordered before but purchased from a different vendor or in a different format), our team maps it to a Product and Categorizes it in the system.

This happens once for each new item, and once it’s been mapped, the software will map it that way every time you order it - unless you make an adjustment. Using the New Item Review, you can quickly look over all your new items, check that they are with the right Product and Category, and quickly make changes if necessary.

Need a refresher? Read How are Vendor Items and Products related?

We highly recommend you do this review on an ongoing basis, or at a minimum before each end-of-period inventory. It is one of the best ways you can make sure our software is putting the information you want exactly where you want it. 

If you have access to multiple units in MarginEdge, and you have a new vendor item purchased in multiple units, this report will streamline the process and only show you the vendor item from the unit where it was first ordered. If that vendor items needs a product or category change, the edits you make will then take effect across all units. 

(If you have been with us a while, yes, this used to be called the Setup Verification Report :) 

Video Tutorial on how to use the New Item Review

To view in full-screen mode, click the bracket "[ ]" to the bottom right of the video.

Step by Step Overview

Go to PRODUCTS > NEW ITEM REVIEW

The first thing to do is set the date range from the current day back to the day after the last time you checked the report. You can do this by selecting the date range menu at the top of the report.

The report shows you all the new Vendor Items you’ve purchased during the period selected. There is a lot of helpful information in this report, but it is most important that you check the to ensure these items were mapped to the correct Product and Category.  

Some helpful tips for navigating this page: 

• To help you see this in the format it makes the most sense to you, you can filter your view by Category, use the search bar up top and sort by any column by clicking on that header. 
• The number shown in parentheses next to the Product name indicates how many Vendor Items are currently associated with this Product. 
  • In the screenshot above, you can see that while this is the first time they have ordered the particular Vendor Item of "Syr Lemonade mm", it's actually the SIXTH vendor item associated with the Product "Lemonade BIB". Chances are high that the Category is correct.
  • For the last item, "Fz Cake Tres Leches", this is the first time we have seen this and a new Product has been created "Cake, Tres Leches". You know this because it shows "(1)" next to the Product. Pay special attention to this new Product and Category.

Changing the Product Category

If any Product isn’t categorized correctly, changing it is easy: just click on the Product name (hyperlinked in blue) and change it.

Select the Category, and change it to whatever Category you’d like

If you would like the Product to be reported in more than one Category, you can do that too: Just select the Add Category button, then assign whatever percentage you would like allocated to each Category.

Other Options for Adjustments

Beyond changing the category, you can adjust many other aspects of the Product directly from this screen. This article, Finding and Editing Your Products, contains full instructions on how to navigate the Product page.

A quick recap of the various options: 

1. Tax Exempt - Check this box if you are not required to pay taxes for this product
   [Making Products Tax Exempt]
2. Should be inventoried -  Check this box if you intend to inventory the product
3. Count Sheets - With the previous box checked (#4), you can now indicate which count sheet(s) you want this product on.   
   [Count Sheets]
4. See this Product on Reports - How do you want to see this product on your reports? 
   [How to change the count by unit of measure of a product]
5. Reassign - If the vendor item you see here should belong to a different product, you can click to "Reassign" to choose the correct product. (Similarly, the small link under the vendor items allows you to add a missing vendor item to this product.)
   [How to Fix a Vendor Item Associated with the Wrong Product]
6. Units Counted on Inventory - here is where you have the ability to add multiple count-by units so you can count a product on your inventory multiple ways
   [Adding Multiple Count-bys on Products]
7. Unit of Measure – this is where you add any conversions needed for your recipes.
   A conversion is needed when how you count or measure the product differs from how you purchase it. 
   [Recipe Conversions]