Cauldron is here

We built our own inventory system. It is called Cauldron, it lives at cauldron.thehealinghedgewitch.com, and you sign in with the same Google account you use for Hedgekeeper. As of Sunday, September 27, Cauldron is live: it is the system that keeps the stores' stock right, and Thrive no longer does. Here is what it does for you.

What changed lately

Each line here answers something the team sent from Feedback. When one goes live, the person who sent it gets this line by email.

• October 3: Products search no longer stops at the first 50. The match line now has Show all matches. (#207)
• October 3: On a transfer, type a name in the scan box to find an item and add it, for anything with no barcode or a wrong one. (#204)
• October 3: The Feedback page shows where each note stands (waiting, fix ready, live, needs Christy), and you get an email when your fix goes live.

Ordering from a vendor

Purchase orders has two doors. The top one is Order from a vendor: pick the vendor, start the order, and Suggest from reorder points fills it with everything that vendor supplies that is at or below its min, topped up to its max. Take off what you do not want with the x at the end of the row. Copy order sheet gives you the whole list to paste into Faire or an email. When the order is really placed, Mark as placed with vendor, and the receiver will find it waiting when the box comes.

Who should we order from? Reorder by vendor answers that for a whole category at once: every vendor we are low on, what an order from them would cost, and whether it reaches their minimum. Tick extra items to get over the minimum, or leave it and wait. One click turns it into the order. (Thanks, Madison.)

Receiving that starts with the box

The bottom door of Purchase orders is Receiving. Type a word from the packing slip, or the vendor's name, or just photograph the slip, and the right purchase order opens. No hunting. No order yet? Find the invoice (in the box, in email, or the Faire order page), take a photo or a scan of it, or choose the PDF, and Cauldron reads it, checks it is not a duplicate, and builds the order for you, lines, costs and all. Only a packing slip? Start from that, receive anyway, and add the invoice when it turns up. Packages can go straight to a store, too, not only the Warehouse.

Cauldron reads the invoice so you don't have to type it

Every line on the paperwork is matched to what we already carry. For anything new, Cauldron proposes our house-style name, the category and par levels from similar items, and suggests a price from the cost and the markup we use on items like it. Click Use to take the suggested price or type your own; if yours is more than 10% away, pick a reason from the list so the suggestions get better. (Thanks, Tamara.) Three sizes of the same stone on three lines become one product with three variants in a single click. Shipping is spread across the lines so the cost of each item is the real cost.

Products that start here, not in three places

New product once: it is created in every store you tick, with a barcode (scanned, or generated if the item has none), price, cost, par levels per location, and a description drafted in the shop's voice before it goes live. Workshops and events, with their ticket counts, can be created here too. Every long list drops down and narrows as you type.

Seasonal items that put themselves away

Mark a product seasonal with its dates (say 09-01 to 11-30) and it is only suggested for transfers inside that window. No more blanking out par levels every autumn and typing them back in.

Bought by the kilo, counted by the piece

Tumbles and chips come in by weight. Open the bag, count, type the number. Cauldron works out what one piece cost and puts the stock in. No more guessing.

Receive now, cost later

A packing slip with no prices no longer stops you. Receive it, the stock goes in, and a manager gets an email to fill in the cost.

Labels that know which sticker each item uses

Print exactly the stickers for the box you just opened. Cauldron remembers which roll each item takes (1 x 1, the little two-up, the jewelry tag, or none) and groups the print by roll. Long names wrap onto two lines and lead with the stone.

Photos, finally

See at a glance which items have a photo in which store, and a filter that lists what is missing. Then Photo mode: scan the label with your phone, tap the store, shoot. It goes straight to that store's listing. Works outside in the sun on cellular. From the laptop, click Use my phone as the camera and point your phone at the QR code.

Transfers on your phone

Pull mode gives you big rows at the shelves, a tick per line for "in the tote", and a fix button when the shelf count is wrong. At the store, tick each line as it goes on the floor.

Counting without the spreadsheet

Start a count for one shelf or category, scan everything you see, submit. A manager approves. Full store counts set what you never scanned to zero.

No more mystery duplicates

When someone adds a new product, Cauldron shows what it already has that this might be, including things we stopped selling. "Are you sure this is a new item?" saves us from the third Lapis Lazuli Sphere.

Stop buying, without deleting anything

When we decide not to buy something again, one click: it keeps selling until it is gone, stops going on purchase orders, and retires itself when the last one sells. If we ever want it back, one click brings it back with its history.

The little things

• Stock lookup on the home page: scan or type a barcode, see the count at every location.
• Type 4*12 in any number box and it does the math.
• Click a category or vendor field and type to narrow the list.
• Every long list has a filter line.
• A half-started purchase order can be deleted and comes back from the deleted bin for 30 days.

Cauldron is live: do your work here

1. Open cauldron.thehealinghedgewitch.com and sign in with Google. Click Help at the top of any page for the full manual.
2. Receiving, transfers, counts, new products, photos, stop buying: all of it happens in Cauldron now. Every Receive, Confirm and Approve moves real stock in the real stores, the same as Thrive did.
3. Do not change stock in Thrive any more. Thrive stays open for two weeks so we can look things up, but its inventory sync is off: anything typed there goes nowhere.
4. Something looks wrong, or you are not sure which button? Stop and ask Christy before pressing it. A wrong count is easy to fix the same day and hard to find a week later.