Inventory Planning > Inventory Families & Groupings > Families and Groupings - Collections

Families and Groupings - Collections

This section describes information relating to the Collection Information and Collection Structure panes of the Families and Groupings program.

The Collection Information pane displays information on the collection currently highlighted in the tree view of the Collection Structure pane.

The Collection Structure pane displays a tree view of the structure of your Families and Groupings module.

Collections are stock holding entities that allow you to group items into clusters or categories that make sense to your business. Groups or families of stock items can be added to collections, after which forecasting can take place. A collection is a prerequisite to aggregated forecasting in Families and Groupings.

Collection Information pane

Column Description
Collection The collection descriptor.
Description The description for the collection descriptor
Instance The instance of the collection.
Aggregation date The date on which a sales aggregation was last performed on the collection (i.e. when it was last aggregated).
Aggregation time The time on the date at which a sales aggregation was last performed on the collection (i.e. when it was last aggregated).
Unit of measure The unit of measure defined against the collection.
Forecast calendar

The forecast calendar to use for the collection (see Forecast Calendars).
Algorithm The forecast algorithm to use for the collection.

Collection Structure pane

The top level node All Collections is automatically inserted and cannot be deleted. The nodes below this root node indicate the specific hierarchies you created to suit your products and business processes.

All maintenance on collections is done via this treeview. You highlight the collection you want to maintain and then select the action to perform on this collection from the menu bar (or by typically using your right mouse button to select an action).

The information displayed in the various Details panes changes according to the node currently highlighted in the treeview.

If you enabled the Families and Groupings structure amendment journals setup option (Inventory Optimization - General Setup) then amendment journals are created for any changes you make to structures. These journals can be printed using the IO Amendment Journal program.

The views you create are subject to the following rules:

  • Only collections can be added to the All Collections node.
  • A collection can only hold either other collections or SKUs, but not a combination of these.
  • Collections used for consolidating warehouses (defined when adding collections) can only hold stock items.
  • Only one instance of a specific collection can exist against a particular parent collection.
  • A maximum of 15 levels can exist against any single collection you define (i.e. user-defined collections can be organised in hierarchies down to 15 levels).

Treeview options

Submenu item Description

This icon is displayed when you position your mouse pointer in the white space at the top of the treeview pane.
Expand if Collapsed Expands the treeview back to where it was before selecting the Collapse All option.

Note that child nodes must be expanded manually by clicking on them. This option merely re-expands the nodes previously manually expanded and does not expand all levels of the treeview.
Collapse All Collapses the entire treeview. Only the top parent item is displayed.
Print Prints the treeview as it is displayed on the screen. If the treeview is entirely collapsed, then it prints the treeview as displayed before you selected Collapse All.
Print Preview Displays a preview of the treeview as it is displayed on the screen. The treeview can be printed from the Preview screen. If the treeview is entirely collapsed, then it prints the treeview as displayed before you selected Collapse All.
Output to Excel Outputs the contents of the treeview as displayed on the screen to Excel.

If all nodes are expanded, then the entire treeview is exported. If only some nodes are expanded, then only the information for the expanded nodes is exported.
Background Color Enables you to set the background color for the treeview.
Foreground Color Enables you to set the foreground color of the treeview.
Show Treeview Lines Toggles between displaying the connecting lines between the nodes in the tree.
Hot Tracking Toggles between highlighting the line your mouse is currently hovering over.
Reset Treeview Resets the treeview options to their defaults.