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Wisk Evolution

Product Map

Contents

WISK Web Portal & iOS App

The WISK platform is made up of the WISK Web Portal (web.wisk.ai) and the iOS App. The core product features are available on both (Taking inventory counts, placing orders, and adding invoices), but the Web Portal contains our more advanced features.

Our users mainly use the iOS App as a tool when they are physically interacting with items in their venue. This includes taking inventory counts, and adding invoices.

The Web Portal is better for entering/editing data and viewing reports.

Venues / Account

All user actions in WISK take place in accounts. The name of the account is usually the name of the customer’s venue. When a user is assigned to an account they can access it via the Web Portal and the iOS app. If they have access to more than one acccount, they can toggle between them.

There are two types of accounts:

  • Beverage
  • Food

Aside from the preset item Families & Categories, there is no functional difference between Food and Beverage accounts.

Most venues have both a Beverage/Bar and Food/Restaurant account to keep the data separate. This is because they are normally managed by different teams, Front of House (Beverage) and Back of House (Food), and they take inventory counts on different schedules.

Items

When an account is created, users need to add their inventory items. Each item requires these fields:

  • Title
  • Category
  • Item Measurement (quantity and unit of measurement - for example 750ml)

Note: To learn more about units of measurement, see Units of Measurement

If the account type is Beverage, most users add their items by scanning barcodes when taking their first inventory count in the WISK iOS app. When a barcode is scanned, it searches our item database for a match and adds it to the account.

If the account type is Food, users upload invoices from their suppliers. These invoices go through OCR to extract the relevant data. The invoices are processed by a dedicated team that create the items.

To learn more about adding Items, please see:

To learn more about Items in general, see:

Adding Items

After setting up their accounts, users can add new items when they are adding invoices, or they can create items manually on both the WISK Web Portal and iOS App.

To learn more, see:

Item Properties

When an item is created, it requires a title, category, and item measurement.

There are other properties you fill in to use specific features in WISK. When a user adds an item and there is a match in our database, some of these properties are assigned to the item automatically.

Note: The definitions for the properties listed below introduce new concepts that will be further explained in their respective sections.

Family & Category: The default way items are grouped and organized. “Family” is the top level, and “Category” is the sub-category. For example, “Wine” is a family, and its categories include “Red Wine”, “White Wine” and “Champagne / Sparkling Wine”. These groupings appear in most reports sent to the user.

When assigning to an item, you just select the Category.

Every Food and Beverage account has preset Families & Categories but they can be fully customized by the user. To learn more, see:

Par Level: The amount of stock you want to be at after placing an order. You can set this value as individual units, or cases (if you have indicated a case size for the item).

By setting par levels you can use the “Pre-fill” options when generating your orders. It looks at your current stock, and adds to the order whatever you need to reach the par level (minus any outstanding purchase orders). For example, if my stock of an item is 4, and my par is 10, it will add 6 units to the order.

These levels are set by the user, but WISK calculates suggested par levels based on the past 6 weeks of consumption data in the account.

To learn more about Par Levels, see:

Distributor & Distributor Code: By assigning distributors to items, you can generate orders to that distributor. The distributor code is optional, but it’s the unique identifier the distributor uses for that item. This code is helpful when placing orders to distributors, and is used in the OCR process for draft invoices.

To learn more, see our Help Center section on Distributors:

Cost: Adding costs to items is one of the most important things users can do to get useful data from WISK. The cost is used to calculate inventory value, cost of goods sold, recipe costing, and more. Item costs can be set by the unit, case, or specific units of measurement (per kilogram, pound, etc).

To learn more about adding costs, see:

Inventoriable:

Order Guide Item: This checkbox makes the item appear when the “Order guide items” filter is applied on the Cart Builder screen. This is a quick way for users to see the items they order regularly. To learn more, see:

Receive Only: TBD

Case Size: This sets the case size of the item. When a case size is added, the item can be counted and ordered/received as cases.

Weights: Both empty and full weights (in grams) can be added to items with the volume measurement type. The iOS app integrates with specific models of Bluetooth scales. When the item is placed on the scale, it calculates how much liquid remains inside.

Barcodes: The barcode on the item. When the barcode is scanned in the iOS app, it pulls up the item. More than one barcode can be assigned to an item.

For a full list of customer-facing terms on the WISK Web Portal, see Web Column Glossary

Item Variations

Sometimes venues purchase items from suppliers that come in a variety of formats. For example, you can buy bread flour in 1kg, 5kg, or 10kg bags. Instead of having a separate item for each size / purchase format, you can create an item variation.

To learn more about item variations, see:

Merging Items

As our customers use the system, it’s possible they’ll end up creating duplicate items in their account. This affects their consumption and variance because they exist as two separate items in the system. For example they may count both during an inventory which throws off their reporting.

If the items are the exact same, they can use the merge feature to combine them. To learn more about merging, see:

Grouping Items

If a user has separate items in their account that should actually be item variations, they can group them together under one item. For example, if they have a bottle of vodka that comes in a 750ml, 1L, and 3L format they can group them together.

Note: Users should also only group items that are 100% interchangeable, and can be used in all the same recipes / menu items.

For example, if you had a beer that came in a 341ml bottle, and a 500ml can, those are sold as individual items in the POS. Those would be considered separate items and should not be grouped.

When grouping you’ll have to decide which format will be the default item variation.

To learn more about grouping, see:

Distributors

Distributors are the businesses that users purchase their inventory items from. In Beverage accounts, users normally add Distributors after they’ve taken their first inventory and added all their items. Food accounts typically add Distributors first because they need to add items via invoices.

After adding a Distributor, users can place orders and receive invoices from them. Users need to assign distributors to specific items so they can be ordered.

Users can also add contacts, including their email address and phone number to the distributor. By adding this information, it autopopulates it when a user sends an order through WISK.

To learn more about Distributors, see:

Inventory

Users can take Inventory Counts in both the WISK iOS App and the WISK Web Portal.

As mentioned in the intro, the iOS App is better for when actively counting in the space.

When a user takes an inventory count, it’s a snapshot in time of what they have in stock at the moment the count started.

Users should only take inventory counts at a time when they are not actively selling items.

When an inventory count is completed, this becomes a reference point in the venue for comparing data. When looking at Consumption or Variance, we compare the data between two completed inventories.

Areas

Areas are physical spaces in a venue where inventory is stored. In other words, it’s where users count items when taking inventory. These may also be referred to as “Inventory Locations”.

Users can create as many areas as they need, but by default, we provide the following based on account type:

  • Beverage - Main Bar, Stock Room
  • Food - Kitchen, Stock Room

Users can create areas before or during inventory counts, and in both the app and WISK Web Portal.

There is no limit on the number of users that can count in an area at the same time.

Users can only submit an inventory count when all areas are marked as complete.

To learn more about areas, please see:

Taking Inventory

During an inventory count, all areas in the venue must be counted. The user goes into the area and begins counting items.

To count an item, the user pulls it up by using the barcode scanner, or using the search.

When an item is pulled up, the user can count full units and cases (if a case size has been set). If there are any partial units, how it’s counted depends on the item’s measurement type. There are 3 measurement types:

  1. Volume-Based
  2. Weight-Based
  3. Unit-Based

Users work their way logically through the space (for example, top to bottom, left to right). When finished, they can review everything they’ve submitted and then mark the area as saved.

When all areas are marked as saved, the user can submit the inventory count. When submitted, the user receives an email with their inventory report.

As a bonus, when the user takes their next inventory count, it remembers the order in which everything was counted. Instead of having to scan the items next time, the user sees a list of the previous items and can modify the counts as needed. If the user would prefer scanning everything again, they can do that too.

To learn more about inventory counts, please see our section on Inventory:

We also have videos/articles that cover the first inventory in Beverage and Food accounts:

Independent Inventories

Independent Inventories are a way for users to count a subset of their items on a more frequent basis. This is often called a spotcheck and is intended to help discover any issues with variance (overpouring, spillage, theft etc.).

When taking an independent inventory, it doesn’t affect the stock count of items in the venue. As the name suggests, it stands entirely on its own. There are also no areas, so the user needs to count all stock of an item in the venue if they want to track it.

For example, a user has noticed from taking weekly inventory counts they have a high variance on certain items. They suspect that a certain employee may be overpouring drinks. They take an opening independent inventory count of those items before the bar opens on Friday night, and another count when the bar closes. This way they can see their consumption and sales for a shorter period of time, and if there is a variance.

To learn more about Independent Inventories, see this section of our Help Site:

Invoices

When a user takes their first inventory, they now have an accurate count of their items.

When new stock is brought into a venue, the user needs to add an invoice to account for this. On the invoice, they’ll include the items received, their cost and their quantity. Users add their invoices a number of ways, and we also offer a service to enter invoices on behalf of our customers.

Adding invoices keeps the cost of items up to date.

Adding invoices is also a key part of calculating an item’s consumption/usage between inventories. If a user doesn’t add their invoices, they will never have accurate consumption data.

Consumption = Starting Inventory + Invoices - Ending Inventory

Consumption data is used in a number of calculations, and you can learn more about Consumption here.

Manual Invoices

This is the most straightforward way of adding an invoice. The user adds the invoice manually on the web or the app by selecting the distributor, and adding the items.

Invoices from Purchase Orders

If the user generated an order in WISK, they can create an invoice from that order when it arrives in their venue. This differs from the Manual Invoice because all of the items are prepopulated. The user just needs to swipe in the items they receive, and modify the quantities and costs if needed.

Uploading Invoices

Instead of entering an invoice manually, a user can upload invoices to their account via:

  1. Scanning the invoice using the WISK iOS App
  2. Uploading the invoice PDF / image to the WISK Web Portal
  3. Emailing the invoice PDF / image to a custom email address

Once the invoice is uploaded, a draft invoice is created. To learn more, see:

Draft Invoices

When an invoice is uploaded to our system, character recognition software takes a first pass to build a draft invoice. The user can then review the draft invoice and convert it to an invoice when everything is correct.

A big selling point of WISK is that we offer invoice processing. When the user uploads the invoice, they can opt into having our team process the invoices on their behalf.

Since we use a third party for processing these invoices, it’s very important that the draft invoice flow is optimized and error free. To learn more about reviewing and converting draft invoices, see:

Purchase Orders

When a user adds their items and assigns distributors to them, they can generate orders within WISK.

The main benefit of generating an order through WISK is that you can prefill what to order based on your venue’s consumption, and then quickly add the invoice when the ordered items arrive in the venue.

To learn more about orders, see:

Cart Builder / Your Cart

This is where users fill out their orders in either the WISK Web Portal or iOS app.

Users can enter the amounts to order manually, or can prefill the amount based on the Par Levels they have set, or the WISK recommended levels. WISK looks at the last 6 weeks of consumption data to give a recommendation of what to order.

Generating and Sending Orders

After a user has added all of the items to order, they click on the “Generate order” button beside the distributor’s name. This creates the purchase order in WISK. At that point, the user is free to place the order how they please.

Some users may place the order in person or over the phone, or use the distributor’s ordering platform / portal.

If they want to email or text it to the distributor, they have the ability to do this within our system.

Movements

There are other actions the user can take in the system that affect an item’s stock. These are broadly classified as “Movements”.

Returns

Sometimes a user needs to return items to a distributor. By creating a return in WISK, the returned items are subtracted from their total “Stock” count. To learn more about returns, see:

Depletions

If stock needs to be removed for any other reason (spoilage, breakage, etc), you would use a depletion. Just like a return, this subtracts the item and the amount from the total “Stock” count. When adding a depletion, the user can creates the reason why. To learn more about depletions, see our Help Site:

Transfer Between Areas

This feature allows users to move items from one inventory area to another. By default this isn’t enabled in the mobile app, and needs to be turned on in the Venue Settings.

By using transfers, the user can get the consumption per area after completing an inventory. For most users, seeing the consumption for the venue overall is sufficient. It takes a lot of extra effort to get the consumption per area since they need to track the movement of each item.

This is only required if the user has a POS system that supports variance by area. In that case, they map the sales from revenue centers to specific inventory areas. That way they can compare the sales and consumption to get the variance for that area.

Transfer to Partner Venue

If a user has multiple venues, they can transfer stock between them.

To do this, they must first set them as “Partner Venues”. When this is done, they’ll be able to see the other venue while using the “Transfer to Partner venue” feature.

The user adds items to the transfer and sends it. The amount of the selected items is removed from the venue, and a draft invoice is created in the receiving venue. The receiving venue converts the draft invoice and the stock is added.

To learn more, see:

Consumption

Consumption is the amount of product used between any two inventories. This can also be called the Cost of Goods Sold (COGS).

Consumption = Starting Inventory + Invoices - Ending Inventory

Work in Progress

POS Integrations

Types of Integrations

Supported Integrations

For a full list of our current POS integrations, please see:

Mapping POS Items

Stock & Cost Alerts

To learn more about Stock & Cost alerts, see:

Batches

Variance

Custom Fields

Other Integrations

Suppliers / Distributors

Accounting Software