More in Inventory Truth & True Cost is part of Inventory Truth & True Cost in Windward System Five. System Five includes 86 documented capabilities here — 61 in the standard set and 25 optional. Trades that lean on it include Furniture Store, Lighting Showrooms, RV Dealers.
These 86 capabilities sit within System Five's 1287-capability documented set — a selection, not a ceiling.
Find out why the count went wrong
Manual stock adjustments can be made to require a written reason, overselling an item can automatically flag it for a fresh physical count, and the global oversell rule can be overridden part by part. Stock errors are corrected automatically, optionally with an on-screen notice.
Stop staff selling stock you never had
A setup option decides whether staff may ship more than is in stock. With it configured to warn, the system alerts the clerk when an invoice line exceeds available quantity.
Track core charges and floor-planned stock
Core charges are handled as core parts identified by a part number suffix and optionally held in their own category. Floor planning — financing stock held on the floor — is a separate switchable option.
Give every part a barcode that works
Barcodes can be generated automatically, with EAN plus check digit recommended and up to 99,999,999 unique codes, and 11, 12 and 13 digit codes carry the category inside the number. Duplicate part numbers can be banned, allowed only across categories, or allowed outright, and part numbers can auto-increment within a category from 0001 to 9999.
Purge dead parts in bulk, safely
A Delete Inventory routine in Inventory Routines removes flagged parts in bulk after they are marked through a Part Load import file. Parts still attached to live invoices are detected and blocked from deletion.
Clear dead parts out of the catalogue
Obsolete parts are removed in bulk by importing a text file keyed on each item's unique identifier, with an optional column controlling which rows are deleted.
Set up a whole rack of bins fast
A wizard creates whole racks of locations from the segment structure in one pass — enter how many of each segment to create, complete the first line, and the rest are generated with the same description, picking and quarantine settings.
Reprice a whole product line in one pass
The Stock Count Report tool is used to push a configured price level onto every item in a category, so a whole product line can be repriced in one pass.
Buy in kilos and sell in pounds
Pack size settings on the inventory item let goods be received and costed in the purchasing unit, such as kilograms, while being priced and sold in a different unit, such as pounds, from the same item record.
Break cases into singles and stay accurate
Stock can be broken down from cases into individual selling units, or bundled up into a package, with the inventory positions on both sides adjusted in one transaction.
Change an item's category in one step
A newer Category Change method built directly into the inventory record supersedes the older multi-step category and ledger move routine.
Make each category behave the right way
Each inventory sub-category is assigned one of eleven category types that changes how the item behaves, including Normal stock, Labour that bypasses inventory control and cost of sales, and Non Inventory lines such as freight.
Cost tiny-value parts without rounding errors
Cost can carry up to 6 decimal places, retail up to 4 and quantity up to 4, applied consistently across invoices, printed invoices, inventory, price adjustments, purchase orders, reports, units and department transfers. Fractional quantities can also be blocked outright at point of sale.
Account for stock you do not own
Dedicated category types cover consigned goods, floor-planned units, and tires and tubes, so financed and third-party owned stock is accounted for differently from goods you own.
Stock the floor without paying up front
Consignment items are paid for only when sold; floor plan items are paid when sold or after an agreed number of days, whichever comes first, and both sit in normal inventory.
Drop consignment prices on schedule
Shows scheduled consignment price drops in a date range highlighted in yellow across all price schedules, with the first drop date and the days to discount, allows prices to be edited directly in the grid, prints labels for the affected items and links to the consignor record.
Show consignors what their goods are priced at
A dedicated report tracks price changes on consignment inventory so the consignor and the business stay aligned on what the goods are being offered at.
Know which consigned stock we still owe for
Reports consignment stock in four states: in stock and unpaid, in stock and already billed after being returned, sold but not billed, and sold and billed. Bills to the consignor are posted from the report, and in supervisor mode items can be marked billed, attached to the original bill, or have the billed flag cleared.
Sell consignment goods without owning them
Consignment stock sells through the normal counter flow, with scanned non-serialised consignment barcodes adding a quantity of one without prompting.
Know who owns the goods you sold
Consigned goods are taken in against the supplier record of the person or company that owns them, so System Five knows who to pay when the item sells, and reports track the status of consignment inventory and the payments owed.
Sell consignment stock you do not own
Consignment stock can be sold first-in-first-out, which limits an invoice line to the quantity in the oldest stock receipt, and costed four ways: fixed cost, a percentage of selling derived from standard cost against list, a fixed percentage of selling, or a percentage of selling that is ignored when the line is discounted.
Keep returns off the shelf until checked
Nominated locations can be given special purposes: a cross-dock location for goods marked order-ship-direct and for special orders that never go to a shelf, and a returns location where point of sale automatically places customer returns so they are inspected before going back on sale.
Order using the customer own part numbers
Each customer and part combination can carry the customer's own part number and bin location, linked to ship-to addresses, and printed on that customer's invoices.
See what arrived and what moved
The Daily Receiving Report groups received purchase order lines by PO for a date range and supplier with drill-through to the PO and the item; the Stock Movement Report shows movement for a date range, department, or a single part.
Track which items passed their checks
A global set of dated checkpoints can be defined and then ticked or left unticked item by item, with the dates and status available to custom inventory reports.
Add new parts without keying the same settings
A master default item pre-fills every new part, with optional defaults per sub-category and per supplier, carrying settings such as a standard markup — paint at cost plus 60 per cent while everything else is cost plus 35.
Know the real cost of imported stock
Tariff codes with dated rates can be loaded from a CSV file and assigned to inventory items, then shown on receiving reports and subtotalled on purchase orders. A separate landed-costing duty scheme with dated area rates supports Jamaican importers.
Read an item's cost without the customer seeing
A digit substitution mask defined in inventory setup prints the item's cost as a coded string on the label, together with coded digits for the year and month the label was printed, so staff can read cost and stock age while the customer cannot.
Add a pile of new items quickly
A grid creates a part from nothing more than a category and part number, loads existing items by sub-type, single item, supplier or the whole inventory, allows the columns shown to be customised, imports an external file, and processes the entered quantities into stock adjustments or oversold positions.
Know the real cost of what you sold
Inventory is valued as a perpetual sub-ledger built from FIFO cost lines created when purchase orders are received, and cost is recognised as COGS at the moment the customer invoice is created.
Value the stock on the balance sheet
Adds up the First In First Out stock lines behind every part to produce a total inventory value, used to reconcile the inventory asset GL account through the year and at year end.
Know the real margin on every sale
Margin is calculated against the landed cost captured when the goods were received on a purchase order, consumed first in first out, rather than against a standing cost figure.
Give in-transit stock its own place
Locations are defined as fixed purpose (a permanent physical place) or random purpose (a temporary holding place for committed or in-transit stock), letting transfers and commitments occupy their own space.
Hold foreign cost against a local price
Items hold a foreign cost against a currency code with the local equivalent shown alongside, and price schedules can be nominated to hold fixed prices in a specific currency rather than the invoice currency.
Record details the system has no field for
Two independent free-form comment sets allow up to 100 labelled entries per item for data System Five has no field for — garden centres use them for genus, species, cultivar and common name — printable on invoices and reports and searchable in Part Find.
Handle glass jobs on the item record
A licensed Glass module adds glass-specific options to the inventory record.
Put prices up across a whole range
Prices are adjusted in bulk for a selection made by main category, sub-category or sub-category range, supplier and brand, by percentage or dollar amount, across foreign cost, cost, extras, freight, duty, list and the twelve regular and twelve sale price schedules, respecting the dependency chain from landed cost upward. Visual mode previews and allows abort or reset before committing; blind mode handles selections too large to display and commits immediately.
Reorder before I run out of stock
Each item carries a maximum stocking level and a minimum, and when available quantity falls to or below the low the system calculates a quantity to order.
Fix broken stock data before counting
An inventory integrity check with fix options can be run to find and repair stock data problems, and is the recommended precondition for any physical count.
Find the stock report you need
The Inventory Reports menu collects the stock-control reports, including Inventory Value, Back Dated Inventory Value, Open To Buy, Manual Adjustments, Inventory Integrity, Stock Reconciliation, Hold Serial Numbers and Unit List.
Know what stock is worth and what to buy
Values all or selected inventory at landed cost with separate columns for hold work orders, work orders and layaways, available stock, on order, and special order stock received and on order. With budget shown, current stock value equals financial stock value minus on-order value, and open to buy equals budget value minus current stock value.
Print labels for shelves and stock
Three designed label types print from ten places in the program — locations, parts linked to a location, parts contained in a location, receiving, put-away, pick, stock move, target location and inventory report design — and label printing follows the quantity in each linked location.
Configure an item and price it right
Modifiers configure an item into branching options and sub-options — seats, trim, colour, or connection type and plan — each able to add or reduce cost and price and to carry its own part number, with option sets linkable across items.
See what this item really sells
Monthly sales by year with a graphical view, a date-range selector, first and last sale date lookup, and a department sales breakdown in departmentalised systems.
Stop staff editing stock records
Editing inventory is a separate privilege from viewing it, with View Item as the read-only path, and supervisor mode required to override constraints such as changing the type of an item that has history.
Tell at a glance how long stock has sat
The printed price code carries the last digit of the year and the two digits of the month the label was produced, giving a readable indicator of how long an item has been on the shelf.
Count each bin and shelf separately
With Advanced Inventory Control the count generates a separate line for every location a part is held in, so floor, warehouse and display quantities are counted and adjusted independently.
Know where returned stock actually sits
Under Advanced Inventory Control an RMA is a final invoice with defined location behaviour: customer returns land in the location "Not Set", supplier RMAs draw from "Not Set" first and fall back to regular stock, and stock coming back from a supplier goes into regular stock.
See every hand adjustment to stock
Lists manual stock adjustments and can value them against a chosen price schedule, multiplying the price by the adjusted quantity to give an extended price value per line with report totals, shown on a shaded background.
Retire dead lines without losing history
Flags an inventory item as retired so it drops out of reporting and normal lookup while its transaction history stays intact; the item keeps selling until stock reaches zero, and items with no history can be removed outright.
Handle size and colour variants properly
Inventory supports matrix products, where a parent item is linked to child variants carrying size or attribute values, and those links and size fields can be populated in bulk during a data load.
Sell a one-off part without stocking it
Four kinds of non-stocked resale parts — wholesale purchase with cost and bill number captured at sale, wholesale percentage, wholesale percentage reducing landed cost, and discount percent item — sell without creating stock records.
Walk the clerk through the options
Modifier levels use rules such as Select One Of and integrated selection, and are presented to the clerk in the order they were built, so the sale walks the options in a fixed sequence.
Recategorise a whole product line quickly
Relocates a whole subcategory of parts into a different category in one routine, rather than re-coding items individually.
Break a case without a stock adjustment
When stock of a selling unit runs out, System Five draws down the next larger case size in the breakdown list — through as many levels as are defined, such as can, six-pack, flat and pallet of flats — either silently or with prompts.
Find stock in the right bin first time
A single part can be linked to several locations, loaded in bulk from a CSV file, and stock is put away by entering quantities per location when receiving. Inventory reports can list quantities by location, showing the total in stock and a line per location beneath it.
Type notes in your own language
Comment fields accept extended character sets including Arabic, Chinese and Hindi.
Show staff the right picture of stock
Items hold several images with captions and a nominated default; changing an image that other parts share prompts to update them together, and images can be attached in bulk through Data Load.
Find the part from whatever the customer says
Search by part number, barcode, supplier part number, description or words contained in it, brand, size, sub-category tree, lookup words or customer part number — and a barcode entry also searches virtual warehouse items.
Count the items that need counting
Each item shows its last count date by department, allows a historical or corrected date to be entered manually, and can be flagged Force New Count so it joins the next count that department runs; items can also be forced to recount when oversold.
Tell pickers where to go first
Each location carries a pick priority across eight tiers and a separate put-away priority for receiving, so the system suggests where to take stock from and where to place newly received stock.
Pot plants up and keep stock right
Garden centre operations cover potting up plants into larger sizes and recording botanical as well as common names.
Budget against what happened last year
The budget entry dialog shows the current budget record on the left and the same period from the previous year on the right, so each number is set against what actually happened last year.
Stop returned goods being resold untested
Returned goods are automatically routed to a designated return location that can be flagged quarantined, so they cannot be resold until inspected and moved back to a stock location.
Label goods as they come off the truck
Inventory labels are printed as goods are received and attached to the item or taped to the carton for later use on the sales floor, with an Alt-L label menu available from customer, supplier and inventory records.
See which items were retired
An inventory report option lists items that have been marked for deletion, so retired stock can still be audited and cleaned up deliberately.
Build a clean-up list from a report
Parts are selected and exported from the Inventory Report Designer, edited outside the system, then fed back in for deletion, so the clean-up list is built with the same filters used for reporting.
Refill the shelves from what sold
Calculates the quantities needed to restock shelves from the quantities sold across an invoice number range or date range, listing quantity sold, quantity on hand, item and part number, location and sub-category, with an option to net off returns.
Set sales targets and track them
Sales budgets set expected sales and gross profit values by main category, sub-category or specific part, by week or by month, and reports then show whether the budgeted value has been reached.
Scan once and use it anywhere
Scanned collections uploaded from a handheld can be applied to a physical count, an invoice or a purchase order, so the same scanning pass feeds whichever document is needed.
Sell on rebate without giving away margin
Manufacturer rebates on nominated products show salespeople a net promotional cost so they can close without giving away margin, and daily and monthly sales reporting uses that net cost. The accounting recognises the income and corrected cost inside the promotion window and raises a receivable to claim later; returns and commissions use the net promotional cost, and actual landed inventory value is unchanged. Expiring allowances can be reported ahead of time.
Manage sizes and colours as one item
A two- or three-dimensional matrix manages a family of similar items — size by colour by sleeve length, for example — as one item, while each cell keeps its own description, price, stock and high/low levels.
Fix count numbers in Excel and reload
A pre-configured stock count report exports the count list to CSV with selectable extra fields, for editing in Excel, and the corrected spreadsheet is then reloaded into System Five through a data load.
Move or swap stock without losing count
Stock Move transfers inventory between locations and Stock Replace substitutes one item for another in stock, alongside manual and user-defined custom adjustment methods.
Explain every movement between two stock counts
Shows opening and closing stock balances for a date range together with the movements between them: purchases, transfers to and from other branches, RMAs, sales, customer returns and stock adjustments, with user-definable and calculated columns and saved named settings.
Trace who changed a stock figure
Optional logging records every transaction affecting stock quantities, dates and costs, so stock record changes can be reviewed after the fact.
Plan how much stock to hold
Stock budgets plan target end-of-month stock values by main category, sub-category or specific part, working on the same weekly or monthly basis as sales budgets.
Find the part that replaced the old one
Inventory records support superseded part chains, pack sizes, dimensional lumber measures, lookup words, pictures and comments.
Sell down old stock before the new
Parts are related as Equivalent, Supersedes or Superseded by, combined with Can Sell and Can Order flags, so old stock sells down while new stock is ordered.
Keep everything about a part in one place
One item record holds part number, description, supplier, cost, retail, quantities, taxes, comments, images, history and stock locations across a set of tabs. Every other module reads from this single record.
Get customs paperwork right on every shipment
Items carry tariff codes alongside weight, volume and length for customs and shipping paperwork.
Track every colour and size variant
Define a style with up to three attribute dimensions — for example colour, size and gender — and the system builds every combination as its own part number in a MATRIX STYLE-Size1-Size2-Size3 pattern up to 20 characters.
Track second-hand stock separately from new
Second-hand items bought from customers or other sources are set up as their own categorised stock with distinct part numbers and their own cost and selling prices, kept separate from the new-goods equivalent.
Label every shelf and bin in the warehouse
Location labels are designed for warehouse shelf management and printed from Location Maintenance, and inventory-location labels showing what stock sits in a location print from the purchase order at receiving or from the Locations tab of the item.
Warn staff before they serve this account
Warning comments can be set on inventory items, customers, purchases, units and invoices, and pop up as a message when the record is opened.
Value the stock for year end
The Inventory Stock and Landed report printed on the last business day of the financial year, after all receiving and sales are entered, gives the definitive stock value, with a Backdated Inventory Value Report available to estimate value at an earlier date.
Yes. Core charges are handled as core parts identified by a part number suffix and optionally held in their own category. Floor planning — financing stock held on the floor — is a separate switchable option. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Pack size settings on the inventory item let goods be received and costed in the purchasing unit, such as kilograms, while being priced and sold in a different unit, such as pounds, from the same item record. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Consignment items are paid for only when sold; floor plan items are paid when sold or after an agreed number of days, whichever comes first, and both sit in normal inventory. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Reports consignment stock in four states: in stock and unpaid, in stock and already billed after being returned, sold but not billed, and sold and billed. Bills to the consignor are posted from the report, and in supervisor mode items can be marked billed, attached to the original bill, or have the billed flag cleared. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Consigned goods are taken in against the supplier record of the person or company that owns them, so System Five knows who to pay when the item sells, and reports track the status of consignment inventory and the payments owed. This is optional in System Five.
Yes. Consignment stock can be sold first-in-first-out, which limits an invoice line to the quantity in the oldest stock receipt, and costed four ways: fixed cost, a percentage of selling derived from standard cost against list, a fixed percentage of selling, or a percentage of selling that is ignored when the line is discounted. This is optional in System Five.
Every capability on this page is documented in the System Five capability index. Last updated 2026-11-05.