What Atlas will not do
What the screen says
What to do
A per-store figure presented as certain
Atlas shows the number and what it could not place: “this is what is known to be here, not necessarily what is here.” Location has only been recorded since it became a field on the movement form.
Record a location on every movement. The figure and its caveat both improve as you do.
A transfer refused because the source looks empty
It is not refused. A ledger that never recorded locations shows zero everywhere, and blocking on that would stop every honest transfer on every existing workspace.
Read the coverage line and decide. Atlas reports both figures rather than asserting a balance it cannot stand behind.
A loop in the store hierarchy
Refused. “A hierarchy with a loop in it makes every report that walks the tree run for ever.”
Choose a different parent. A location cannot sit inside itself, or inside anything already below it.
A variant of a variant
Refused. Variants are one level deep: “a product has sizes and colours, and a size does not have sizes of its own.”
File it under the parent product, not under another variant.
A barcode that could never be scanned
Refused. Digits only, and 8, 12, 13 or 14 of them: “A wrong one is worse than none, because a scanner will simply never match it.”
Enter the GTIN as printed. One already on another item is refused too: a scan that could mean either tells you nothing.
A transfer with one end missing
Refused. “One with no destination is a write-off wearing a movement's clothes.”
Name both ends, or record it as the write-off it actually is.
Retiring a location that still has stores under it
Refused. Taking it out of use would not remove them — it would hide them, because the tree is walked through locations that are in use.
Move them somewhere else first.
Underneath all of it
Shared by every pack that converts or imports anything
What to do
A conversion that was never declared
Refused, and Atlas never returns the quantity unchanged. “Until it is declared, the two quantities are not comparable and Atlas will say so rather than return a figure that looks right.”
Declare the factor for that item. A factor is per item — a case of paper and a case of wine hold different numbers of things — so it is never guessed from a unit's name.
A blank unit read as “each”
It is not. Blank is nobody having said, and it refuses.
State the unit the stock is counted in. Nothing existing is re-expressed when you do: every quantity already recorded means exactly what it meant yesterday.
Spreading import costs with no basis chosen
Refused; there is no default. By value, by weight and by quantity give three different unit costs from one invoice: “all three look equally right on the screen.”
Choose the basis the consignment was actually costed on. A house default would be Atlas deciding which of your products looks profitable.
One line with no weight, on a by-weight split
Refuses the whole split, not just that line. “That would overstate every one of them and understate these to nothing, and the total would still foot exactly.”
Record the missing figures, or choose a basis every line can carry. A figure that foots is the most convincing kind of wrong.
A charge in another currency
Refused, not converted — a customs entry settled months ago at one rate is not today's fact: “What was paid is an amount in a currency, not a rate.”
Record it in the shipment's currency, or cost the shipment in the currency the charges were settled in.
Every one of these is also written into the guidance drawer on the screen it happens on, and into the process guides your own workspace generates — so a person who meets it at four o’clock on a Friday does not need us, or you.
