This article explains what Absence Detection is and when you should use it. It also explains how, when, and why you Archive items.
RFID technology makes it easy to quickly count and add items to your inventory. But what happens when you want to take an item out of inventory? Of course you can perform a "Remove from Inventory" scan to take these items out of stock, but if you are like most businesses performing a remove scan each time an item leaves your stock may not be realistic. So how then do you prevent your inventory from becoming inflated with items that are no longer in inventory but have not been removed?
Absence Detection
Absence Detection provides a list of all items which were in inventory but are currently not being scanned. Items can be marked Absent in a number of different ways:
- User can perform an "Audit" Scan (previously called Reset) and all Verified items will be marked Absent
- User can enable the "Absence Detection" setting in the Settings menu. Determine a frequency window of when all items must be scanned. An example might be that you wish for all items to be scanned each day. In this case you can set the Absent window to daily and simply perform Add Scans.
Archiving Absent Items
Items which fail to be scanned collect on the Absent list. This list of Absent items must then be moved to Archived to properly remove items from the system and keep the Absent list free to help spot truly Absent items. This process can be completed in the following ways:
- User can enable the Setting to "Archive Absent Items after X days/weeks/months" (loosest and least secure method since Absent items aren't being curated and are Archived without review)
- Match against orders - This allows the user to upload orders or pull them in via an integration. The system then looks for corresponding items which have been marked Absent after the date/time the order was placed, which were in inventory, and with this match Archives the item.
- Manually - The user can also select individual items from the Absent list and remove them. This is completed by clicking on the Trash Can icon on the right of the SKU and clicking Archive. We plan to make this available via the EPC level as well.