Departments are created in the Admin portion of the program.  You can follow the steps below to get there and add additional departments in your Date Check Pro account.

Once you have clicked that button, you will be taken to the screen below where you can create your department.  Underneath that screenshot we will walk you through what fields need to be filled out in order to actually create that department.

You will need to fill out all of the fields in the top area (Name, Parent Department, and Rotated), but parent department can be left at N/A and the Company Default for markdown override is also acceptable for the status.  Below we will go through a more in depth look at what each field does.

When you select a parent department, the department you are creating becomes a sub-department of that overall category.  If you were creating the Dairy department, you would leave parent department as N/A.  However, if you were creating Yogurt as a separate department with separate settings, you would make Dairy the parent department so they can be viewed separately or together in the reports if you wish.

If you decide to change the Rotate Markdown Override, this will change what happens when users find items that are close dated in the store.  

Rotate Only - This will cause all items in this department to only get rotated to the front of the shelf and NOT marked down with coupons or sent to a marked down area.

Markdown Only - This will cause all items in this department to only be marked down (coupons or marked down area) and NOT rotated at full price.

Rotate or Marked Down - This will cause this department to have their item's movement date analyzed when date checkers enter the item count.  If the most profitable decision for you is to rotate items and sell them at full price because they are likely to move, the program will tell you to rotate those products.  If, based on projected movement, they won't sell enough the program will tell you to mark those items down.

If you select the donate option, all expired items from this department will be added to your Tax Deductions report.  How does the Tax Deductions Report work?Make sure that store staff are aware of this procedure and items are truly getting donated to your local food bank or similar charity organization.  

Remember that this is per department, so your list can include just grocery items but exclude refrigerated items, which is a common procedure for many grocers.

The marked down expires option is designed for stores that are using a marked down clearance area of the store.  When this box is checked, the program will ask for the next closest date when those items are pulled from the shelf to save the step of having to go back and look for those items.

Once you have setup the top options on this page, you can move down to the company settings.  You have to choose how far in advance items will be checked for each designation.  These settings will apply to all of your stores, but can be overridden if you update the Store Settings below that for each specific store within your company.

Close Dated - This is how far in advance date checkers will be taken to items that some effort will be made to sell before they are removed from the shelf.

Expiring - This is how far in advance items will be pulled from the shelf and no longer for sale.  We recommend at least a couple days lead time so items are not expiring on days that staff do not use the program.

Out of Stock - This is how long after an item is marked out of stock in the program that it will come back to be checked.  You want a minimum of how long it would take for the next order to arrive and be stocked so staff are not looking for items that are still out of stock.  You can also try to push the time out farther, which can cause for there to be less items to check over time.  This runs the risk of items expiring before you get to them, so its up to you on what you would like to do.