One of Creative Force’s missions is to keep your sample management easy by not having to manually manage your samples via various Excel files! By scanning the samples into Creative Force, the samples are visible and easy to access by anyone in your team.
To scan samples, go to Logistics- Samples -> Scan.
Scanning options
After clicking ‘Scan’, the Scan box will appear. There are two options:
Job: you will do the check-in for a specific job. Then, Creative Force will know how many samples to expect and will show you the exact number of samples to scan minimizing the chances that you miss an item.
Unlimited: you won't check the samples against the requirements of a particular job. Any time that you scan a sample, you are telling Creative Force about its location as well as its status (Checked-In or Checked-Out).
Check-in screen
The first thing you should do is to make sure you choose the correct container, location, and even sub-location for where you are checking the samples into. You can click the drop-down menu to choose between the locations that you have created in your studio settings.
Note: If you add samples to a Container in a ‘check-in’ location, your samples will be automatically checked in.
The next thing you can do is to set up the flow settings and alerts. For example, Creative Force will notify you if there is an existing sample with the same product code or if this product is already in production.
The alert box will appear if it meets the conditions in your settings.
With the ‘Actions’ button, you can ‘Print sample label’ for a barcode scanner or ‘Export CSV’ of the sample lists.
Check-in flows
Under the ‘Flow’ there is a drop-down menu where you can do the following actions:
Check-in: there are 5 ways to do check-in
Check-out: once a sample is no longer required by production (i.e. ready to go back to storage or to be boxed up and sent back to the supplier of the sample), it needs to be checked out. When selecting locations, Creative Force will only show checked-out locations to ensure that you aren't accidentally checking items out to check-in locations.
Change location: change the samples’ location to track them easier
Assign to wardrobe: assign the samples to the wardrobe to use them as props on the set
Check-in
With this check-in flow, you can simply walk down a line of samples and scan their barcodes. Creative Force will automatically check the samples into whatever location and sub-location you have selected.
You'll use this flow if you know all the data is correct on your samples and you simply want to check in your samples quickly.
2. Check-in with label print
Your samples may arrive with a label that does not provide all of the information about the sample that your studio needs. In this case, you can set the flow to "Check-In with Label Print."
Using this setting will tell Creative Force to print a new label (which you have created and/or selected) for each product that is checked in.
You may want to use this flow if labels from the supplier are limited in information and you want to print a Creative Force label that provides more information about the product.
3. Check-in with data review
Check-In with Data Review will allow you to review the data of each sample before confirming it as checked-in. By clicking the filter icon next to the flow name, you are able to set which data fields you would like to review when checking in samples.
With this flow, you can add additional information that wasn’t provided when the product was created, or you can check if the data is correct or missing.
4. Check-in with property update
This will help you to quickly apply the same value to samples in bulk. Every time a sample is checked in, the value will be added to that sample and you don’t have to review the data.
You can separate the samples by categorizing them with property value. Just uncheck the ‘Update property’ and then enable it again when you want to apply that data to the sample. You can also remove the property by clicking the small ‘x’ on top of it.
5. Check-in with label print and property update
This flow with print the label and update the properties at the same time to all of your samples.
Note:
The counter here counts the successful scans not the number of different barcode scans.
