From time to time you may receive an alert for a stolen item or items before they come into your shop for Pawn. Perhaps a customer has called to alert you that something of value that they own was stolen, perhaps you received an alert from the police department. However you receive the notification, you will want to make a note of the items so that should someone try to pawn or sell it, you can receive an alert before bringing the item into your store.
In Bravo, you can monitor these items by first bringing them into your inventory and marking them as stolen. Follow the steps below to create a list of stolen items for your shop.
Start by creating a buy transaction for the stolen item. You can use the customer who called in, or you can create a special customer just for stolen items.
In order to correctly track these items, you MUST enter a serial number. The serial number is how Bravo will recognize the item from transaction to transaction.
Enter the item as a Buy with a $0.00 Buy Amount.
Once the item is entered and the buy transaction is complete, navigate to the Loans/Buys screen. Pull up the buy that was created. You are going to need to mark it as stolen. Right click on the item and select Lost or Damaged.
From the Lost or Damaged screen, you will want to select Stolen Non-Controllable. You can enter notes showing additional information if desired.
Marking an item as Lost or Damaged requires special security and will generate an exception. If you do not have the security required to perform this action, you will need a manager to sign off on this.
Once the exception is approved, the Event will be created.
Now if someone brings that stolen item into Bravo, when the serial number is entered in the Loan/Buy transaction Add Item Screen, Bravo will generate an error showing that this serial number is already part of an item in Bravo.
This will alert the associate that the item in question is part of the stolen item list. They will then take whatever steps your store has deemed appropriate in this situation.
NOTE: For the serial number check to work correctly, items have to be an active part of Bravo. If you write off an item as stolen, it is no longer a part of the system inventory, and the serial number will not correctly trigger this check. You will want to keep the stolen items active for as long as you want to check against them. Once a sufficient time has passed, you will be able to write the items off with zero impact to your overall cost.
If the employee attempts to continue a transaction with a duplicate serial number, an additional warning will appear before navigation to the tender screen.
This will be followed up with a manager approval if completion of the transaction is attempted.
Management for duplicate serial numbers can be found under System Configuration>Security> Transactions> Duplicate Serial Number For Transaction-based Acquisition.
If you need additional assistance with this process, please contact tech support at 888-407-6287, option 3.
To learn more about the Lost/Damaged functions and how to write off items, please see the following articles:
How to Write Off Inventory (Video)