Inventory Overview

Creating Visual Simulations To Match Your Product

Finale comes standard with a set of libraries of visual effects that correspond to common fireworks products. However, it is natural for professionals to want to import their own inventories and use simulations of their own products. If you have a record of your inventory in Excel or in MS Access or in another scripting application, you can export your inventory in the "CSV" format, and then import the CSV file into Finale.

When you import a CSV file, Finale will automatically match visual simulations to your products based on their effect names. This process, however, does not always produce accurate simulations because effect names are not a perfect description of what the simulation should look like. In some cases, such as consumer cakes, the effect names provide very little useful information at all.

If you want to improve the simulations that Finale finds for your products, you can add an "Animation Search Phrase" column to your inventory CSV file and re-import it to update the products with animation descriptions that provide better matching animation results than the original effect names. This extra column allows you to control the animations without changing your effect names.

You can also make custom simulations for your products by editing a simulation through user interface panels of sliders and property fields and then saving the simulation to your product. Editing custom simulations takes time and practice, so it is usually easiest to start with the nearest match animation based on the effect name or Animation Search Phrase, and then customize the simulation, and finally save the customized simulation to the product.

Some manufacturers have constructed accurate simulations of their product lines, which are included in Finale's standard libraries of effects. These simulations are tagged with the "Manufacturer ID". If you import an inventory that contains products with matching Manufacturer IDs, they will inherit the simulations made by the manufacturer.

Instructions for this importing your products and constructing animations are here: Import Inventory.

Scripting A Show To Specific Target Quantities Of Product

Finale provides an "Inventory View" that shows you the tallies of products used in a show as you build it. If you have been given a list of product and quantities to use in a show (e.g., a "Packing List"), you can import the products to your inventory as described in Import Inventory and then you can set the target quantities for your show with the command, "Show > Set target device quantities from CSV (pack list)". This command is in the "Show" menu because the target quantities that you set are a property of the show itself. If you save the show and load it, it will retain its target quantities. The Inventory View will display the target quantities and will highlight the products that you have too many of or too few of in red or green. You can also set the "All quantities" filter on the Inventory View to "Target > 0" to display only those those products that your show is to contain.

If you are scripting for a display company that uses Finale's web-based inventory management service, Finale Inventory, then you can also set a show's target quantities directly from a sales order in the inventory management system with the command, "Show > Set target device quantities from sales order." The connection to Finale Inventory also gives you the ability to create and upload a sales order based on your show to the inventory management system ("File > Create or update sales order from show"), or update a sales order to the product usage in your scripted show, if you've had to make changes.

Managing Stock Levels

Managing stock levels is outside of the scope of Finale PRO and Business choreography software, but it is square in the middle of what Finale Inventory does. Finale Inventory is a web-based inventory management service that provides real time, up-to-date inventory views to multiple users in remote locations, and provides reservations and concurrency control to protect against selling product that is no longer available. Finale Inventory is deeply integrated with Finale Business choreography software to provide extraordinary visibility into inventory when scripting a show. You can filter or sort by stock levels, look at quantity on hand or available, and highlight products that are slated to be used in a show based on the actual sales order of the show. The "live" connection between choreography and inventory management always gives you an up-to-date view of the products that are available to you. Please see Finale Inventory for more information.