SIM and Time Zones

This is a short snippet on Oracle Retail Store Inventory Management (SIM) and its ability to handle stores in different time zones.

SIM Server is usually in a central location. Stores could be located in single or multiple time zones. In either case, the time zone of the store(s) could be same or different from the SIM server time zone. If they are different, it creates a challenge in terms of how the transactions have to be recorded in the SIM database - whether at the stores local time or in the server time. Following is a configuration possible in SIM to handle this situation without any complex customizations.

SIM has a feature to configure the time zone of each store in one of its database tables. There is also a configuration available to indicate whether the actual local time has to be sent to the SIM server or the time needs to be converted to GMT and sent. When these two parameters are used it cleanly handles the stores location in multiple time zones.

For example, a store in Zone 1 performs receipt of items. Another store in Zone 2 does an inventory adjustment. Both of these transaction times are converted to GMT time and then sent to SIM server. SIM server converts the time back to its time zone and performs necessary postings to manage it uniformly. But, when stores access these transactions, they display in store local time. That is neat.

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