How we optimized our workflow w/TB and some custom modules

[bzndk]

Back in May when we bought 4 webshops, only 3 active currently, we started out using Prestashop, the first step to optimize our workflow, since there where 3 webshops, was to scan all EAN’s in to Prestashop, and then with the help of a integration partner, integrate directly against e-conomic.dk/revise.com Bookkeeping/ERP system.

It was a process that took about 2 months of our time, a lot blood sweat and tears to be honest, frustration over missing Prestashop features, finding modules that we could use to fix some of the issues, even just getting the integration with our Bookkeeping/ERP working was a pain.

When we finally managed to get everything up and running, we decided to take 2 months, where we focused on usage of social media, and google adwords, to optimize our income, we started optimizing product texts, and finding freelance product text writers, just to uphold a good quality on our product texts.

All this work started sparking ideas on how we could optimize and customize prestashop in to something we could use more efficient, and when we started looking more in to this part we found a forum post about ThirtyBees, I started digging in to this, and did some initial tests, and found out speed wize TB was faster, and it all felt more optimized just from within the backoffice.

I started creating minor bug reports on github, added new ideas on how to optimize the TB platform, and we decided when the time is right we are going to migrate all shops to TB, right now it’s only a module that’s not working in TB holding us back, our b2b store is built on TB.

Started talking with Michael and Lesly about some ideas, and bit down the road we actually hired Lesly to do some custom modules that would optimize our workflow.

The first module is to help us avoid issues with our ERP, it requires that we use unique reference id’s even for combination products, so Fabio and him developed a module, that help us keep track of duplicate id’s and if a ref id we use is always in use in the system.

Besides that with the usage of ERP all our stock management is done external, and then synced to the shop in real time, the issue here is when you got backorders, you can’t track if you got the products in stock, without having to click and manual review every order.

For this they developed a module that shows a red X or green V depending on if we can deliver or not, this optimized our workflow a lot since we now are able to handle backorders 100% faster, since we don’t have to click in to them all to figure out if we can deliver the order.

A couple of weeks back I talked with Michael about an idea we had, we wanted to be able to see the last 5 orders of a product when we clicked in to a product in backoffice, since the stats, is not the best place to find all this information.

A week ago we then asked hired Michael to do a module that would show the last 5 orders under each product, and actually show a total number to, so we knew how many of that item we have sold in total, without having to use stats module.

So why am I telling you about this? Because we decided together with Lesly and Michael that these modules will be released for public usage, since we believe others might have the same needs as us, and others might not even have thought about this, but actually might be able to use this anyways.

Some might think why? Because we want to give back to the community, we just do it in our own ways, and fund small modules that we need, and instead of just keeping them to our self we decided to share it with the community, because we think making them public accessible, might give us some new ideas how to extend the modules, or give other a chance to add functionality to the module that we might be able to use, and have never thought about.

To finish up the post I have added a couple of screenshots of the backorder module, and the last 5 orders module, the other module is a bit harder to showcase with a screenshot, some information is blurred out.

[vzex]

Very nice! @bzndk

[spidawebs]

Thanks @bzndk !

[wakabayashi]

Thanks a lot @bzndk! Your post shows a lot of good points. I hope in future, we can build a great module for sale statistics. Yours is a nice way for the time being :thumbsup:

[bzndk]

@wakabayashi thanks to @mdekker it works perfect :D - and is a good way to keep track on a more simplistic level.

[alwayspaws]

@bzndk This type of input helps make our community great! It's also always good to keep in mind that there are users who don't know how to implement whatever it may be, so simple is wonderful! :)