Advanced Stock Management issues

[led24ee]

Moved from topic

 

 

For me this "many things" is Advanced Stock Management, FIFO, handling of combinations. These elements are present in TB, but I'm unable to understand how they work or maybe they're not working after all. Also there is need for Proforma Invoice and "offer"

[Messenger Bee]

13 minutes ago, led24ee said:

For me this "many things" is Advanced Stock Management, FIFO, handling of combinations. These elements are present in TB, but I'm unable to understand how they work or maybe they're not working after all. Also there is need for Proforma Invoice and "offer"

@Community: Maybe you guys can shed some light here for @led24ee ? 

[lesley]

Not that my opinion matters that much but let me say these things. 

* ASM, the system for ASM does need a revamp and a lot of things taken out. Its complicated, cumbersome, but thanks to @wakabayashi a lot of bugs have been fixed in it. 

* FIFO this will never be present. The work and overhead this would add would be unimaginable. The data requirements would be as well. This is not something you can find in any open source system, many warehousing systems, and any paid system with under a 100k a year license that I am familiar with. 

* Handling of combinations As far as I am aware no native solution can handle more connected combinations that thirty bees can. Shopify is limited to 100, woo commerce limits you by not connecting them to stock. I am not sure what changes you are looking for in this system. 

 * Proforma invoice and offer. This is module territory. Not something fit for a core of an ecommerce software. Either is going to be difficult to add to the core, because a new checkout process has to be made for only these things. 

But like I said, my opinion might not matter much, I am soon leaving thirty bees. But I still do understand how difficult or useful these things are and what it would take to add them into the core. 

[led24ee]

Well. Handling of combinations is situation when You have for example mug. White, blue, black, etc. You can't have stock for every color in one page, because all combinations is added together and you can see this number. But when You need to know how many each color you have, then what ? At least I haven't found place. But if You have 30 combinations for one mug ? And then You have for example plates, kettles, etc. There is also useful quantity, stock quantity, physical quantity ... shortly WTF ? In real life you need to know only two kind of quantity. How many you have in total and how many is reserved, that's all. With these you can find almost all other values. Finally I gave up with this ASM. And if this isn't working, then it is just useless ballast. But I have no knowledge how to fix it, I can only imagine that this can be real hell. I'm pretty sure that same thing is also with  FIFO or WA.

[datakick]

6 hours ago, led24ee said:

Well. Handling of combinations is situation when You have for example mug. White, blue, black, etc. You can't have stock for every color in one page, because all combinations is added together and you can see this number. But when You need to know how many each color you have, then what ? At least I haven't found place. But if You have 30 combinations for one mug ? And then You have for example plates, kettles, etc.

You can see combination quantities on your product page, even for products tracked by ASM:

Quote

There is also useful quantity, stock quantity, physical quantity ... shortly WTF? In real life you need to know only two kind of quantity. How many you have in total and how many is reserved, that's all. With these you can find almost all other values.

It's a little bit more complicated, as ASM tries to handle not only the selling part, but also purchasing side. You can track products you have ordered from your supplier using Supply Orders. This will tell you how many products you actually count with, even if they are not physically in your store yet. You know they should arrive shortly, so you can re-sell them already.

 

I understand your frustration with ASM. It has a big potential, but it's kind of buggy and not completed. Hopefully it will be improved after (if) the sale of thirtybees is completed. 

 

 

[led24ee]

Oh dear. For inventory (when You need to count all items in your stock) are You really going for every item ? Ok, I understand, when You have 20 item. But when You have 200 ? And I played with ASM more than month. I was unable to completely understand how this work. I don't know maybe my head shape is also different ... Anyway I will wait for next release.

 

[datakick]

The important thing is that ASM does not change the way product/combination quantities are tracked inside thirtybees. It only extends it to track more information about the stock movements.

I agree that thirtybees could do bette, and include more usable inventory report. But it's all about priorities. This is 'nice to have'. There are too many 'need to do' tasks.

However, even now you can choose from many modules that allows you access and adjust inventory data. For example, my very own datakick module can be used for that quite easily. 

[wakabayashi]

34 minutes ago, led24ee said:

And I played with ASM more than month. I was unable to completely understand how this work.

That's the main problem beside of the fact that there are/were serious bugs. In general I can feel you. I had the same issues and questions two years ago. I decided to code my own ERP and changing ASM to our needs. It works great now. But obviously most merchant can't do it and it shouldn't need to do.

Actually my main hope to the new owners is, that we get a place to discuss and vote for such bigger projects. No dev can ever build a working ASM without clear requirements. I also had to spend dozens of discussing hours, to understand how things really should work (for us). A dev doesn't automatically consider it a problem, that you can't search fast for the stock quantity as they never did inventory. They may also think, that it's enough to have one location per product. But some merchants (as us) need multiple locations for the same product. The list goes on and on. But only a discussion with a dozen of serious merchant, will show what is important in general and what is more like a specific business usage.

Btw such attempts can fail easily as my own example shows:

 

1 hour ago, datakick said:

It's a little bit more complicated, as ASM tries to handle not only the selling part, but also purchasing side. You can track products you have ordered from your supplier using Supply Orders. This will tell you how many products you actually count with, even if they are not physically in your store yet. You know they should arrive shortly, so you can re-sell them already.

This is true and the main point, why we started to use ASM. But I believe it's not entirely correct. As far as I remember the "usable_quantity" has more an interpretation like: do we have broken items in storage? It's not totally nonsense, but we don't use it too. To exaggerate a bit: ASM was designed as it will become the most powerful erp ever, but was only finished 10%. There are tries to calculate product costs over multiple suppliers, currencies and stuff. 🤔

[wakabayashi]

8 hours ago, led24ee said:

I'm pretty sure that same thing is also with  FIFO or WA.

This is really not easy to add to the existing behaviour. I don't even know, how FIFO could ever work without multiple locations and generation of picking lists!?

[datakick]

17 minutes ago, wakabayashi said:

This is really not easy to add to the existing behaviour. I don't even know, how FIFO could ever work without multiple locations and generation of picking lists!?

In the context of stock inventory FIFO is just an accounting principle. It can answer the Cost of Goods Sold question. 

It's not really important if you really ship the oldest piece of inventory you have. It has nothing to do with stuff like Best Before Date, etc...

This is just a way to attribute accurate expenses to every sale.

From this perspective, current ASM implementation is... on a right track. Unfinished (the actual COGS  is not calculated for every order), but it tracks all the information needed to do it. 

[led24ee]

FIFO and WA are not for the oldest or newest product. They are used to calculate the value of a products and are also needed if you need to calculate earnings for a report. For the oldest and newest, you can easily view the item label. Because when you send this package, you will see it anyway. But the hard part for FIFO is when someone returns the goods. Then You need to find this price again. For WA this will be even more complicate. And when You need also convert currency then it is for Einstein type people.

[wakabayashi]

1 hour ago, led24ee said:

FIFO and WA are not for the oldest or newest product. They are used to calculate the value of a products and are also needed if you need to calculate earnings for a report. For the oldest and newest, you can easily view the item label. Because when you send this package, you will see it anyway. But the hard part for FIFO is when someone returns the goods. Then You need to find this price again. For WA this will be even more complicate. And when You need also convert currency then it is for Einstein type people.

See: You have a different opinion what FIFO is than me. We need to sort this out, before it makes any sense to dig into coding. I have for example no idea, what you mean with " you can easily view the item label".

[The Pellet Guy]

Pro Forma would be superb for us B2B retailers or those that mix retail and B2B, I would love to see that in module form or hard coded would save me a ton of time

 

[led24ee]

If You are dealing with physical products and there is need for production date then it is good idea to mark these products. Easiest way is put this mark on item or put item so that you can easily know/find out this date. And when You send these items out you can see anyway this mark. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[wakabayashi]

1 hour ago, led24ee said:

If You are dealing with physical products and there is need for production date then it is good idea to mark these products. Easiest way is put this mark on item or put item so that you can easily know/find out this date. And when You send these items out you can see anyway this mark. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Ah I understand now. This is a physical label on the product 😊 Thought of a label in the product data ^^