I am transitioning to the manager inventory system but have run into a problem. I have 6 different locations, and when sales happen in one location, the product/s will be delivered from the location’s available stock.
Previously I used location specific item codes to achieve this. When I go to customers → qty to deliver → Item Qty to Deliver, I can see how many items are to be delivered in a list of invoices and how many I have in stock. Since the item codes are location specific, I see exactly what is available and what should be delivered for that specific item in that specific location.
When I test manager.io’s native inventory management system, I can no longer see where an item was sold since location can’t be specified on the sales invoice (for good reason). Thus, if Widget Blue had 3 sales in location Shop, 2 sales in location Van, and 10 sales in location Warehouse, I will only see that I have 15 quantities to deliver. I can’t see where the quantities should be delivered. I would need to drill down to each specific invoice, or keep a second register of invoice numbers and locations.
Is there any way to make manager’s native inventory system work in a way where location can be specified on the invoice? For example, a custom field, or a custom sorting field, to be able to discern where an item was sold?
EDIT: I believe a viable solution could be to add “Location” to the sales invoice. If location is specified on the sales invoice, then going to Customers → Qty to Deliver → Item Qty to Deliver, would show the locations with balances next to each one. This could effectively solve the problem of knowing where a sales invoice happened and thus the balance at each location.
Yes. No not enable the Delivery Notes tab. Then, the Inventory location field appears on the sales invoice. But, of course, you will not see the Qty to deliver column in the Customers tab.
You can add such a custom field to sales invoices. But it can only be made to appear in the Sales Invoices list and on the sales invoices themselves. It will not show in a drill-down on Qty to deliver in the Customers tab. You could also create Sales Invoice Totals by Custom Field reports each day or week to see what was sold from each location. That would give you totals for each location, from which you can drill down to individual sales invoices.
Thanks for the response! It looks like continuing with location specific item codes might be the way to go for my use case until further notice. For my specific case it becomes too difficult to manage without the ability to see which sales are pending delivery at different locations, what the stock status is (items to be received and to be delivered by location) and communicating this to customers asking about availability of items. I suppose location specific item codes are fine, it is just that Lubos suggested against it.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with location-specific inventory item codes, as long as you recognize their limitations as well as their advantages. Things to think about:
Do you view order fulfillment more as an obligation of the business or of the location? In other words, will you do whatever it takes to fill an order, including move inventory from another location? Or is it the responsibility of the location staff to satisfy their particular customers? Both philosophies have merit.
Are you already using tracking codes to follow profitability by location? If so, it is fairly natural to segregate inventory that way, too.
If one location can really help out another by shifting inventory of identical—but differently coded—items, are you willing to use production orders to convert one to another? Doing so is no more difficult than entering an inventory transfer, and also allows addition of transfer costs very conveniently.
If you use location-specific item codes, you might consider doing away with inventory locations entirely. That would somewhat simplify some screens, allow disabling of the Inventory Transfers tab, eliminate at least one report, and so forth.
These are good points. Some locations do have the obligation of independent order fulfillment, while others are more flexible with possibility to fulfill from other locations.
I think the answer is to use a hybrid system. Keep the location specific item codes for the one location that operates independently, and consolidate the other item codes for the locations that sometimes share inventory.
I have looked at it as an either/or, black/white type of choice which hasn’t been suitable for my situation. However, combining both systems should heavily reduce the amount of item codes while keeping the location specific item codes for the only location that fully depends on it. Using manager’s inventory locations will not hinder this, since it makes sense that widget-black-nyc is also in the nyc location as an example. I think we can mark this solved!