I am designing a new helpdesk system for my clients. One of the tables on that helpdesk will be the Hardware Inventory which will be a list of the IT Equipment that I have sold them over the years.
So in Manager on the sales invoice, I might have something like 30 Fujitsu E547 laptops with 4GB Ram etc.
I think that what I want is to have the serial numbers for each laptop on the sales invoice and that could be copied to the delivery note.
The problem I am seeing is that I would have to enter the serial numbers in manager on say the Sales Invoice Notes and then I have to put them in Excel to import into the helpdesk system.
Where should I be putting the serial numbers so that I can easily export the following information - Serial Numbers, Client sold to, purchase price and date so all I would need to do is copy those columns into my excel helpdesk import template.
How do other people handle linking inventory in Manager with inventory audit for each client with specific relevance to serial numbers etc?
i have created a line custom field for Sales invoices to enter product serial numbers.
but the problem is you cannot set it to show as a column which prevents the user from exporting the data. and i do not have any option to track them.
i had started a discussion on the forum regarding this few months back.
below is the topic.
I don’t think there is a good answer for that. There is nowhere you can search line item or invoice content. You can only search what is displayed.
As I’m sure you realize, this is because there could be many line items on a sales invoice, and the “show as a column” option applies only at the invoice level, not the line item level.
I have had a look at your earlier topic and it looks like I am going to have to think about how I want to do this. One of the problems that I have is that if I put it in the notes field, I can’t search for it which is something that I need to be able to do so I know which supplier to contact in the event of a product return not withstanding the helpdesk question.
I think that perhaps we need to create a feature request for handling serial numbers for inventory in Manager as it affects purchase invoices, sales invoices, delivery notes, goods receipts as well as disposed of inventory and of course inventory transfers and warehousing stock etc. The serial number is the unique identifier in all these disparate forms enabling tracking of inventory.
I need to think about this more, @dalacor, but it seems on initial consideration that a more capable Search function, one that would actually look at transaction content, would solve this and a variety of other challenges. If you could search for a text string anywhere in the database, whether that was a serial number, customer name, inventory item name, city, or anything else, that would be a powerful tool for answering a lot of questions. You could then generate a list of invoices on which you had sold a certain product. Or a list of customers in London. And you would not need to depend on creating dedicated custom fields and trying to make them visible in lists.
your idea to search a string anywhere in the database will be useful but may not cater to different business wrt the product serial numbers.
for manufacturers the product serial number is usually defined as a range. a sales invoice with 1000 numbers of inventory will be defined by their starting serial number and ending serial number, for example, GFS00001 to GFS01000. an efficient solution would be if Manager can find the transaction when a serial number say GFS00456 was searched. i believe this would be possible only with dedicated line fields in the form.
yes if you could filter a view that could be exported. For example. You sell 30 laptops each to 20 different clients. Then you want to export serial numbers, laptop details and client into excel and then import into your CRM database. This is just one example of how someone may want to use serial numbers.
Another example would be that I receive goods from suppliers and I list the serial numbers that come with that shipment. I sell laptops to some clients and I need to supply them with the serial numbers which I already have in stock, so Manager would need to autofill serial numbers based on existing stock.
There are so many variables to where serial numbers are being used that just capable search function would not be sufficient. I think that Lubos would need to build serial numbers into the system in a modular way as they affect all those forms that I mentioned. So as you say using custom fields etc is not really workable.
I think its something that needs to be integrated with warehousing stock and thought through as an integrated part of the program if inventory module is enabled and this will require some planning. This is one area where inventory module in Manager is not meeting requirements.
I would have to sit down and write what the purpose of having serial numbers on each form would serve and where else I want to use serial numbers and that will help to identify how to incorporate serial numbers into the program. I am assuming that virtually everyone that uses the inventory module is working with inventory that has serial numbers.
That is a much taller order than has been discussed so far. How would the program be expected to automatically know which serial numbers have been selected from stock? There could certainly be situations where you sell less than your full stock and might have non-sequential serial numbers in stock.
I would not make that assumption. The program was conceived with the notion that all of a particular inventory item are interchangeable. This is reflected not only in absence of ability to easily handle serial numbers, but also in absence of FIFO or LIFO costing options, etc. And of all the users of the inventory features, only a couple (mostly those already participating in this topic) have had much to say about serial numbers.
This is why I am saying instead of just adding some functionality to support Serial Numbers, the concept needs to be thought out thoroughly as there are so many considerations. Basically your suggestion of an enhanced search function while good and probably should be implemented -its not the correct solution for addressing the issue of serial numbers.
When I say I am making the assumption, I mean in general inventory has serial numbers, not that everyone requires serial numbers. I think the concept of serial numbers is more than just a case of does the Manager user want serial numbers or not, but more is a case that to effectively manage your inventory, you really need serial numbers to be tracked etc.
I am happy to wait on the feature to be implemented, because I think its a big job to do, kind of like budgeting or warehousing of inventory. Its not a small addon.
If your business bought and sold inventory, you would very quickly realise how difficult it is to manage inventory in terms of warranty returns etc if you don’t have proper inventory records that contain serial numbers.
I agree that we don’t want to implement every single concept into Manager as sometimes a different program is better suited for a specific task, but in this case serial numbers affect quite a number of forms within Manager in my opinion, so I think when Lubos is next working on Inventory Management, he might want to consider reviewing Serial numbers as I think even people who are not requesting serial numbers will find it very helpful.
I’ve been there and done that. No question, when it’s important, it’s very important. When it’s not, it’s a nothing. Your comments about the far-reaching complexity are definitely on target.
No. There are no serial numbers on inventory such as clothing, groceries, toys, stationery supplies, auto spare parts, nursery plants, electrical wiring components, plumbing components, hardware items, hand tools, office & household furniture and media items (books, cd’s, dvd’s, newspapers & magazines). In fact probably 90% of what you buy, including computer accessories.
A lot of the above items have part numbers, but every part has the same number.
In fact, serial numbers are generally limited to inventory which have warranties.
The exception being the aviation industry, where every part in a plane has a serial number.
they may have a batch number too if not serial numbers in most cases.
true. unless a user has a serial number unique to a specific date there is no possibility in Manager at present that would help easily find the transaction related to the product. and there is also this problem, if the produced inventory was not sold on the same day, since the serial numbers would be of the date of production whereas warranty is applicable from the date of sale.
I think that whether it uses batch numbers, serial numbers or the names of each of your cats is besides the point.
The purpose of serial numbers and batch numbers is about warranties and its about stock control - every company does a stock take of equipment. Also companies may need to recall all furniture with batch numbers xyx which they can only do if they know which customers bought those batches etc.
So the question is about managing inventory bought, sold, received and delivered for warranty purposes, product recalls and stock control purposes using serial numbers and batch numbers to uniquely identify each product.