Inventory Sub Groups

1

Is it possible to create inventory sub groups.

I’m trying to set this software up for my sisters salon to keep track of her retail side of things and the number of products is just too big.

It would be much more effective if products could be grouped somehow.

Perhaps by company or type;

  • Loreal
    • Shampoo 500ml
    • Face Wash 250ml

or

  • Shampoo
    • Loreal 500ml
    • Head & Shoulders 600ml

Otherwise the Inventory list becomes simply TOO long. It makes it worse when trying to find the right product in the sales invoice.

If the same sub groups were available in the sales invoice then that would make things so much easier.

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2

Having a lot of inventory items will produce long list of inventory items. That’s just the way it is.

Why not name inventory items such as

  • Loreal Shampoo 500ml
  • Loreal Face Wash 250ml

etc…

3

A separate brand/manufacturer field would be nice to prevent issues when you want to apply formatting to just the brand (bold, separate line, hide, etc).

Categories would be a nice addition (perhaps a low priority feature), even if it was just a single level only.

1 Like
4

If sub grouping isn’t viable… perhaps item codes could be used?

5

Hey Lubos,

Here is a template for inventory sub groups that I think would GREATLY benefit users. Hopefully you’ll like it.

And here is how the excel export format could look like,

6

I have fashion-related inventory and internally, we want to keep track of product category/sub groups (e.g. Top, Pants, Skirt etc) and product info like SKU Code, Size, Color etc. Currently we only have about 180 items, but even now its starting to feel kind of hard to manage. Manageable, but there’s some friction to making it easy to use.

1- Currently, we created a custom field for each of them, i.e. Category, SKU Code, Size, Color, which is okay, except that currently the custom field does not appear as a column in the Inventory Items view.

2- This mean that we can’t search inventory based on the custom fields that we defined, in the Inventory Items view and in other form views like Sale Invoice and Purchase Invoice.

3- Also, currently, custom fields are not included when we try to export Inventory Items as CSV.

4 - What ended up happening is that we had to re-duplicate the SKU Code, Category, Size, Color information in the Name field in the inventory so that we can perform search, and easily find the right inventory for invoices.

For eg:
SKU Code: SKU0001
Name: SKU0001 - Printed Cotton T-Shirt - Top - Blue - L
Category: Top
Size: L
Color: Blue

5- This works to a certain extend, but it feels kinda hacky. It would be great if the custom field feature gets extended to be

  • searchable in Inventory Items view, so that I can filter my inventory based on Category for example, or search a product based on its SKU Code
  • searchable in forms (for e.g., when looking for inventory items in Sales of Inventory Items Account in a Sales Invoice).
  • Maybe the custom fields can appear in the search results, so that I can differentiate between product variants. (Size, Color, Materials etc)
  • Allow custom field to be included as a column in views like Inventory Items
  • Allow custom fields to be included templates like Sales & Purchase Invoice templates.
  • Allow custom fields to be included in the exported CSV

At least these are some of things that we observed since we started using Manager.

Thanks.

1 Like
7

All this is actually coming but not all at once. You will see at least half of this stuff implemented early next year.

By the way, data from custom fields can be already used on HTML invoice templates already. Not sure if you meant that or something else.

8

Great! Looking forward to that

If I’m not mistaken, I know that if we define a custom field for Sales Invoice, its available in the View Templates in custom_fields variable, which is awesome.

What I was trying to refer to are custom fields defined for Inventory Items (for e.g., let’s say I define a custom field Color for inventory items, I would like to maybe have access to the custom fields in the View Templates)

From what I can gather, there is a lines array, and for each inventory item line, I can access Name through line.inventory_item.name.
I would like to suggest making other fields available, particularly the custom fields, (probably like line.inventory_item.custom_fields['Color'].

With this, I can format my Sales Invoice line items more appropriately, using values from the custom fields.

Thanks again, you guys are doing an amazing job =)

9

Check the latest version (14.12.38), you can now use variable:

{{ line.inventory_item.custom_fields['Color'] }}

This would show Color custom field defined on inventory item level.

2 Likes
10

Woahhhh that’s freaking awesome! Thanks!
You guys are blowing my mind off with the level of service and support!

I’ve already been referring my clients, mostly new small-businesses, to get them away from spreadsheets and to Manager for their bookkeeping.

Excellent, guys =)

11

Dear Lubos,

How can we get these features, specially the Group Inventory described by Mr. Sogko for the fashion inventory.

Thanks.

12

Read this Release notes and read the topic below this which includes a worked example