I have just found this incredible software with almost everything I need for my store. I am evaluating it and very satisfied with the installation, UI, speed. The UI is just enough, not too much or too less. Only the Inventory module which not fully matched our needs and I know that it has just been added not so long so it might be not so full-featured yet.
Our store is selling products with both retail and wholesale prices (also with % discount sometimes). We have thousands of products and many of them have variation in size, color, material, and some other attributes depending on each product.
My requirements are
Categories: I have read some topics about this requirement in this forum already. I just want to clarify this a little a little more detail. The requirements are (a) Products are multiple categories. (b) Category can be organized in multiple level (treelike) or can be 1 level with Category Group. Although we have thousands of product, we found that in many occasions too many levels of categories are confusing to use so 1-level Category with Category Group is enough for us. But if others need treelike categories, then it is ok for us also (because treelike is more flexible and covering this requirement already).
Product Attributes (not just custom field which now act like an additional description): This means we can have a product with sizes, colors, or other variants (3 attributes are enough really but it can be different for each prodcut) link to the same parent product. This feature will shorten the list of searching, browsing items in this application and then enable making catalog on website or mobile app that you may extend Manager in the future (I hope soon). Surely the price and outstanding amount of products will be separated by their attributes too.
One-more Price Levels: Sale invoice items can solve issue about retail sales already and it is really useful for us too. But for wholesale, we need another price for each product because almost of products have another fixed wholesale price rather than % markdown. The consequence is that we need to set the customer base-price-type (retail or wholesale) and % discount from that base price so Manager will choose the price calculate discount in invoice automatically for us.
In cases we use sale invoice item, we need to show the product code in the invoice rather than the name of sale invoice item which behave like a discount schema for any product. I guess this is about templating but I cannot find the template variable in your Guide.
Catalog Generating is a surplus feature.
Are some of these features existing in your plan? How soon would they finish?
PS: I am also interested in Barcode Reader like other posts too. In addition, support for QR Code is also useful and easier for use. We can use simple web cam attached with POS machine, notebook, or mobile.
Forgot to note that the most urgent requirement for us is the no. 3. One-more Price for each product and the setting of Customer to use which price for his/her ordering.
The other features can be done outside this software or can be added later not so soon.
I donât know if it was my topic (I think it was in, what am I doing wrong here topic) that you are referring to, but I was also wanting categories. I have created a custom column for categories but its not really working for me very well because if I type in computers, I am getting inventory items that have the word computers in it as well as the category computers. Of course I can change the category name to something else, but I will always find my category name appearing in other fields in inventory item. So I fully agree with categories as I need to break down my inventory items
Product attributes - Yes I like the sound of this as I am finding that I am forgetting to put all attribues into description. Having specific fields would help me to ensure that I remember all attributes. How that would work as everyones business works differently. But product attributes is really necessary as I keep forgetting to put the same attributes in for each laptop.
I also need price levels improved. I have already spoken to the developer. I actually sent him an email with my workflow, so I can understand that price management is an issue. Not sure how he will get it to work for all users, but he is clever - he will work it out.
showing product code in sales invoice is questionable as some will want this and others will not want this. I donât want my clients to have the product code
Catalog Generating? Whats that about?
I am pleased to see someone else reporting that they would like to see new functionality in inventory as I donât want to be the only one requesting changes
I think that product attributes could work for different companies by creating coding that allows you to select how many attribute categories you want and what you want to name them and then Manager could concatenate the description field with all the attribute fields that have been created or better yet do away with the description field and just add all the attribute categories together so that you see a description field in sales invoice and purchase invoice which is a grouping of all the text in the attributes fields. I think that could work
No. 2. can be accomplished by âCustom Fieldâ already. What I need is a little more complicated than just Custom Field.
No. 3. Yes, price levels are needed. And for me I just need 1 more level so it would be easy to put 1 more field in the productâs db schema. To make it unlimited-level, I guess we will have to wait for a longer time for coding and testing and I am not sure how many people need it, although it will be much more flexible surely.
No. 4. I guess it is all about template. So I just ask for the variable name to put in the template myself.
No. 5. Capability to generate Product Catalog in PDF from the Inventory Item Database.
I expect the software to select the price automatically which will be easier and faster for work. The price level is selected for (or associated with) each customer already and can be loaded once a customer is choosen in Quote/Sale Order/Invoice creation. Anyway, choosing manually is also ok for now. Just support it first because we cannot work without it.
Infinite level of prices will be cool but (I guess) it might need more time to do so for this short time, I want just 1 more price to choose for each customer. Although currently we really have about 5 - 6 price levels, we basically use 2 main levels, and the other 3 - 4 levels will be calculated as % discount from the 2 main levels. Only the 2 main levels which have fixed price without percentage relationship to the other, so one cannot be calculated from the other one.
For categories, I mean Group of Categories, not Group under Categories. However, this is just a matter of name and the real structure is the same for yours and mine.
The #4 is about templating and is about information in the invoice which is not so urgent for us.
The urgent issue for us is #3. But I mean the price for selling our goods which we have 5 - 6 price levels for each customer. Roughly they are retail or wholesale customer. For more clarification, retail customers are consumer, while wholesale customers are reseller. Then we will give some discount for some customer based on their base price. The discount calculation can be set as Sale Invoice Item in Manager, but the 2nd base price cannot. ⌠The price from suppliers is not the problem for us.
BTW, sorry for use too many post for replying. I am not yet familiar with this webboard. Anyway, I love the functionalities of this webboard so much and never seen any similar one.
Yes I understand that and I am actually agreeing with you. Custom fields as it stands now is not practical for attributes because custom fields are not visible to the client in the sales quote/invoice. What I mean was introducing coding into Manager so that you can tell manager that you want three attributes for your inventory items. You name your attributes whatever you want and you populate the fields with your details. Then in sales invoice, in what is now the description column it sees what you put in attribute fields 1-3. I am thinking that it may be necessary to be able to set different attribute fields to different inventory items such as a laptop or anti virus software. Anti virus would only have one attribute field such as one year license or three year license whereas a laptop would have cpu, memory, hard drive etc.
Maybe it would be easier if the program could have drop down attributes that we could name whatever we needed and we could select the attribute we need from our drop down list otherwise we will end up with a field called memory and one called RAM - which is actually the same thing!
No 3. will be difficult to implement because you want multiple prices, I want price markups based on percentage or fixed amount and other people want batch imports and so on - the permutations are endless. I think it could work because the basic concept for most people is the same - they are buying something for x amount and selling it for y amount. That will be relevant for all businesses.
âDifferent attributes for different inventory itemsâ that what I really want and it is also kind of real-life case. But it might be too difficult and take to long time to add it in Manager so I was afraid to speak it out loud.
No. 3. I understand its difficulty so I suggest just 1 more price level is enough. With this additional price level, Manager will be able to support many more cases of business. Do not need to go for unlimited multiple prices.
