Re: Order/Inventory Problem in all versions, proposed solution

On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 1:52 AM, Erik Huelsmann <..hidden..> wrote:

Hi Chris,

This sounds related to the issue on the users(?) list where users wanted to be able to ship after invoicing.

It is related in the sense that this shows the limits of tracking "onhand" as a single number, without categorizing what we have in inventory in various ways.

It is relatively unrelated in the sense that the UI appears to support this workflow but does so in a way that ensures that the onhand numbers in the parts table are not useful for any purpose whatsoever.

Would it be a solution to the problem above and the one I just referred to, to stop adding items to inventory on invoicing, requiring users to go through the ship/receive cycle?

That would break point of sale workflows, right? To do this we'd have to do a lot

Even though I'm not too fond of changing behaviors of the application this far into the life cycle, I'm all for changing workflows if that's required to fix fundamentally broken administration.

Long run, what we really need to do is just start logging inventory changes and then have roll-forward points (like we do for accounts) various categories of inventory states. I would like to see an ability to pull numbers of items invoiced but not shipped, shipped but not invoiced, on hand and available, ordered, and the like. This is 1.5 or 1.6 territory at least, however, and I think it will require a significantly different database design than we currently have.

[A bit later]
Re-reading your "current approach" section, I'm wondering though: what if we would adjust the number by the "total number minus number shipped"? Would that not adjust by the right number? My point is that from what I understand, it's not possible to do shipments after an invoice has been posted against the order.

Although I think this is a better approach in the abstract, there is a significant problem in that I don't think we currently can link an invoice line item to the orderitem line item which it was generated from.

Best Wishes,

Chris Travers