Re: Suitable for artisan?

[Jeff Kowalczyk <..hidden..>]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:06:49 +1100, Simon Haines wrote:
> Hi, I'm looking at properly organising the accounting of my girlfriend's
> business and was wondering if LedgerSMB can help...
> 
> She's a jeweller and does not sell directly to customers, but loans her
> items to galleries who then display them for sale (with their markup).
> Every month or so each gallery sends her a list of items sold that month
> and requests an invoice. Her accounting kit needs to have some sort of
> inventory management (can warehousing cover this?) where a partner
> location is assigned stock and then the items in their stock list can be
> turned into sales invoices if required, or transferred back to the main
> 'warehouse' (when items aren't sold by galleries, they are returned). In
> this regard, she does not directly make sales to customers.
> 
> I remember reading some months ago that LedgerSMB is proposing an
> inventory management feature. Is this still on the cards? Can LedgerSMB
> handle this particular requirement without kludges and hacks? I know an
> ERP like TinyERP or OpenBravo can cover this scenario, but she's a
> one-person show and ERP is simply overkill. I like the size and scope of
> LedgerSMB as a good solution for her, I just can't see how (from reading
> the manual) I can set it up to cover the gallery scenario.
> 
> Thanks for any advice on offer,
> Simon.

I think it would be a good fit. The multiple warehouses could represent
the consignment shops. You'll have transfer events between warehouses.

If it works out, We could probably benefit from a consignment workflow in
the documentation. This would seem to be a common objective for small
business users.

Will the jewelry parts be stock items (with a shared SKU) or unique pieces
(with their own SKU and/or a serial number)? Chris Travers has termed
these 'comparable' and 'noncomparable' in my previous questions about the
subject.

Jeff