Re: Suitable for artisan?

["Simon Haines" <..hidden..>]

Thanks for the follow-up. Her jewellery pieces are assigned a catalogue number (shared SKU), but its rare that she makes more than one piece with the same SKU and no single 'warehouse' would have two pieces the same.

Unfortunately I don't know much about accounting (except the very basics about double-entry), so I'm trying to gauge whether LSMB will fit her needs while learning about things like general ledger. Fortunately I do know perl, so I can bend LSMB to my will if it can't do what I want.

One last question--because all her 'sales' are actually to 'warehouses', will she be able to take advantage of the invoicing features the same as if she was making sales to regular customers, or will it require some fiddling? Is there any other advice for setting her up with LSMB, considering her needs?

Thanks again Jeff and Chris,
Simon Haines.


Message: 5
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:00:26 -0500
From: Jeff Kowalczyk <..hidden..>
Subject: Re: [Ledger-smb-users] Suitable for artisan?
To: ..hidden..
Message-ID: <..hidden..>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

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