Need advice-considering company store with osCommerce

[don.cpc]

Hello, I'm hoping to get answers from experts and/or osCommerce staff.

 

I am considering creating an internal company store, to aid with my warehouse inventory management. An online store, I think, would do very well in this regard, as it would track my "orders" going out of my warehouse just as if it were a store (the only difference being that my technicians are my "customers").

 

Some questions:

 

1. Does anyone know the kind of reports/analytics that come off the back-end? Can you describe?

2. Does this integrate or export to PeachTree?

3. Does anyone do something like what I'm suggesting, and can you share your experience?

[don.cpc]

I'm realizing that I may need to give more context so that the questions make more sense. We are a pest control company, with many chemicals in inventory. My technicians are my "customers", and an "order' would be me issuing inventory to them. I like the idea of an online store managing the inventory counts, as right now we have a MASSIVE spreadsheet that is a pain.

 

Very open to thoughts on this.

[MrPhil]

This is strictly for tracking chemical etc. inventory? Out of the box, I'm not sure that osC is going to give you what you're looking for. I think there are some add-ons for generating reports for each "customer". To comply with EPA rules, wouldn't you need to further track the ultimate usage of the chemicals (the retail customers)? Frankly, I think osC is going to come up short for such tracking -- it's just not designed for that. Rather than a spreadsheet, perhaps you should have a database application where you can slice and dice chemical disbursements and search for who drew what stocks and where they were applied. Will the technicians be responsible for data entry, or will there be someone in the central office responsible for it? I would presume that after some period of time, records fall out of the system (perhaps to a static archive).

[♥bruyndoncx]

I think the biggest issue is going to be - how will you be adding stock ?

Our inventory control is really integrated with our accounting system, don't you have something compatible with PeachTree ?

[don.cpc]

Thanks for the responses, all.

 

@@bruyndoncx: So not running an online store, I am guessing here that it's the same - I would hope there is a way for me to enter product received, to add stock? Isn't that true for ANY store, regardless of if the customers are true "external" customers or they are internal customers? And we are looking at Peachtree, but I thought this might be more user-friendly for those of us that don't use Peachtree, but do the inventory issue.

 

@@MrPhil, it is strictly for tracking chemical "orders" (resupplies). We have x amount of Chemical 123 on the shelf, in a 1 quart bottle. Tech 1 "orders" 2 bottles for resupply. I fulfill that order, and I am hoping that osC tracks the count of inventory on the shelf as well as is able to tell me that my customer (tech 1) has so many orders of which product in a month. Again, seems like things that any online store should be able to do, regardless of the customer type (internal vs external). Let's not get hung up on that detail...I'm wondering how does osC handle inventory for all of you now?

[burt]

I made an inventory system for a high street chain of shoe shops. As you can imagine a shoe shop has to carry multiple styles of shoe in multiple sizes - the database of products soon gets enormous. Warehouse has 1000s of items ready to be picked and packed to teh shop which sells to the end customer.

 

osCommerce is the central hub of it all, in this way (simplified for brevity);

 

1. new stock comes in and is barcoded

2. that new stock is entered into the osCommerce shop (with the barcode as an extra input)

3. using the master slave system, an old addon that is past it's sell by date :(, the osC shop is able to differentiate between a style of shoe "Doc Martin Boot" (master) and a size (slave). If all the size 10s sell out, that slave is deactivated, the other slaves are still available to buy.

4. If new stock of Size 10 comes in, barcode is scanned and the slave (size 10) is reactivated in the online shop.

5. In each shop, at the POS checkout, the barcode is scanned and the quantity is reduced in the online shop.

6. If a person then looks at the online shop, the stock is completely up to date and any item can be bought with the business owner having complete confidence that the stock is available for that online buyer. Stock is reduced by 1, order is picked and sent.

7. Reports can be shown showing who bought what, what stock is on hand and all the rest of it.

 

In this way, each "real" shop, and the online shop, and the warehouse is using 1 osCommerce shop to power the real-time stock trakcing.

 

I hope this gives an insight into what is possible with osCommerce.

[don.cpc]

Thanks burt! This is what I would HOPE osC could do, and it seems to me that my little inventory needs would be child's play...so thank you for the detail of your response. After 4 or 5 people asking questions here and on LiveChat, I was really starting to wonder!