Community Forums

by **Xsecrets** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:37 pm

scanreg wrote:This would be extremely helpful, best would be to fully track stock entry dates for FIFO (first in first out) cost tracking too, I started a feature request thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=110&t=29208

yeah I don't see that being important to too many people. I imagine between the fact that not many people will require it and that it will add a tremendous amount of work you will have to have that custom built for you.
I will be doing a mod for option combination stock tracking, but It won't track dates that's for sure.

by **JAY6390** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 6:51 pm

Well I know of a way to do it just fine. The problem with 1.4.x is that the options get deleted each time the product is updated. If that didn't happen, 1.4.x wouldn't be an issue either. The solution is fairly simple actually, and can be done dynamically, although will require a bit of work and some elbow grease from the person inputting the stock values

by **Xsecrets** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:14 pm

Still sounds like alot of work for a feature I've never even seen requested before much less have I ever seen a cart software that had the feature.

by **JAY6390** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:19 pm

Yeah, to be honest it's not something that particularly bugs me, but for store owners that have clothing as their line of business, tracking that stock becomes really important or you end up p***ing off customers. Of course, you still need to update stock when you get more in, which can also lead to the same problem if something gets sold while it's being uploaded, since the user needs to manually calculate the amount to increase it by - that and human error of course, a quick slip of a finger and you add 100 pieces of stock you don't have

by **Xsecrets** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 8:08 pm

JAY6390 wrote:Yeah, to be honest it's not something that particularly bugs me, but for store owners that have clothing as their line of business, tracking that stock becomes really important or you end up p***ing off customers. Of course, you still need to update stock when you get more in, which can also lead to the same problem if something gets sold while it's being uploaded, since the user needs to manually calculate the amount to increase it by - that and human error of course, a quick slip of a finger and you add 100 pieces of stock you don't have

well I completely understand the stock combination thing like for clothing being able to track large+green shirts separate from large+red shirts. And I have a good handle on that and think I should be able to get a pretty good system in place fairly quickly once 1.5 is released. What I don't get at all and have never heard of a system having is the first in first out thing. I can't even think how you would handle it. somehow you would have to batch your inventory and have a cost field associated with it. That is an enormous amount of work, and like I said I've never seen a system with that functionality nor have I ever heard anyone else request it.

by **JAY6390** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:02 pm

oh yeah no doubt, the hell you would do that

by **web2works** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:40 pm

Is this not already built into OC with the option-values you can enter the stock level and if it needs to subtract.

by **Xsecrets** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:53 pm

web2works wrote:Is this not already built into OC with the option-values you can enter the stock level and if it needs to subtract.

stock on individual options is built in, but not stock on option combinations, so if you have
option size
value small
value medium
value large
option color
value orange
value white
value green

you can currently only track stock on small and separately on green, so if someone buys a small green shirt small stock decrements by 1 and green stock decrements by 1 then if someone else buys a small white shirt stock on white decrements by one and stock on small decrements by 1. This is obviously does not jive with the physical stock you have on hand. You cannot currently track stock on small green shirts unless you create it as below which people really don't want to do.

option size/color
value small/green
value medium/green
value large/greeen
value small/white
value medium/white
etc..

by **web2works** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:59 pm

Ok I understand now thank you for explaining.

by **tjdeveloper** » Tue Jun 14, 2011 9:51 pm

Does any one know if this issue was solved on the 1.5.0 version and how?

Thanks!

by **Xsecrets** » Tue Jun 14, 2011 10:09 pm

tjdeveloper wrote:Does any one know if this issue was solved on the 1.5.0 version and how?

Thanks!

no. It was never going to be solved in the 1.5 version, though I'm sure that someone will make a mod for it now that 1.5 has been released. It's just that most of the devs are just completely swamped with work right now.

by **tjdeveloper** » Tue Jun 14, 2011 11:15 pm

Thanks for the reply, I will try to solve it

by **mystifier** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 10:23 am

But no provision has been made for it in the database.

Speaking personally, when I saw that v1.5 still didn't take product (multi) option stock control seriously, I felt that it was time to move on (actually at the suggestion of a mod here despite several hundred supports).

I did four Opencart sites for people who asked and initially, everything looked great. After a few months of experience of running the sites with multi-product options, ALL were very displeased. Bells and Whistles shouldn't have taken higher priority IMHO.

by **i2Paq** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 12:48 pm

Sorry to see you go.

Thanks for all you help in the past! :clap:

What are you using now if I might ask?

by **scanreg** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 1:03 pm

Would it be possible to assign each and every item-option combo a unique number?

Item 123 Hat
Sizes, S, M, L, XL
Colors Blue, Red, Green

Assigned ID numbers with a date (in parens):
123-S-Blue (123-20110614-290384028340)
123-S-Red (123-20110614-290384028341)
123-S-Green (123-20110614-290384028342)
123-M-Blue (123-20110614-290384028343)
123-M-Red (123-20110614-290384028344)
etc...

This would also allow batch tracking of similar items, like if you get a new batch in of the same basic items (123-S-Blue for example), the new batch could get its own set of unique ID numbers:

123-S-Blue (123-20110628-290384028340)
123-S-Red (123-20110628-290384028341)
123-S-Green (123-20110628-290384028342)
123-M-Blue (123-20110628-290384028343)
123-M-Red (123-20110628-290384028344)
etc...

Could be neat to track each supplies entry for quality control for example such as when a new batch comes in that is slightly off on color or other quality.

by **Xsecrets** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 2:37 pm

mystifier wrote:But no provision has been made for it in the database.

Speaking personally, when I saw that v1.5 still didn't take product (multi) option stock control seriously, I felt that it was time to move on (actually at the suggestion of a mod here despite several hundred supports).

I did four Opencart sites for people who asked and initially, everything looked great. After a few months of experience of running the sites with multi-product options, ALL were very displeased. Bells and Whistles shouldn't have taken higher priority IMHO.

This was discussed many many times before 1.5 release and it was never once stated that it would be in the 1.5 release actually I know for a fact that you were a part of many discussions where it was clearly stated that it would not be a part of 1.5

Out of curiosity what cart are you going to? Magento I presume since as far as I know it is the only cart that actually does have this feature. You an many other act like this is a must have and common feature, when in reality it is very uncommon to find in any cart, and a royal pain to manage even when you do. Have you seen what you have to go through to actually do this in magento?

by **mystifier** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 3:46 pm

I would put that back the other way; you show me a single serious ecommerce website (eg. Marks & Spencer or even eBay Shops) that DOESN'T have hierarchical/drill-down product options including the number available of the final combination in stock.

Shop operators want to buy stock consignments, eg. lingerie with cup-size, back-size, straps, colour, list it on the site and forget about it. Selling items that are out-of-stock, marking items out-of-stock that aren't and worst of all, having no means of checking combinative stock is a major headache. I had four people bellowing at me with good reason.

Opencart is terrific for single-option products but, although increasingly feature packed, pretty hopeless for anything else.

... but I didn't really call in to argue :laugh:

by **Xsecrets** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 4:11 pm

mystifier wrote:I would put that back the other way; you show me a single serious ecommerce website (eg. Marks & Spencer or even eBay Shops) that DOESN'T have hierarchical/drill-down product options including the number available of the final combination in stock.

Shop operators want to buy stock consignments, eg. lingerie with cup-size, back-size, straps, colour, list it on the site and forget about it. Selling items that are out-of-stock, marking items out-of-stock that aren't and worst of all, having no means of checking combinative stock is a major headache. I had four people bellowing at me with good reason.

Opencart is terrific for single-option products but, although increasingly feature packed, pretty hopeless for anything else.

... but I didn't really call in to argue

you still didn't answer what open source solution you have moved away from open cart to that has this feature.

All you did was point to "serious" shops that make millions of dollars have development teams and run on custom built solutions.

by **mystifier** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 4:38 pm

But it's much less difficult to include than some of the features that have been ?! Especially if it is restricted to Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 options (as opposed to one-to-many).

Jonathon's Dynamic Categories uses the mechanism of a dropdown datasource being generated after the previous one is selected.

And no, my intention is not to lead people away from Opencart by suggesting any alternative.

by **Xsecrets** » Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:36 pm

mystifier wrote:But it's much less difficult to include than some of the features that have been ?! Especially if it is restricted to Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 options (as opposed to one-to-many).

well I don't know about how much less difficult it will be than other things that have been added. I've seen where you attempted it so you know the difficulty level. It might make it easier if you limited it to 2 or 3 levels, but if you are going to release something for everyone you know as well as I do that the day you release it someone will complain that they have 4, so it's best to just do it right and make it many to many. With the options moving to global options it at least makes it possible, though still difficult. I'm sure it will happen, but as you've mentioned elsewhere with 1.5 just coming out and for whatever reason everyone else on the planet actually pulling the trigger on all their projects most of the devs capable of this level of work are just swamped right now.

Jonathon's Dynamic Categories uses the mechanism of a dropdown datasource being generated after the previous one is selected.

I don't see what this has to do with the options at all. The categories are already stored with hierarchical data in mind. All that has to be done is a simple ajax callback to query for categories with the selected parent, and there is no sort of combination data stored in relation to categories.