Stock Control

Has anyone done anything to resolve the "How many Large, Red, T-Shirts in stock" problem?

After a few months of running, this is starting to cause a problem for my clients but I haven't got a good answer. It is easy to tell how many 'Red' ones and how many 'Large' ones but I can't latch onto a good way of relating them.

At the moment, my best line of thought is an external Stock Level system with output data that can be used to update Opencart stock levels.

I agree, this is an issue, also for me.

I bought the Options Plus but its not doing what I hopped it would do, second OpenCart is lacking a report feature to report what is exactly sold withing a certain time-frame.
I know that Fido-x is working on a excellent reporting tool called Full Report, should be finished any day now, but that won't solve the issue we are having.

I suppose this is only an issue for companies that keep plain t-shirts in stock for custom printing, as you would have the same stockpile of tshirt for multiple products. Tho then I would think it best to not bother with stock control at the cart level and perform your own stock control at the warehouse/storage level. Keep 100 large red shirts around.. when the order is placed it comes off the storage tally when you print the shirt.. granted this may be a manual effort, but this isn't really a cart-level issue

well as I see it this relates back to the option combinations, which aren't planned to be implemented yet. The only way to do it currently would be instead of creating separate options for color and size you just create one option and the values would be large-red small-green etc then you could track the stock properly, unless as Q mentioned you are actually using the same shirts for different products then it would be an issue, but one that I've never seen solved in any cart.

I don't think that it is a plain T-shirt problem; I think that it is a general problem in not being able to relate multiple product options in any situation where there is more than one option.

It is not exactly a criticism of Opencart because I can't think of a better way and I would far rather have multiple product options than not.

What would be the best is to create Products Option with stock (like a "normal" product) in the Admin and then Assign them to a product.
When an such Option is chosen and sold it gets deducted from the Option Products in the Admin.

i2Paq wrote:What would be the best is to create Products Option with stock (like a "normal" product) in the Admin and then Assign them to a product.
When an such Option is chosen and sold it gets deducted from the Option Products in the Admin.

I just see this being such a rare need that I don't think the core should be designed that way. Even in the case that most people want where you track stock on large green you would only want to track it per product, as if you sell a large green tshirt you don't want it to reduce the stock on the large green polo shirt.

Xsecrets wrote:well as I see it this relates back to the option combinations, which aren't planned to be implemented yet. The only way to do it currently would be instead of creating separate options for color and size you just create one option and the values would be large-red small-green etc then you could track the stock properly, unless as Q mentioned you are actually using the same shirts for different products then it would be an issue, but one that I've never seen solved in any cart.

mystifier wrote:I don't think that it is a plain T-shirt problem; I think that it is a general problem in not being able to relate multiple product options in any situation where there is more than one option.

It is not exactly a criticism of Opencart because I can't think of a better way and I would far rather have multiple product options than not.

But this is not the same. The question was how to handle stock of "large, red tshirts". The issue you are describing above with relational options is not a problem.. but many of you choose to make it a problem by arguing about the desire for dependent options as an actual need. But again it s only a visual thing. There is nothing wrong with

Product: Tshirt
Option Name: "Color-Size"
Option Value 1: Large-Black
Option Value 2: Large-Red
Option Value 3: Large-Blue
Option Value 4: Med-Black
Option Value 5: Med-Red
Option Value 6: Med-Blue

That will handle all combination stock control perfectly. You just choose not to heed the advice. This is how it works on all carts. Magento has some visual trick on their demo but there is no real ajax callback linking it, it is just a simple jscript that locks the field until the first is chosen.. It doesn't actually go out and get the actual availability.

The only issue with controlling stock of Large,Red Tshirts is when they are plain shirts used across many items, as then you wouldn't know how to break up the stock.

The Large, Red T-Shirt was simplistic. A real life example is:

Gym-Shirt
- Colour
-- Red
-- Green
-- Yellow
-- Blue
- Size
-- 20
-- 22
-- 24
-- 26
- School Logo
-- Yes
-- No
- Embroidered Name
-- Yes
-- No

Four options is far more usable than one option with 64 values.

I have an approach but at the moment, I can't get a base query that lists all possible product options to work.

Linking Product->Product_Option->Product_Option_Value, it is very easy to create a Gym-Shirt dataset with 12 rows:
Gym-Shirt Colour:Red
Gym-Shirt Colour:Green
...
Gym-Shirt Name:No
(Query at bottom of post if illustrative)

But I need one that will produce 64 rows (for this example product)
Gym-Shirt Colour:Red Size:20 Logo:Yes Name:Yes
Gym-Shirt Colour:Red Size:22 Logo:Yes Name:Yes
...
Gym-Shirt Colour:Blue Size:26 Logo:No Name:No

This unique product list could have a single quantity which would allow all option quantities to be calculated by a simple Stock system.

Qphoria wrote:This is how it works on all carts. Magento has some visual trick on their demo but there is no real ajax callback linking it, it is just a simple jscript that locks the field until the first is chosen.. It doesn't actually go out and get the actual availability.

actually no that's not true. both magento and cs-cart allow you to create option combinations and add the stock there. This has nothing to do with the javascript or an ajax callback that would be more of a dependant option thing which I don't see as a big deal.

mystifier wrote:The Large, Red T-Shirt was simplistic. A real life example is:

Gym-Shirt
- Colour
-- Red
-- Green
-- Yellow
-- Blue
- Size
-- 20
-- 22
-- 24
-- 26
- School Logo
-- Yes
-- No
- Embroidered Name
-- Yes
-- No

Four options is far more usable than one option with 64 options.

well actually you are taking the extreme here, because I seriously doubt you will want to track stock on logo and embroidery so you would end up with options color-size, school logo, Embroidered Name all you would do is to combine the size/color which are the only options you really need to track the stock on. Yes it will create more option values in one option, but you will have to have that many places to track stock even if you had some sort of true option combination because you will have to enter stock for every combination. Really the only difference is how it appears visually on the screen for the customer.

Yes, it wasn't a great example, but I have now been asked to do an Opencart site for a Heating Systems supplier and some components have 5 parameters with thousands of items in stock - I can see what is coming a few months down the line

So am I understanding it correctly that product option combinations are not available & not on the roadmap?
If i want to add just 2 options, color & size ,in order to handle stock control correctly they will have to be entered like this:

Product: Nike Air Jordan
Option Name: "Size-Color"
Option Value 1: 6-Black
Option Value 2: 7-Black
Option Value 3: 8-Black
Option Value 4: 9-Black
Option Value 5: 10-Black
Option Value 6: 11-Black
Option Value 7: 12-Black
Option Value 8: 13-Black
Option Value 9: 14-Black
Option Value 10: 6-Red
Option Value 11: 7-Red
Option Value 12: 8-Red
Option Value 13: 9-Red
Option Value 14: 10-Red
Option Value 15: 11-Red
Option Value 16: 12-Red
Option Value 17: 13-Red
Option Value 18: 14-Red

Is there no such thing as nested, or inherited product options?

Product: Nike Air Jordan
Option Name: "Color"
Option Value 1: Black
------Option Name: "Size"
------Option Value 1: 6
------Option Value 2: 7
--Option Value 2: Red
------Option Name: "Size"
------Option Value 1: 6
------Option Value 2: 7

Currently the ability to add a second option seems redundant since they cant be linked to the first value in order to be accurately removed from stock?

This is correct. After a few months of 'proper' operation, my clients have just grudgingly had to increase their products four fold because, whilst great for shoppers, multiple product options make stock control impossible.

The language_id field can also make it tricky to keep a stock query updateable. The underlying query in my back-office is (you will have to add DB_PREFIX if you use one):
My tack now will likely be to have an external stock system that lists and maintains every physical product (eg. Large, Blue, T-Shirt) with the means of 'wrapping' this back into multiple options for the shop site.

It is a pretty major failing but in fairness, not an easy problem.

Sorry to jump in, but this sounds like something we're trying to achieve too....

We're looking for a Pick'n'Mix option... We sell 'packs' which contain one fixed item and then 10 'pick your own' items that make up the pack, but we also sell all of the 'pick your own' items as other products within the shop.

Ideally the options should be linked to products, so that stock levels can be updated automatically, rather than having to hold 2 stock levels for the same product.

Hope that's clear.

Thanks

An easy explanation would be a PC... you can sell a system spec'd up as options, but you allso sell the components for upgrades...

This is also a major issue for me. I am building a shoe shop that has, in some cases, 6 different colours and 6 different sizes for each style. This will mean I will end up with a option dropdown menu with 36 different combinations! This is really an untenable solution for me and a horrible customer experience. I can see/hear my client complaining already It obviously makes more sense to be able to select 'colour' then 'size'. Given that there is currently no relational link between different options, there doesn't seem much i can do.

If anyone thinks of a viable solution for this please enlighten me. The customer will need to know whether size 5, colour red is out of stock, for example. At the moment I have the options plus module, so I am able to provide stock quantities for each size and each colour, but not for combinations.

cheers

i2Paq wrote:I agree, this is an issue, also for me.

I bought the Options Plus but its not doing what I hopped it would do, second OpenCart is lacking a report feature to report what is exactly sold withing a certain time-frame.
I know that Fido-x is working on a excellent reporting tool called Full Report, should be finished any day now, but that won't solve the issue we are having.

I'm totally agree with you !

I suppose this is only an issue for companies that keep plain t-shirts in stock for custom printing, as you would have the same stockpile of tshirt for multiple products. Tho then I would think it best to not bother with stock control at the cart level and perform your own stock control at the warehouse/storage level. Keep 100 large red shirts around.. when the order is placed it comes off the storage tally when you print the shirt.. granted this may be a manual effort, but this isn't really a cart-level issueNike air max, Nike air max pas cher

When I see an email saying that there is a new post in this thread, I always take a look in hope.

The shoe shop scenario is exactly the problem, the plain T-shirts scenario is irrelevant.

I have just turned down a request to do a shop for someone because, where stock is important, Opencart can only effectively handle a single product option.

Hi, Just joined as we are evaluating OpenCart as a replacement for our current system. Reading through the forum I came across this topic. We discovered a similar situation selling certain items with options and the following setup steps may help.

For an example, take demo data in particular the iPod Classic product. Say we have 15 x 1GB and 5 x 8GB versions in stock, giving us a total quantity of 20 for this product.

Within the Product Data tab for the iPod Classic we set a Quantity of 20 and Subtract Stock 'Yes'.
Within the Option Tab, for the 1GB version we have a Quantity of 15 and Subtract Stock 'No'. Then for the 8GB version we have a Quantity of 5 and Subtract Stock No.

The total stock quantity of the options equals our stock total 20 which held against the Product.

As a customer purchases the products both stock levels drop, ie buy a 1GB iPod and the overall stock total on the Product will drop to 19 and the 1GB option version also drops to 14.

Now the Quantity of the Product is correct being 19 and interrogating the Options data for the Product breaks it down to 14 x 1GB and 5 x 8GB versions.

Please don’t jump all over me but I don’t see what the problem is!

As normal, when you re-read the subject it becomes clearer. I need to add another option of a white or black version of the iPod Classic to my example then see how it would handle stock levels.

Sorry for another email mystifier