Post by mystifier » Thu Apr 14, 2011 4:18 pm

Opencart has an enormous flaw - it can't handle stock control on more than one option. MANY threads have been started about the inability to tell how many Large Blue Shirts are in stock but they inevitably fizzle out unresolved.

My initially delighted first clients are far less pleased with a few months experience because they now realise that they have no means of checking stock and are constantly selling things that are out-of-stock.

I have lost one website enquiry for the same reason and I am on the brink of losing my best project to date because re-ordering is not an option; they buy 500 mixed colour/size/options garments and once they are gone, they are gone. Being able to tell how many Small ones OR how many Blue ones but NOT how many Small Blue ones makes it totally useless.

I can't find the best thread where someone was talking sense and I have failed a couple of times to attract a commercial developer.

Does anyone know of a customisable shopping cart (commercial or otherwise) that can handle Product Option relationships? I have invested a lot of time in Opencart but if this can't be solved, I have to find an alternative.

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Post by froggy2011 » Sun Apr 24, 2011 9:16 am

I am new to opencart, and I am now having a similar issue did you find a solution?

With out a relationship between my size and colour options stock control is virtually impossible.

Thanks in advance

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Post by mystifier » Sun Apr 24, 2011 3:55 pm

No! The best I have is the moment is a spreadsheet with every possible unique product with a quantity column that they manually amend whenever they ship. In other words, they maintain stock as a seperate external exercise.

They are very dissatisfied for two reasons a) When they have a run of sales, people inevitably order things that cannot be delivered because it is impossible to check stock at the time of purchase b) when they run out-of-stock of a product variation, the only way they can mark it as unavailable means also disabling other variations that they DO have in stock but can't then sell.

I am still trying, without success, to generate this as a dataset so that I can re-create a view after every sale to enable stock checking.

I have just lost a pretty lucrative project because of the inability to maintain stock and they have gone for a bespoke website costing several times more.

The only amendment I have made to Opencart is to add sku at product_option_value but this only marginally improves back-office reporting.

Basically, the database is the wrong shape. I have invested a lot (time) in Opencart but it is enough reason to start again with something else if I find something that handles it. I don't really want to go magento/aspx.

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Post by Qphoria » Sun Apr 24, 2011 9:56 pm

Did anyone try my idea from the other thread about using the option as color and value as size? Wasn't sure if that would help any but for 2-level combinations it might

Instead of

Code: Select all

Product A
- Color-Size:
    - Red/Sm
    - Red/Med
    - Blue/Sm
    - Blue/Med
    - Green/Sm
    - Green/Med

What if you try:

Code: Select all

Product A
- Red:
    - Small
    - Med
- Blue
    - Small
    - Med
- Green
    - Small
    - Med

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Post by scanreg » Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:35 am

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:

http://forum.opencart.com/viewtopic.php?f=110&t=29208

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Post by JAY6390 » Tue Apr 26, 2011 2:51 am

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

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Post by Xsecrets » Tue Apr 26, 2011 3:14 am

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.

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Post by JAY6390 » Tue Apr 26, 2011 3:19 am

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

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Post by Xsecrets » Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:08 am

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.

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Post by JAY6390 » Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:02 am

oh yeah no doubt, the hell you would do that ;)

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Post by web2works » Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:40 am

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

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Post by Xsecrets » Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:53 am

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..

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Post by web2works » Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:59 am

Ok I understand now thank you for explaining.

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Post by tjdeveloper » Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:51 am

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

Thanks!

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Post by Xsecrets » Wed Jun 15, 2011 6:09 am

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.

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Post by tjdeveloper » Wed Jun 15, 2011 7:15 am

Thanks for the reply, I will try to solve it :)

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Post by scanreg » Wed Jun 15, 2011 9:03 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.

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Post by mystifier » Thu Jun 16, 2011 12:38 am

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.

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Post by Xsecrets » Thu Jun 16, 2011 1:36 am

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.

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Post by hydrowire » Sun Oct 30, 2011 1:56 am

Hi everyone,

I guess Option Combination extension can solve the problem of "how many Large Blue Shirts are in stock". Check it out here: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route ... on_id=3706
With this extension, you can control how your product options mix and match with a fix price exactly.

There's also a demo store with some sample featured products on how you can use this extension, please take a look: http://ocdemo.kfstuff.com/combo/index.p ... ommon/home

Besides stock tracking on option combination level, you can also setup discount for a particular product, e.g. "buy 2 or more Large Blue Shirts for a better price". Try it out on the demo store thoroughly, admin login details are on the extension page.

Your comments and feedbacks are welcome.

Thanks!

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