Any tips how to do inventory for live seafood?

Hi everyone.

I have some friends asking me how to have their perishable seafood reflected into their Opencart.

One headache they have is they are not always available to update stock on their Opencart backend, and worry that sometimes people will order when there's actually no stock...

For example shell fish stock can live and die right at the storage area. If customers order online and processed the payment, it'll be troublesome to reverse the order and refund the customer. Incurring transaction fees as well.

Any tips?

Regards,

How about a mobile app that scans the barcode container with the dead fish and updates the stock for that product_id?
Just an idea, I don't know how to build mobile apps

Or just hold the order+payment untill they are confirmed alive (pre-order form on the product page and after, prepare the customers' cart so they can login and checkout?)

I see.

Is there any android or iOS app out there that will allow store owners to simply update inventories on their phones?

I have visited their factory, and their live stock are literally swimming around in tanks, with trucks coming in and out. So I'm thinking if there's an app out there will syncs with opencart inventory..that will be great.

Regards

That'd be cool indeed!
Let us know if you found any.

Cheers

John2810 wrote:Hi everyone.

I have some friends asking me how to have their perishable seafood reflected into their Opencart.

One headache they have is they are not always available to update stock on their Opencart backend, and worry that sometimes people will order when there's actually no stock...

For example shell fish stock can live and die right at the storage area. If customers order online and processed the payment, it'll be troublesome to reverse the order and refund the customer. Incurring transaction fees as well.

Any tips?

Regards,

Since a shell fish can die at any time I'm guessing it would be impossible to know how much stock you have at any time.

The easiest way to do this would be setting up payments for preauthorization. When you are 100% sure you have the stock available you can then finish the sale and charge the customer. Once the purchase is completed you could notify the customer of the finished transaction and make arrangements for shipping / pickup.

An added bonus to this is backordering - if you don't have any in-stock you could ship out stock as it comes in, this gives customers the benefit of getting the next freshest shell fish available - even if they have to wait a day or two for it.

If you did something like that I would also look for a way to allow the customer to cancel an order at any time before it gets finalized and shipped.