Inventory control for product weight

[djcaseanova]

So, I will be selling coffee and tea in my new store.

Coffee is often sold in several weight increments. 1/2 LB, 1 LB, 5LB weights.

I will be focusing on 1/2LB and 1LB weights, but instead of creating a new product for 1/2LB and 1LB sales, I would like them to come out of the same inventory. Is this something that can be done with product options? I can't seem to figure out the best way to do this. It wouldn't make sense to have the product listed as 1/2lb and force the customer to add a quantity of 2 to the cart to get a full 1LB.

I am assuming the product options matrix would be required for this, but then how does that work exactly? Pricing, stock, etc? If a product option is used what "price" is shown on the product page?

Anyone? I tried doing a search but I couldn't get anything to turn up. There has to be someone else with a similar product that's figured this out!

Thanks!!

 

 

Edited September 25, 2017 by djcaseanova

[bsmither]

I think, generally, one should start with a common lowest package size. Then either one of two approaches:

* use the options to adjust for size and enter a price differential, or
* use the Quantity Discount feature.

You would start with the product's initial price "Starting at $5.00" then the first option could be "Full Pound bag - $9.00", the second option could be "Two Pound bag - $15.00". The latest versions of CC6 allow for an absolute price on options instead of price differentials. This seems to be the most versatile with respect to quantity versus size. Also, CubeCart responds to the skin's coding (if present) where an ajax request is sent to obtain a price to be displayed depending on the options chosen.

Or, do not do options at all, but rather Quantity Discounts with a disclaimer saying shipments will be in the largest sizes available. So, a quantity of ten (half-pound bags) will have a discounted price of $38.00 and be shipped as two 2# and one 1# bags (and not as 10 small bags).

 

[keat]

This can be quite tricky, we have something similar.

We sell cable ties, we sell with price breaks of 100, 500 and 1000.

If a customer ordered 5 x 100, it will cost him more than 1 x 500.

It does happen, and we would never quible if a customer were to complain, however, it does rely on customers being somewhat intelligent and tech savvy.

I couldn't get the options matrix to work how we want it to.

 

[djcaseanova]

I get the pricing concept. But how can inventory or stock levels be handled if broken out.

For example, lets say I sell a product "Bob's Coffee". Under that product listing, there is the option for 1/2 LB and 1 LB. However, both of those options come from the same inventory.

I buy in bulk say 25 LBS. When I go to create a product in the admin, do I make the inventory 25 (pounds?) or should I make it 50 (half pounds). And say I make the inventory stock by the half pound, and someone chooses to buy 1LB of "Bob's Coffee". How can I indicate in the product options to take two out of the inventory instead of the default one.

As I see it now, the options matrix will allow me to input a stock level, but that would mean I would need to separate portions up front to list. That 25 LBs of bulk I ordered would need to be split somehow to create 1/2lb and 1lb inventory.

 

????

[ayz1]

When I look on a supermarket website they sell coffee in individual sized jars/packs. So if I was in the same situation I would list 1/2LB, 1LB and 5LB seperately and adjust my stock levels accordingly e.g. 10 1/2LB, 10 1LB and 2 5LB. As stock reduces you could move stock levels about from the 1/2LB to 1LB etc or visa versa or order more coffee into stock. This is probably the simplest way and as far as I know there is no way to get it to work from the one stock level.

Edited September 26, 2017 by ayz1

[djcaseanova]

Right, but again, that's not an accurate way to handle inventory. Having 3 individual products for simply adjusting the amount isn't feasible. And inventory is still manually having to be adjusted and ordered accordingly. This is especially a problem when your entire store is coffee and tea or anything by weight.

There must be a way to change code for a product to take away more or less units from a single inventory?

And now to add to the issue.... Shipping would probably need to be tied to whatever units used for the inventory. 1/2lb vs 1lb makes a big difference for shipping capacities and pricing.

[ayz1]

As far as I can work out there is no way of doing what you want without using a plugin. If your main objective is to have one stock level per product then the method bsmither suggested

* use the Quantity Discount feature

should be workable until you find another solution. As far as shipping goes the All In One Shipping plugin can be set up to handle shipping costs by weight.

Edited September 26, 2017 by ayz1

[djcaseanova]

I currently have it set up as using options as bsmither's suggested.

Using the lowest size (1/2lb) as the stock unit. So if I have 10 in stock, that is ten (1/2lb) bags. The problem I am having is that when someone chooses to buy 1lb by clicking the option for such, the stock level only changes by one unit (1/2lb) and not two units.

The options matrix does not have a place to mark how many need to come out of the stock inventory for the options selected. For instance in the options matrix, next to stock level I would suggest an option to use the primary stock level by adding the ability to insert -2 to subtract this many from the inventory each time this option is selected (* the amount put into the cart).

To summarize, if bob puts four (4) of the same product in his cart using the 1lb option (because he's going to gift them for birthday presents), and the stock level is set for 1/2lb units, the options matrix could calculate the (4 * 2 = 8) math and subtract that from the overall stock product.

 

It may be something simple to code, I just don't know how to do it. Can anyone here help me figure it out?

[bsmither]

I am working on a solution to do exactly that.

 

[djcaseanova]

56 minutes ago, bsmither said:

I am working on a solution to do exactly that.

 

Totally awesome!