Creating a custom order

[cqpbert]

Seems I have a lot of questions today.

Here is my next situation:

My customers often want a quote for multiple custom lengths of extrusion. They will buy them as a set. I have a formula to get the quote for them, but not sure how to get the sizes from them.So a typical list might be:

4@480mm

10@370mm

1@400mm

2@290mm

I want them to be able to enter that all in and then hit a button like get quote. Maybe this would fire a script to calculate the price and present it back to them. If they like the price they can hit buy and it will be added to their cart as the list for the description and the price.

As a bonus they could add features to them like holes at some dimension from the end.

Maybe this would work better as a seperate page that would open to create a custom piece. This could describe the length and any holes. Then this would get added to a "quote" list. Once they have added all they want they hit the get quote button. But again how does the price stuff get passed to CC?

 

[bsmither]

Is the formula elementary? That is, if the product "Rigatoni" has, as options, a minimum to maximum continuously variable length, and an optional offset for a hole, plus whatever else can be modified to the product, can the equation be shown on the product's description?

Or is the formula so complex that it would take human-judgement to polish off any rough edges and outlier conditions?

 

 

[cqpbert]

The formula is not hard really, not sure if you would call it elementary:

((totalLength * chargePerMM)+(numberOfParts* laborRatePerMinuite))+baseFee

So you see you just need the total number of parts being quoted (17 in the original post)
the sum of the lengths (6600mm in original post)
price per mm (varies depending on the product chosen, in this case lets say .016 dollars
for labor lets say $60/hour, so $1 per min
base fee covers setup ans such, so $10
then
((6600*.016)+(17*1)+10=$132.60

So assuming they like that price, they could purchase the "product". the cart should list the items and have the price.

Adding holes does not alter the price, but of course I need to know to make the parts. We can figure that out once we get this going if possible. Right now the system is I get emailed, then return a price. they agree, I create a custom product then they can purchase the custom product. It is very cumbersome, and I am sure I loose sales by missing emails.

 

[bsmither]

If working with product options, how might we determine labor rate? What measurable aspect of the product could equate to time?

You said that $1/min for 17 total items. Are you saying it takes you one minute to extrude each individual item regardless of length? Or would that be an average across all orders?

Which is to ask: If I wanted a 2km length, so far that would cost $320,000. But how many minutes would be needed? Is there a way to express the minutes of labor in units of length? Like, 1 minute per 10mm? Or is it truly 1 minute per item - on average across a month's worth of sales?

 

[cqpbert]

The extrusion is raw stock I have on hand, think of it like a 2x4 piece of lumber, 8 feet long.

The customer will want some number of pieces at specific lengths. It takes me on average 1 min to get them cut, machined to length, and the ends tapped.

It takes me on average 10 mins to get things all set up and ready to process. that's the base fee

and the cost per mm is what I sell it for.

So we could simply make each length cost $1 to cover the labor, then calculate the per mm charge I guess. Most things are 18-30 pieces, so we could add another $.5 to the starting fee to cover the base fee.

I think I see where you are going with the options here. Maybe.

Let me see your idea.

[cqpbert]

This would work well if I can use the textbox option for the length. But what I don't see how to do is multiply the number in the textbox by the option charge. I know it won't do this by design (I don't think it will anyway). But lets say the product cost .01 per mm. If you enter 1000 in the text box I want the option to add $10 to the price of the part. Then the customer could add QTY 10 of them to their cart. All costing $10 each.

Maybe there is a plugin?

Of maybe there is a way to do this by modifying the code again?