How can I track inventory for varying lengths of vinyl sold?

How can I track inventory for varying lengths of vinyl sold?

KawarthaVinyl
Visitor
1 0 0

Hi there, I have a question about inventory and variants. We sell vinyl. We buy our vinyl in large rolls and sell it in different lengths. We haven’t yet figured out how to track our inventory for this as our variants won’t track it properly. For example our options are

12”x12” 

12”x3ft

12”x5ft 

and so on.. the longer the roll is the lower the price gets. Is there anyway to have our site track this? We buy 12” x 150ft rolls and don’t designate a certain amount of the roll for different variants we just cut as it’s ordered. 

so we would need our 12”x12” variant to take off a qty of 1 and our 12”x3ft variant to take off a qty of 3 from our total inventory. 

this has resulted in us manually entering invoices into our quickbooks to keep track. 
Any help would be appreciated. 

 

Replies 2 (2)

swheeler
Excursionist
45 0 7

Hi @KawarthaVinyl ,


This is perhaps one of the most vexing issues of online retailers that sell anything other than 'widgets' and I've not seen any eCommerce platform actually resolve it.


Full Disclaimer: I author the CartSpan eCommerce integration for Shopify and QuickBooks (and Sage 50 U.S.) that I am discussing in this thread.


CartSpan, as part of it's configuration, allows you to maintain a lookup table that manages Item redirection with an associated conversion factor applied during the import/export process.


Thank you for providing the detailed example as it relates to your individual business process. I have attached an image to this response that illustrates how you would configure the variant options for your vinyl product.


There are two types of records in the lookup table, one that address in-bound order-items, and the second that addresses stock updates pushed back to Shopify.


Let's start with the in-bound side of the equation first. Notice in the 'SKU' field, the meaningful 'Item Name' for the two configuration lines that have no description. Theses Item Names in the SKU field coming from Shopify don't really exist in the accounting system...I refer to them as 'phantom' items. These SKUs will be detected at the time of order import and redirected with the appropriate 'Stock Multipler' value applied. There is no need to configure the base Item Name of '12x12' in the lookup table as it already exists.

 

CartSpan Stock Lookup Configuration.jpg


Now, for pushing stock back in the opposite direction. Shopify doesn't support updating stock based upon the SKU (a.k.a. Item Name in QB), but rather its own unique identifier.  Therefore, CartSpan allows you to import these unique identifiers for subsequent cross-reference with your base stocking items and appropriate conversion factor. When the stock update runs, only the records with this unique identifier are processed.


I have customers that sell product in volumetric, length, area, and other odd-ball units of measure and CartSpan works very well for them. Please give me a call at the number found at the top of the CartSpan website and I'd love to chat in more detail about your business requirements.


Best Regards,
Scott

CloudlabSam
Shopify Partner
611 49 106

This could be accomplished using the Mechanic app. They have a community on Slack that can provide guidance and/or resources to help you put together the necessary tasks that would automate this.