How can I solve the case breaks issue in my retail POS system?

[petgrocer]

Copying from my other thread, since threads with 'feature request' in the title seems to get better attention.

Looking for solution for case breaks. We are a real retail store, that went from a fully function POS system (SmartVendor) to the semi-functional version with Shopify. Our inventory is never correct now, as it has no option for case breaks. I spend (was 5) 8 hours a week manually doing inventory checks and doing inventory adjustments for case breaks. There is no app (yet another $50 a month for something that should be standard on retail POS). There is no answer from Shopify (other than the rote 'we will pass it to the dev team' then we are never to hear from them again).  It's so painful. No communication, no solutions. Surely we are not the only retailer who is using cases of items that are sold in cases or eaches! Any solutions? Any recommendations? Any idea how to get Shopify to communicate with REAL answers about if something will be addressed or not? 

[RubyWalker]

We don’t need this functionality in our (fashion) store, but I feel your pain on features that ideally would be part of the core product but, for whatever reason, just aren’t yet. As no one has jumped on here so far with anything useful, let me at least tell you how I would go about addressing this in our store, by way of a possible short-term solution you could explore.

If I’ve understood your issue correctly, I think it would be quite possible to use the Shopify API to construct some code that ran automatically each night and:

1. Scanned the store’s inventory for products having an ‘each’ variant with a stock level < 0
2. Identified a matching ‘case’ variant.
3. Added the case size/quantity to the ‘each’ variant’s stock level
4. Decreased the ‘case’ variant stock level by 1

To quickly test the theory, I hacked together some code this morning to do just that and added one of your products (Nootka - Black Cod Livers) to our store, with the ‘each’ 100g can quantity set to -3 and the ‘case of 24’ quantity set to 5. When I ran the code, it correctly identified the product needing a case break, reset the ‘each’ variant quantity to -3+24 = 21 and the ‘case’ variant quantity to 5-1=4. So, at a basic level, with a single store location, it seems this might be a workable approach.

Of course, if you needed the case breaks to be a real-time thing (i.e. adjusted after every sale) then you would likely need a more sophisticated solution - but for a simple once-a-day/overnight automated sweep of the inventory, finding someone you could work with on a little code utility similar to the above *might* get the job done for you.

[petgrocer]

@RubyWalker this is an exciting answer for us! You've outlined it as we are using it, and yes, our previous system also did a scan once a day (usually as the retail store closed) to check for 'case breaks' and would change the inventory levels. We are not coders, or even that tech savvy so we are not sure how to even get into the Shopify API or what that is. I would love to learn if this is something straightforward we could do, like you have tested out. Eager to hear if we can use your code! Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to test it out and let us know about your possible solution.

[RubyWalker]

Responded offline.

[Wedevagency]

@petgrocer Would you be open to custom private Shopify App solution?

[petgrocer]

We aren't in a position to be paying over and over and over for third party unsupported (by Shopify) apps that are doing a function that should be standard in a system this expensive. 

Going to reach out to RubyWalker to see if we can implement that suggestion.

[nomadbrad]

We all really need to see this feature, it's very basic but a huge important feature to keep accurate stock. Please shopify add this.

[Zapfor_Apps]

Hey,

Saw your other post and replied there. Repeat my reply here to benefit the other commenters of this post. 

You can try  CaseBreaker. It is designed for merchants who need to manage the inventory count between bulk cases and individual units.

I am the developer of the app 🙂

Regards,

Sam

[petgrocer]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for commenting. I lost track of this request due to the constant changes and unstable platform that is our POS with Shopify. So many other problems took priority for us.

We are in the habit of manual case breaks now, but I am curious to see how your app works. We had a poor install with a (supposed) shopify approved partner who built us a website which we can no longer utilize a many apps (it is apparently a 1.0 shopify site and we need it to be a 2.0 shopify website and due to it being a PURCHASED ON SHOPIFY theme, it is NOT supported and will cost thousands to update to a 2.0 theme). So, first question for you - can this work with a Shopify 1.0 theme? After that, we would want to see the workflow to get an idea of what exactly it is doing. The screen shots do not make it obvious if it will be a fit for how we break into eaches. Thanks.

[Zapfor_Apps]

Hi there,

Yes CaseBreaker works regardless of Shopify theme version 🙂

There is a video here that shows the overall workflow. (Please ignore the first 35 secs as it mainly on installing the app)

In a nutshell, here is the outline of the workflow (as show in the video):

1. Setup the relationship between case and individual units (each).
   For example,  A case of "24 cans Chicken Breast in Broth" unpacked into one can of "Chicken Breast in Broth".
   Multi level break configuration is also supported. For example: 24 cans unpacked into 6 cans packs and 6 cans packs unpacked into individual cans.
2. With the relationship set up, when the quantity of a child becomes negative. It will be listed in the suggestion list on the CaseBreaker's Dashboard. 
3. Merchants review the suggestion list and decide if unpacking is necessary. 
4. If unpacking is necessary, merchants can click on the "Unpack" action. Right now merchants have to manually click "Unpack" on each suggestion to initiate the unpack operation. In future updates, there will be an option to unpack multiple (or all) suggestions.
5. Merchants can view the status of each unpack operation. e.g whether it is successful, the quantities that were changed. etc.

#1 is probably the most time consuming step especially if you have large product offerings. However you don't need to set up all your products, you can set up a few products to test out if the app helps while continuing to manually break the rest.

Hope that makes sense. Let me know if you need more information.