How to handle case breaks in a POS system for accurate inventory?

[petgrocer]

I've put this up before but it seems to have disappeared. Looking for solution for case breaks. We are a real retail store, that went from a fully function POS system (SmartVendor) to this semi-functional version with Shopify. Our inventory is never ever correct now, as it has no option for case breaks. I spend 5 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 before anyone releases a POS and claims it's suitable for a retail environment). 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). Trying to force this square peg POS system into a round hole retail environment is taking us so much time we are ready to look (yet again) at another POS system. 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? Frustration level is off the charts lately with this system.

[kingstore]

Why not use separate variations for the case breaks which will enable you to set up separate SKUs, prices etc., and just use an app which enables custom variations to show the case variation? 

Within SKUSavvy we bring over all the variations, and you would do the same here and could set your units of measure on the variants themselves for pick-pack-ship functions. 

[petgrocer]

Thanks for the reply. I don't see how that is going to correct our inventory. We already have variants for each. We have a case of dog food cans (12 in a case) sku and a sku for the individual can (1 each). We need something that will see at the close of each day that we are showing (for example) 1 case in stock and -4 of the eaches, then do the case break for us, effectively changing the stock levels to now read 0 cases in stock, and 8 eaches. Most POS systems already have this as an automatic feature. I have not yet even seen an app that can perform this function. From your reply it doesn't seem your system performs that function? We are not a warehouse, so the pick-pack thing is not how we operate. We are retail (hence the retail pos forum) so we are only doing case breaks on the floor. Case is on the floor, and the eaches are on the floor, and when we open a case to put out the eaches, we need our inventory to reflect that we cracked open that case and the case is no longer available, and the eaches are. Hope this is clear - hard in writing to explain the retail flow.

[petgrocer]

Bumping this in case some app company sees it and can help. I'm exhausted from trying to make manual inventory corrections so many times each week. We need automatic case breaks. Anyone?!

[CanyonsT]

I think your best bet so far is Connected Inventory, you can connect different products/variants (Case&Individual) together. Set case product/variant as master of the bundle and set the number of individuals in each master. The only issue is you have to do that manually for each product, could be exhausting if you have many, you could automatically bundle them though with SKUs if both case break items have the same SKU. 

[petgrocer]

Bumping again. Still spending hours manually reviewing inventory each week and doing manual case breaks. POS for retail normally has automatic case breaks. Hoping @Shopify  will add this in as a standard item in Stocky as they are using that as the main way to manage inventory for retail.

While we are on the topic of Stocky - set the prices to automatically update between Shopify and Stocky - like every other piece of data does. I manually must update each of those for every single purchase order. Way too much manual work for a computer system. Thanks for working towards improvements for us in the POS an Stocky. 

[petgrocer]

Bumping again. I have over 820 manual stock adjustments in Stocky in one year, and on each of those stock adjustments there are multiple case breaks. These are all to do case breaks to keep our inventory accurate. I can't believe there is no solution to automatic case breaks (that should go both ways - build a case or break a case). This is retail 101. Help @Shopify !

[petgrocer]

Please @Shopify  can you get case breaks written, so this can be a 'real' point of sale system? I have a new full time job doing manual inventory counts constantly to update our case breaks. If I had known this prior to switching we would not have switched. Our inventory is never correct. Please help with case breaks - this is what is needed in real world retail stores with inventory. Thanks!

[petgrocer]

Bumping again. Honestly, the amount of time we spend trying to correct our inventory is out of control. I would like to bump the thread as well where we ask for the option to pay for one on one training on how to use stocky correctly since our year end inventory count DID NOT properly change our inventory after that 16 hour manual count. So frustrating.

[MKIIGT40Viper]

I'm curious if you ever found a solution as we have been having the same issue for 3 years now.

[tobaccooutlet]

Solution is to use Lightspeed

[MKIIGT40Viper]

I'm going to guess this is not something that links to Shopify?  This is something to replace Shopify?

[tobaccooutlet]

Based on talking to 4 "support" reps, they don't even seem to know what you are talking about.  I use Vend (now Lightspeed) and it handles case breaks easily now.  I am looking at moving over to Shopify POS but when it is near impossible to get answers to anything like "does it handle case breaks", i decided to run away.  Thanks for this post, as otherwise we can not get any information from shopify.  Hopefully they decide to get a proper POS set up that retailers can use (not just t-shirts but proper B&M stores that handle diverse goods).  Good Luck...
P.S. lightspeed integrates well with shopify I am told.... will find out soon!

[Zapfor_Apps]

Hey there,

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