Inventory Bins/Locations?????????

[EdibleLandGS]

We are a greenhouse complex that ships all over the country and also a facility where people can come shop in person. Think of us like a large warehouse with multiple areas for holding plants. Our current method of finding a plant (shippers and POS employees) is, for example, if I need to find a Legacy blueberry in a Qt. pot , a master list report will tell me it is in Greenhouse #1 on the 3rd table on the left, written as 1T3L. Plants sometimes have multiple locations for the same size plant, i.e.: if I have 200 Legacy blueberries in Qt. pots there may be 100 at 1T3L and 100 at 1T6R. 

Our needs are:

A: To be able to have a simple live master list for POS folks to refer to when finding plants for customers that will pull from Shopify for availability of that plant.

B: To have a pick list for weekly shipping with locations that will pull from Shopify for orders to be shipped that week. Specifically, just printing a stack of orders, and gathering each order individually will create a lot of running back and forth. So a master pick list that will tell gatherers, "10 Legacy blueberries in Qt. pots are needed for shipping this week at 1T3L and 1T6R". Once all plants are gathered from their various locations, then we can assemble individual orders from the plants gathered from the master list.

No solutions from Shopify yet and two of their recommended add-ons  are unusable. Taking the risk of hiring a Shopify expert at $120.00 an hour is not an option. Everyone seems to way overcomplicate what seems to be a fairly simple request. My people just need to find the product!

[CloudlabSam]

How are you hoping to track the plant location within Shopify? Seems like using inventory locations to identify locations and then track the quantities available at each would make the most sense.

[EdibleLandGS]

That seems to be the problem. We can't assign locations to the inventory list within Shopify. They tell me Metafields are a possibility, but I can't get the two lists I need using Metafields. I need two simple lists: first, a list of all plants and the locations of the plants; second, a weekly list for the shipping crew to gather all plants needed to ship that week. We ship Mon. thru Thurs. plants that were ordered the week before. So, we print orders on Fri. with a master list of all  plants that are needed for those orders.

[CloudlabSam]

In order to accommodate your requirements, you need to begin by assigning your inventory to locations, such that 1T3L and 1T6R would be examples oof locations. See the link below.

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/locations/assigning-inventory-to-locations

[EdibleLandGS]

Thanks for your help. This function seems to be for offsite locations and still doesn't give me the option of the lists I need. We have 12 areas where plants are held and numerous specific locations within. For instance greenhouse 1 has 48 tables (T) and ground space (G) under those tables to the left and right of a center aisle, so 192 specific spots just in greenhouse 1 (1T3L, 1G3l, 1T47R, 1G47R etc.). Plants can sometimes have multiple locations also. Greenhouse 1 is the most complicated. Shopify only allows 5 locations and seems there is no way to be specific within those locations.

[CloudlabSam]

This is the only way this could be accomplished in Shopify, unless of course you wanted to use meta fields. I'm guessing there are apps out there that could accommodate this.

[Skye]

Hi, @EdibleLandGS 

Thanks for posting. I hope your day is going well!

While it won't be perfect, there are some workarounds you can potentially use to achieve what you are looking for. 

Upon reading your thread, all your greenhouses are in one location. Is that correct? If so, you can still use locations to track your inventory. You can use Greenhouse 1 as one location and so on. Then, to know exactly where the product is located in said greenhouse you can use SKUs. You will need to come up with a system similar to what you already have by using G for ground, T4 for table L for left, etc. It is excellent to utilize dashes between each identifier so it is easier to read. The employee will only need to search the particular product in the POS or Shopify App to see the SKU and its location. If you want a master list to export, you can export your products to a CSV file which you can then sort by SKU. 

When your warehouse workers need to pull the inventory for their shipments you can use an app such as Bodegacat which creates a pick list and pack list for your orders. The great thing about this app is it is completely free!

I hope this helps! I assume you will have more questions or comments concerning the above and I look forward to helping more. If you can also attach your store's domain that would be great!

[EdibleLandGS]

Skye,

Thanks for responding. We are already using SKUs for barcoding and inventory tracking, we can't use that field for anything else. The folks I talked to a few weeks ago had no real answers for me, agreeing that we are not reinventing the wheel here. From looking into the forums this seems to be an issue that many people have with Shopify. Some of the add on programs are way too complicated for our needs. I don't need a 3D visualization of our facility etc. Just 2 simple lists. It seems just a couple of small changes to the Shopify could handle this without being nickled and dimed with these complicated add ons. Stocky and Sheetmaster were recomended but niether gets me these 2 simple lists. Bodegacat seems like it might be an answer for the shipping crew, but still leaves us with how the POS folks are going to find plants for walk up customers. The office manager is also having trouble with the integration of shipping info. We are relatively frustrated, as you might be able to tell. We are a small family business and can't afford $4,500 a month for an expert. In our business when someone buys a plant from us we are available to answer their questions, sometimes even 10 years after purchase, and come up with solutions for them. Lack of a help with a fairly complicated system is disconcerting. 

Thanks for listening,

George

george@ediblelandscaping.com

P.S. eat-it.com is the domain we are using to work out the bugs before we switch to ediblelandscaping.com (our current site). The customer interface is really great by the way, we are happy with that side of things.

George

[Skye]

Hi, @EdibleLandGS 

Thank you for the additional feedback. I appreciate how frustrating this is and definitely agree you aren't reinventing the wheel. 

That being said, can you elaborate on your current use of SKUs? SKUs should not be used for barcoding as this is a separate feature we offer. Additionally, we do have inventory tracking available via product titles within Shopify. While not ideal, if you're willing to adjust your SKUs all of your needs will be met without any add-ons or additional costs. 

Essentially, your inventory will be tracked under Shopify Admin > Inventory, your product locations will be tracked under your product SKU, and your barcodes will be assigned via barcodes. You can also export your Products to a CSV which will show a summary of all the above within a spreadsheet.

As you mention, you are looking for simple lists. Is it possible to have a Google Sheet of the store's product locations? If not, can you expand on why that won't work? As the POS works from mobile devices, you can have the sheet readily available via the device your workers are using.

[brdata]

Hi @EdibleLandGS,

If you can put your product locations into Shopify Metafields you could try our Pick List app.

https://apps.shopify.com/picklist

($5 per month with a 15 day free trial)

We allow sorting / grouping products and orders in your picklist. If you have product locations or bins in metafields you can order your picklist by any product / variant metafield to reduce your pick path.

Documentation for adding metafields is available on our website.

Product location via Shopify metafields

Let us know if you have any questions or feature requests.

Thanks,

picklist@brdatasolutions.com

Pick List Support

[kingstore]

Hey @EdibleLandGS Shopify offers an off the shelf tool called Stocky that might be a good fit for you here. Though with Stocky I'm not 100% sure how the interaction between POS goes. 

If you wanted to explore another option you should check out SKUSavvy which is a visual inventory system built for Shopify that will give you a map of every item on your lot. With POS orders your staff can search within SKUSavvy for an item and pull up a map of exactly where that item is. The platform works on any device and with any Bluetooth hardware scanner or camera to scan barcodes. 

You can also use SKUSavvy for your online orders which will enable you to create pick lists and navigate on a map of your warehouse to each bin location with items on the orders in your batch. This would be the solution for point B in your list. 

This app will connect directly with Shopify to pull in your products, locations, inventory, orders, customers etc. and then updates back to Shopify when you pick orders or add inventory. Try it out free for 50 orders per month.