I've recently setup AC 7.0.2 and am very satisifed with all of the features that are available. Many things I did not think would be possible have been implemented rather easily with minimal modification to the coding. One feature, however, that I think I will need to do a lot of work on is the backorders.
Our company is rather small and we carry a small inventory. Backorders are a common thing for us, so we need a way to manage backorders easily. Our current system is setup as such...
A) Backorders come in 2 varieties; 1. all items in order are on backorder 2. some items on backorder/some items not on backorder
B) Inventory has 4 status levels; In Stock, Allocated (currently ordered by customers), Backordered (Calculation of [Allocated - In Stock] if > 0) and EnRoute
C) We have a report that shows all items currently on backorder that our Purchase Manager can use to track and order stock
D) All backorders regardless of which variety sit in a Backorder Status until all items on the order become available
E) There is a script that can be run manually that checks the backorders against the inventory, organized by the date they were received, and then updates their status accordingly. If the items are in stock, they come off of backorder. If they are still unavailable, the status remains the same.
Obviously I would need to write a script for the last part (E). That's not really an issue, just have to build it. The Able Comemerce system seems to do (A) fine, but it is (B), (C) and (D) that I'm going to need to implement into the system somehow. With regards to (B), I'm not so much worried about getting Allocated (although it will be necessary to calculate Backorders) or EnRoute quantites in the system, I just need to get the quantities of items on backorder so that I can generate the report for (C). Does the quantity of backordered items reside anywhere in the Able Commerce system? As for (D), I can create the script that will convert the status from backordered to pending shipping, whenever the items become available. However, is there a trigger that can set the status to Backordered, whenever all items in the recently placed order are not in stock? I found where I can set status change triggers but do not see anything regarding orders that do not have enough inventory. I have the Backordered status added into the syste currently, but no way to move the orders to that status without doing it manually. Problem is, I can't find an identifier in the orders to see if there are backordered items on the orders.
I know this is a lot of stuff, but I'm just curious if anyone has customized the system for backorders (or maybe some of this exists and I'm just missing it). If anyone has worked on these modifications in the past, I'd love to see some of your posts on the subject. Or if anyone has any ideas or suggestions, they'd be much appreciated as well. If not, I will try to post as much here as I can as I get these things completed.
I wish our company wasn't so dependent on backordered item management, but it is, so I have to get this resolved before we can even use AbleCommerce at all.
Thanks,
Wil