AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

We ran into a problem a while back where one of our suppliers had issues delivering on certain items so we added a couple additional suppliers. However, we don't want to have two seperate items that are identical in our products table for both vendors. Any way around this?

Also, another issue that will come up if we do have multiple vendors and warehouses for the same item is identifing which supplier and warehouse to use based on shipping and cost information available for that supplier. (It gets a bit more complex when considering some warehouses only ship certain methods). Our cost may be different for each vendor and possibly even by warehouse. I know this could be a major overhaul of some parts of the code but it would be extremely helpful for us. Anyone else got the same issues? How did you resolve this?

Hi Mark,

I have similar issues where some items (but not all items) are stocked in multiple warehouses and where each of the warehouses has different shipping methods. As you've noted, there can be very complex combinations of products vs. shipments depending on the customer location, which products they order and which warehouse is nearest to them.

As I'm just getting online quoting and ordering underway, I'm simply indicating to customers that we will review their order with regard to the nearest stock and provide them with an adjusted shipping cost as necessary.

This is OK for now, but eventually it will require some advanced programming.

The first thing that would be helpful sooner than later would be the ability to assign multiple warehouses to a single product (rather than duplicating products per warehouse). Inventory tracking is probably the complicating factor on this feature.

Beyond that, we would need to be able to assign shipping methods per warehouse and then finally we would need to be able to assign a supplying warehouse to a given customer group. Most of these functions are probably "behind the scenes" in that they are not options for the customer to see or choose.

I believe in AC's abilities to make these things happen in time. But for now, I'm just working the orders manually to optimize the stock vs. warehouse vs. customer location on a case by case method.

Good luck,

-JeffR

http://www.woodessence.com