[PeakeUSA]

Everyone,

We are an older Volusion customer that has struggled with using Volusion's inventory management tools. We've stuggled bc we build / brand custom golf/snow/surf clothing and when using the Vendor Information Tab... you can set up inventory tracking and alarm PER ITEM.

The issue we find is with our clothing... we have 1 item per product but each item has multiple SIZES (XS, S, M, L, XL etc.), which we build in the Product Options. So we can have say 50S 10M 200L etc... in one product, so you have sub products in a product that doesn't lend itself to the inventory tracking tools.

Does anyone else have this challenge, and have you found a workable solution leveraging the platform w.o custom development?

Long story short this is a growing massive burden we have to manually track. Especially on items that are going out of stock, where we need to manually keep a close eye... so an order doesn't come in with something that has recently been sold out.


Any thoughts or feeback would be great.

PEAKE - peakeusa.com
-Casual Clothing, Technical Apparel & Gear

[bigred]

Do you want to track inventory on the child products? Because if so you have to look at it this way, the parent product is just a dummy product that show cases the child products (which are the actual product). You can keep track of inventory even through the vendor tab. But you have to set the inventory and the vendor tab up in the child product in the admin not the parent product.

Is this what your talking about?

-Paul

[PeakeUSA]

I guess to be clear... we want to use the inventory tracking capabilities of the Volusion platform if possible - and I don't think we can but wanted to check with the forum to see if anyone has the same challenge and a work around.

Right now I believe the only way to use the inventory tracker is per product ie. the total # of that you are selling.

For example you are selling Black Ipod Nanos and have 100 of them. U can easily update the number of those black ipods and the Volusion platform subtracts 1 per item sold... and then alarms at some variable say 5... and won't let you buy one once it gets to zero.

We however b/c its clothing have multiple sizes in a product, using product options to build the size = XS, S, M, L, XL, XXL.

The Challenge is (Example a Peake T-Shirt)

Product - Peake T-shirt (TOTAL 60)
XS 10
S 10
M 10
L 10
XL 10
XXL 10

We need to track not just the TOTAL of the t-shirts, but get more granular and track the SIZE within that product to give an accurate view into inventory.

I hope that is a bit clearer and appreciate any feedback on work arounds anyone has found with similar products they are selling.

The only way we can see to do it is to make a product per style, size and color which would display terribly and be confusing. Sorry to ramble a bit and thanks for any additional feedback.

-Peake

[PureInfant]

We do this for our clothes line as well. You essentially have to make the sizes an option for the product you want. Then use the inventory control grid for the parent product to set the inventory for the different options.

[rickandjune]

Hey Peake, I had a Volusion store for women's sleepwear and had the same issue. It IS workable and easy once you know what to do.

You basically have to set up Inventory tracking which involves having a "parent" product, ie t-shirts, and "child" products, ie small/black, medium/black, small/green, etc. If you already have your product options set up, it will be easy for you to do.

You should plan to implement this change when you have some time to test it and make sure all inventory numbers are correct. What I ran in to is when you use this inventory system, it will assign it's own product numbers, rather than YOU assigning them. The parent can be the name/number you want, but the children will be a variation of that name assigned automatically.

I can't remember all steps involved in setting this up, but it's not hard. Give Volusion support a call and they can walk you through it. When it is set up, you may have to delete all products that are duplicates. That's another thing to be careful about - If you have duplicates your inventory won't be right.

Once this inventory tracking is set up, it makes it much easier to be sure that customers are not able to order things that you run out of, plus it will give you reminders on low stock, etc.

Good luck!
K

[rickandjune]

Also, once you have it set up, you must remember that ALL changes to a product (price, content, images) are done in the PARENT product, not the child. The changes will be visible for all.

[PeakeUSA]

Thanks everyone sooooo much for the feedback, just knowing its possible gives us hope. We'll call Volusion to walk through it with them. Sincerely thanks for the feedback we really appreciate it.

See you on the course, in the water or up in the mountains.

Take it light

-Team PeakeUSA

[bareapparel]

actually i thought it wouldnt work unless we did multi child add to cart, but it does!!


You need to enable these options
Go to inventory>products, then click on blue/purple "product settings" near top left and enable "SmartMatch_AutoCreateChildInventory: "

Then go to settings>config variables>general variables. Then click View all.
Enable "Config_EnableOptions_InventoryControl"

Then click check out varibles and make sure "Config_EnableAllowBackOrders" is not enabled.

Then go to Inventory>products options> then click option catagories. Go into each catagory (size and color) and make the display type "dropdown__smartmatch"

Then go to Inventory>products, go to product options section, clear all the option ids and go to bottom and click save+view record and save, then after it saves, go back down to same area and put the option ids back in that belong to that product. click save again and in the inventory control grid, you will have all your child products listed with new product numbers. and you add your inventory to each.

Works great, but if you are out of stock and the stock says 0, it will not show at all in product page to you customers. SO if black in small is out of stock, they wont see the color swatch or be able to pick the size in drop down.

Never make changes to the child product admin sections, you need to change the parent product.

Here is the video to show howo to do this: http://www.volusion.com/training_vid...ns/default.asp

go down to smart match.

hope this helps.
Beau