We use Sage 100 Advanced 2023. We have an item, Honey Straws that we make up into 50 packs to sell. We buy these in boxes of 2000. There are about 2 dozen flavors we offer, but for the examples, I will use Apple as the flavor. All items have similar setup where Apple would be substituted with another flavor.
I want to use barcodes to streamline the process of shipping these but am having trouble with item set up. I am looking for input on how to set these items up in order to streamline the shipping entry without losing the sales "easiness." Maybe it cannot be done without some compromise, but I am here asking if anyone has ideas for me.
The straws each have an item such as HS0Apple for individual Apple flavored honey straws. The individual straws are what carry inventory levels in Sage. The idea was we could make 50 packs, 2000 packs or variety packs with 5 of each flavor and draw from the same inventory so we would not be out of stock until we were truly sold down below the order being placed.
We have an item Honey Straws 50 Pack that we offer. This is a kit item in Sage that has an associated BOM and is set to always explode. The BOM has an option called flavor. Each flavor draws 50 of the individual straws. This was set up this way to allow us to have one tile on the website. After clicking on the tile, the customer can chose the flavor or flavors they want from a drop down. On the Sales Order in Sage, this shows as one line HS50 with a quantity of 1 and then another line under it with HS0Apple with quantity 50.
I also have HS50Apple which is an item and BOM that does not have options. It draws 50 of the individual honey straws. I do not set these up to have inventory levels though I am considering doing Transaction entries to record when a box of 2000 is split into these packs.
The website has the generic HS50 with all the options so we can have one tile for honey straws. For the Customer Service Reps, they can use that and scroll to the flavor or they can type in the HS50APPLE and skip the option choosing step. For customers who order lots of different flavors, this speeds the order entry time on the phone. For the website, If we only sold HS50Apple and the other flavors, this would mean we would have a lot of pages of these if each tile was its own flavor. It could be done, but seemed unwieldy with our previous ERP that didn't allow for the options.
When shipping, I have issues. I can make a barcode for anything, so that is not an issue. Our 50 packs have HS0Apple as the barcode. This means if the shipper is shipping a bunch of honey straws, they can scan this barcode not in AutoIncrement mode and go to the line in the kit that says HS0Apple. They could then go up one line and type in 1 to ship a 50 pack of apple honey straws. This is a lot of clicking around and takes a while for each line to explode. If I have auto increment turned on, they would have to scan the bar code 50 times for each pack. This is worse.
If I make HS50Apple the barcode, then I can scan a barcode for that and it will add one and then explode the 50 individuals out. This is great, except that it would make me have a lot of tiles on my website to sell them this way. I thought I might put the 50 pack in as an item that holds inventory, but when I have HS50 quantity 1 with HS50Apple quantity 1 as the flavor option, scanning the barcode will put 1 in the HS50Apple line, but leave the HS50 line that is the exploded kit as 0.
I am wondering how to get things to scan correctly. I am thinking I might need to make a script that will add the quantity shipped to the main kit item after the component items of the kit are shipped. Is that best or are there other ways to do this?
Thank you
Chris
