Bulk and group buying - wishlist

Software improvement 1-Voting Candidates
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Continuing the discussion from Bulk and group buying - wishlist

OK, apologies everyone - this is a working brain dump which leads to simple next steps, but just wanted to really think through the options and implications. Tim / Leah - do not be overwhelmed, there’s a lot of lingo in here that you do not to be on top of right now

in good news …

I think the steps under Set-Up are the correct next steps regardless of which options we choose later, so let’s get those started then the rest can become clear incrementally . .

Situation

  • Food Connect has an order cycle with bulk items available e.g. box and half box
  • Associated buying group wants to sell items in smaller units, and place order with FC for bulk amounts, while maintaining individual customer information for adjustments, invoicing etc
  • BG has existing business process, seeking OFN use to reduce some of the labour associated with this

Considerations

  • FC does not want to manage / deal with all the micro-units
  • Need to make sure that ‘double accounting’ doesn’t happen e.g. same unit being counted twice
  • BG needs flexibility to deal with other producers etc that aren’t part of FC

Set-up

  • Create separate Hub for buying group
  • Allocate ‘add to Order Cycle’ permissions (P-OC) for each Producer to the new Hub, so that new hub can offer products from those producers. NB. this can include P-OC for producers that are not working with FC
  • Give new hub temporary P-PV (permission to change products / variants) so that they can add variants in smaller unit sizes that they wish to offer to their customers (NB. If BG is willing, they could also help FC by checking descriptions, adding photos etc where these are still missing)
  • Set-up fees (if there is a mark-up at the hub), shipping and payment methods etc

orders open and close

order cycle - option 1

  • new hub creates a completely autonomous order cycle, adding only the variants that they want to offer to their customers (NB. in this version, bg would be cross-checking against FC’s off-system list re. what is available)
    • set timing that works for their window of finalising and adjusting orders (potentially different from FC’s)
    • use variant overrides if they want to manage their own stock levels etc and/or if we need to isolate inventory from FC / core producer (see critical questions below)

order cycle - option 2

  • BG is added as an outgoing distributor on FC’s order cycle
  • FC ‘adds all’ variants to OC, but only the bulk amounts to their outgoing distributor (FC wholesale)
  • BG adjusts their available variants in the order cycle, by eliminating what they don’t want to offer their customers
  • can still use variant overrides if we want to isolate stock levels
  • !! If in the same order cycle, the BG cannot set a different order cut-off time from FC - so there may be timing challenge getting the order adjustments and reconciliation done in time for FC . .

BG order adjustment - incl. customers agree to take more

  • once orders are closed, the hub can use bulk order management to easily adjust the orders into bulk amounts
  • based on your description here, for this particular bg, you would only remove items where you have decided not to fulfil that order, not automatically increase amounts
  • OR you could tweak your model to allow for ‘group buy’ indicators on the shopfront, where customers can indicate if they are willing to take more, so that you can make these adjustments for them in the first round
  • We don’t currently have the ability for customers to adjust their own orders once placed. As the Hub you can easily adjust their orders, add items etc . . but for now they can’t. So two options for next step
    • one would be continue your current process, e.g. you circulate availability, they tell you what they’re willing to take and you adjust their orders on OFN
    • OR you could reopen the order cycle having adjusted the stock levels to match your new surplus availability . . customers then place another order to mop up. this would mean that some customers have two orders in the order cycle. For the purpose of pulling out packing reports, making adjustments etc this wouldn’t actually matter (we can easily just see all their items together in the important places). Depending on how you intend to do invoicing this could matter more or less. Let’s cross that bridge in next round
  • BG works out and finalises order of bulk amounts
    • easily adjusted to match bulk amounts on the Bulk Order Management screen and read / checked using the Orders & Fulfilment ‘Supplier Totals’ report to see summarised total amounts, including the Group Buy (unit sizes)* to check multiples are correct.

BG places order with FC wholesale

  • BG then places this order independently with FC through their shopfront
    • LATER there could be lots of ways to improve / remove this data double-handling, but let’s get more info before we decide how to do it . .
    • NB. @lisahill - even if in the same order cycle, inventory totals will still be ok because a) BG can draw from variant override inventory so it doesn’t touch underlying and b) you can just pull out reports for FC - wholesale, you don’t need to include theirs, so it only gets counted once
    • *OR if in the same OC, FC can just use Supplier Totals report from BG as their order. If we did have magical csv order input, we could base it on this supplier totals csv. . how close is it to Lettuceshare export?

Order arrives, people pack, adjustments made

  • again the orders can be easily adjusted using bulk order management and variable weight adjustments (e.g. if someone ends up with 1.25kg rather than 1kg)
  • work is in progress on changes to the order summary interface, that will enable you to quickly re-email all finalised orders / invoices to customers for payment

Critical questions for deciding detail of set-up

  • @lisahill - how are FC planning to use inventory control on products and variants? how important is it that these levels reflect your internal stock or known incoming levels? or are you managing stock elsewhere for now and just
  • @sstead is just checking that my understanding of mutual exclusivity of variant overrides is correct :smile:

**Notes to OFN team re. tweaks / adjustments

  • add ‘group buy’ quantities to Supplier Totals report for easy cross-check of bulk order

  • allow ‘group-buy’ to be set at variant (not just product) and at VO (not just core) - as it’s more an inventory management / shopfront setting than an underlying product setting

  • for FC to not have to see the micro-variants we could implement first step of product / variant wishlist, have FC use variant overrides for stock management and ‘hide’ the variants that they don’t want to see. We then also just need to adjust OC interface so that it only shows variants on the hub’s inventory list

  • allow new variant to be created in VO, that is isolated to this hub (not affecting other users of that producer)

  • order import from csv to save double entry

  • create order from bulk amounts . .