The ability to link parts transferred from one warehouse to another to a job under the inventory transfer feature. This would be nice to be seen at the quote level or through reporting.
Work flow is similar to
Pull parts from pick ticket.
Label pick ticket.
Open Inventory Transfer - transfer inventory from one warehouse to another.
Link to quote if possible.
If the Quotes screen had a “inventory transfer/pick ticket” that let you allocate those parts to this warehouse and to that job that would be great, but not trying to get ahead of myself. So under actions it would list “pull/transfer stock” copy over the parts to the inventory transfer like it does for a PO and model how a PO behaves with transferring or allocating inventory from one warehouse to another.
We have our stock warehouse which we pull from and than transfer to our “Job Warehouse”
Thank you @AshleyCrest for your great suggestion. I can understand why this request would be helpful! I will create a Future Feature Request so it can be reviewed by our team and when we upgrade this area of the system we will utilize your feedback.
This is another example of where having items allocated to tasks, in this case a ‘pick ticket’ task, would make a lot of inventory shuffling easier to manage.
With multiple stores, we need to be able to schedule and track movements of items between stores more completely than the instant inventory transfer method currently allows. Managing In-Stock to Staged, Staged to On-site, and ‘spoken for’ between stores is murky.
How do you overcome knowing where the parts are allocated from a work order. If they just put the parts on a work order or task once you have 20-30 tasks related to a project how would you keep track of this? Right now the process is extremely tedious to move the inventory to a new warehouse for every project but it allows us to see how much is in stock verse pulled for jobs quickly but it’s a two main job to accomplishment, required front and back office personnel. I’d love to find a way to allocate the inventory to a job quickly at the pick ticket and item received stage that is more seamless and pulls the list from the quote and doesn’t require data entry.
If the items were on the task, whether it was a staging task or an install task, the appropriate workflow could be created to initiate an inventory transfer based on the item list checklist and the status of the task - if it were built natively inside of Striven. Even if Striven added an inventory transfer API set, an external workflow would be able to be created using 3rd party automations pretty easily.
I think the biggest challenge will be getting the items on the task, or more appropriately, getting the correct items on the task. Like with most new construction companies, our product installs go through stages - rough in, trim out, finish. Each uses a selection of the total items on the order.
It’s ugly, but using the Inventory Adjustment API set, we might be able to get it accomplished, but it’s pretty convoluted, will involve multiple custom reports and I’m not sure Google Sheets could handle it. I think Airtable may be the only solution to process the item list correctly, or a combination of Sheets and Airtable, even. Then a 3rd party automation app to push the inventory adjustments into Striven so the result, in essence, is an inventory transfer.
Inventory handling ‘while in process’ is one of Striven’s only real shortfalls I’ve found while researching new ERPs.
This is what I would like , is that they allow items from sales order/Quotes that was already written up or approved to be transferred to the task/work order. Then the tech would be able to edit quantities for each item on their task installed that day. I think this would be a powerful feature for a lot of customers who do multiday installation projects to be able to track the amount of material installed each day on a task/work order that came from and a quote/ sales order. Than you could have a report total all the material from the tasks / work orders to see if the qty matched. We do this now by creating copies of the approved quote we us the same quote#- date of work. The quote is never created just saved so it does not affect numbers then we put a link on each work order for the techs to access the copied quote which we call a “contract install” see a list material and can write the qty used each day is custom columns on the quote. They see how many they need and list how may installed with there name. This has worked great but it is a lot of extra work for us when we have large projects that run for weeks to copy the quote each day and link is to the work order. It does give us the detail we need to make keeping track of large projects much easier. Ashley can explain the work flow better if any one is interested.
That’s a whole separate issue that I am probably going to use Jotform, Airtable (or Google Sheets if I can manage it), {one of the Zapier lookalikes} and the API to solve in the short term, by using custom reports to get the line item information into a Jotform.
I’m not sure how people can do work when they don’t have a list of the parts they are supposed to be using and have no way to track parts and quantity used. I really don’t want the people that solve problems with hammers actually editing the sales order.
Print a sales order pick ticket for each job? This isn’t the late 1900s.
So like Chris said we give them the list by duplicating the original quote and giving them there own copy so to speak. Basically a digital version of a printed pick ticket. Instead of them using a paper copy. They edit a “custom column” that is designed for them on the right (beneath on a mobile device) and they put the quantity they installed. It works but is not as fluid and user friend from a mobile device. Its also so much extra work for the admin team.
If the parts copied to the work order and they could “check the items and then edit items/add” from a tab or modular window that frame filled nicely like work order/tasks tends to do now (kinda like check lists) or they figured out to make reports in an editable context where you don’t need so many reports/api and 3rd party platforms to perform the task and get the data easily accessible. Guys that solve problems with hammers are not always fan favorites or all steps in using technology. So the least amount of clicks/navigating for them is preferred with service techs. Maybe with this dialogue a striven team member can bounce some of our suggestions that would work for all of us.
One of our hardest struggles we have with striven is the inventory/tech allocation management with inventory and it following a standard work flow. I would love some other feedback of how others do it start to finish.
