Requests for Manufacturer and Supplier management

First of all great product. We have been using RedShop for some time, but this has the potential to leave Redshop in the dust. At the moment we have paid for the Essential Version for testing. For us (and we know it is still early days) management of suppliers and manufactures are musts. At the moment our largest site has nearly 10000 products with over 200 manufacturers and 50 suppliers. Creating a custom field for manufacturer works but usually we have additional data associated with each manufacturer (address, telephone, email etc). Similar situation for suppliers, and often we have more than one supplier associated with a product.

We hope something that allows us to manage these will be added soon. We have seen there is already the product_manufacturer_id!!!

Hello Nicoloas,

thanks for the quick reply. The required functionality would be as follows:

table for manufacturer that has the following details:

manufacturer_name
manufacturer_description
manufacturer_image
manufacturer_address
manufacturer_telephone
manufacturer_fax
manufacturer_url
manufacturer_email

Then when you insert a new product you can choose the product manufacturer from a drop down list. I believe most people need only one manufacturer per product (I stand to be corrected). Not so important but is nice if you can insert a new manufacturer while inserting a new product. Otherwise if you begin inserting a new product and then realise there is not the desired manufacturer you must save the the product, go insert the manufacturer and then finish off the product. That's the back end. At the front end a filter by manufacturer is very important.

Regarding supplier functionality:

supplier_name
supplier_description
supplier_image
supplier_address
supplier_telephone
supplier_fax
supplier_url
supplier_email
supplier_zone
supplier_currency
supplier_category

For products we often require more than one supplier, so it would be nice to be able to add more than one supplier for each product with the following info:

product_supplier_name
product_supplier_code
product_supplier_price
product_supplier_currency

None of our clients require any front end supplier info.

I hope this helps.

Thanks, James

From the frontend user's point of view supplier details are completely superfluous. It is purely for administration. Without doubt there is other functionality of higher priority. But you did ask.

I was wondering whether a supplier field would be useful - but cannot see a use for it other than being a back-end comment against a product.

jameswadsworth wrote:

We have been using RedShop for some time, but this has the potential to leave Redshop in the dust.

Hi James,

maybe you could bring me some light through your experience:

I built several websites with the mightyExtensions component which I finally decided to abandon, then looking for alternatives I found redShop which still haven't tried and also hikaShop, HikaShop looks like fiting better to my needs as it has similar features but also more language support and integration with joomfish! which is a must, but,

could you tell me what made you decide to swap from redShop to HikaShop? And, what are those positive points that make you think HikaShop will leave redShop in the dust?

I have to make a decisions and all information will be welcome.

Thank you!

Peter.

Supplier information in whatever form for my clients has always been backend. However there are several reasons why they need it:

1) for many when they start selling online this is first time they meet database driven data storage. They then realise how easy it is to manage prices, price updates, currency conversion etc. Because many of our clients are small businesses who don't have accounts management programs, or ones that integrate with the online shop, they look to use the online shop for accountancy management as well, in particular supplier info. In particular:
supplier product code
supplier price
So when a supplier updates their prices it becomes easier to updates the price in the online shop too.
2) Some products might drop-ship from the supplier and so when they order goes through in the backend there is the flag to organise the delivery of the product from the relevant supplier
3) The same for back-order items

However, having said all this I would say supplier information is well down on the list of priorities:

My list of priorities would be:

1) Manufacturer/Brand - back end admin and front end filter
2) Filters - sort product by price, name, manufacturer etc
3) back end information about who was the last user to modify a product/category/supplier
4) Import/Export data (Google base integration??)
5) Supplier info (as above)
6) Stock
7) Quotations
Reports

Just my ideas. All current functionality is rock solid.

Look forward to seeing this project mature and become the best Joomla shop. It is probably appropriate to now answer PeterChain's question. Many years we started out with ECJC shop which was for Joomla 1.0. It was a port of the OSCommerce, and the functionality was great, however the product had many bugs and the support was terrible. The upgrade to Joomla 1.5 was poorly implemented and the project seemed to die. Anyway at this point we decided to look at alternatives, which were redShop and Virtuemart. We chose redShop in principle because the code was truely Joomla MVC (may be Virtuemart has changed). redShop has a huge range of functionality and support is good. However the main things we dislike about shop are:

1) lack of multiple language. We live a multilingual world and very few sites we work on are truly mono-lingual. I can believe there is no joomfish integration. I read on the redshop forums that there was no joomfish integration because it compromised SEO. Hikashop offers this integration
2) poor back-end interface. Just the first page (General) of the configuration is enough to scare anyone. While you can configure virtually anything in redShop too much information was displayed to the user in a cluttered way. Hikashop is simplicity itself and everything is much more intuitive (for me anyway).
3) documentation - while redshop does have a manual, the level of documentation and presentation is lower. Don't you just love being able to click on help in Hikashop and you have answer presented to you.
4) incorporation of superfluous functionality (Economic and Post DK). If we don't/can't use it hide it please. (Note to Hikashop: may be you can allow administrators hide functionality of different versions. i.e. if using the essential version and my client's don't need Affiliates, can we hide it??)
5) while Hikashop and AcyMailing are two separate projects and entities the similarities and overlaps are there to see by all. If Hikashop progresses and develops like AcyMailing then we will have the best shopping cart for Joomla = intuitive, easy to use and solid. We are convinced it will be as we have seen the development from the launch of version 1 in Semptember 2010.

many thanks for such an extensive answer to your former experience with redShop, this will for sure help us make the reight choice.

Happy New Year 2011 and happy HikaShopping!


Peter

Thanks Nicolas for you answers. We are still learning lots. Happy New Year to everyone for 2011

Hello Nicolas. this thread is just what i am looking for. Simply we want to associate Joomla Contact with product. like a category, but separate contact only information. currently i'm developing for my client a component which will

/* illustration is just human readable language */
-for all products ((stock_quantity==unlimited) or (stock_quantity < reorder_value)) do
- current_product.getAssociatedContact().List.Push(current_product);


this is similar to EAM(enterprise asset management ) software which is automatically generating RFQ(request for quotation) if the product quantity is dropping bellow reorder value, or non stock-able product is ordered.
MACMMS is a perfect example of asset(inventory) management software.


yes and forgot to say that illustarted algorith abothe shall trigger immediately or by schedule, let say daily or weekly

Regards
Arsham

yes you'r almost right. instead of third table, information shall be kept in products table. I wish your team to do this, i'm writing reordering part and i'm very weak in PHP and joomla development for me is new so i'm doing it outside from Joomla with RadPHP XE.

Hi Nicolas

we have developed a system to management product manufacturers. If you are interested in receiving the files and evaluating for incorporation into future versions let me know and I'll email you the files.

Thanks James

We evaluated using the category structure for the manufacturers. The reason why we decided against was that we only need a single manufacturer per product, whereas the categories is geared for associating multiple values.