Hidden Component for Stock Control

[NVL]

I'm familiar with components, atributes and dependent pricing etc. and am trying to create what would seem simple but for some reason isn't, here is the scenario;

Many of our products arrive packed by the manufacturers ready to go, however some arrive bulk and are packed into our brand packaging here... things like condoms etc. At this time the generic vending cartons we use are manually stock controlled so to keep tabs on this consumption what I'd done today was add a product called "vending carton" and hidden it, added this as a component to applicable products via association and sure enough the correct number of cartons are consumed with every stock item.

However - the client can see this on their order which is confusing for them and even with the component as a seperate order line the cart does not group and total the items as it would with a normal product. You end up with your order and another line for each "vending carton" usage of the component...

Pleasure Gel (Arouse) - Vending Pack 5
Small Vending Carton 150

Condom Fruity - Vending Pack 4
Small Vending Carton 120

What can be done to (a) group these same components and (b) hide what is essentially an internal requirement the client doesn't need to know about?

[Mike Hughes]

For this to work you need to:

- Set the name of the hidden product to be name you want to show.
- Under components on the product tab set the pricing model to be 'sum of compnents'
- A little box marked 'no order line for main product' will appear; Tick it.

Mike

[NVL]

I can see where you're going with this, tried that but no luck...

The physical result can be acheived however no matter what way you do it the item you wish to stock control is not consolidated in the cart, you get twenty lines of the same item description all related to the build of each product whether components, hidden or other.

When you rename the product as suggest the quantity is always one.

It seems to be that Actinic is not capable currently of grouping components but only the main product, like you order three t-shirts with the optional badges and two scarves with optional badges. The cart would read:

T-Shirts x 3
Badges x 3

Scarves x 2
Badges x 2

When what we are looking for is:

T-Shirts x 3
Scarves x 2
Badges x 5

The next issue is that say for example a trader wants to assemble a product via components, but some items consumed in the creation of this shipment are internal stock control... in our case the vending cartons. You can hide the vending cartons and use them in components of other products but when the component derived product is purchased all components are shown, so the user sees that they are getting 3200 vending cartons for exmaple... not great but we can live with that - would be better if this were not shown and then how do you deal with Sage Link...? The biggest problem is that Actinic is not grouping the components of same name without relation to the product they create...

[cdicken]

The biggest problem is that Actinic is not grouping the components of same name without relation to the product they create...

When what we are looking for is:

T-Shirts x 3
Scarves x 2
Badges x 5

This is simply not possible in Actinic. I will add this to the wish list for you.

would be better if this were not shown and then how do you deal with Sage Link...?

As you say, any items that you want to transfer into Sage for stock control purposes have to be either standard products, or products that are associated with components. The latter case will always create an entry in the shopping cart - though I can see a case for maybe having an option of supressing certain component rows from appearing in the shopping cart. I'll add this to the wish list for you as well.

[NVL]

FYI : This product assembly from components is now a feature in some Sage products.

[NVL]

A new one, same idea but on minimum levels...

New scenario...

We offer a venue placement option but the minimum order is five units, rather than have the minimum set (as for some reason clients don't cope with that because the minimum level can not be seen even in the links or error messages) what I'd like to do is have a component built product which uses five of the hidden product, venues = 5 for example but the customer can add additional venues to the form like "I would like three extra, total eight..." without me having to create a choice for each one...

Any logical way to do that other than the obvious with a mass of choices?

[Bruce]

Have you thought about using the 'Other Info Question' prompt for your products? This will allow them to enter any additional instructions to you.

Kind regards,