How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the bottle and injected (per ml)
Sorry if this seems obvious:
We are implementing stock control. We have a drug (an antibiotic) that is supplied by our wholesaler in 100ml bottles.
We sell this drug by the bottle to some farm clients. But we also inject by the ml into farm animals and small animals.
How do we deal with this situation from a stock point of view? Do we enter every bottle purchased as 100ml of the antibiotic?
Thoughts appreciated.
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Cahir - I don't think that this is question has an obvious answer at all. I suspect that the optimum answer depends on the relative sales volumes of the 'by the ml' and 'by the bottle'. If its mostly 'by the ml' then I would be tempted to have just the one product that you buy by the 100ml bottle and sell by the ml. The only problem here is that you probably want to sell the bottle at a far lower price than 100x the ml price. The problem them becomes how to get this price charged. One crude solution, (assuming that this is a medication item) is to add a note in the Dispensing Notes ("if selling a 100 ml bottle the the price is $$$") and check the label box so the dispensing notes are shown.
A cleaner setup is to have two products, one the 100ml bottle, and the other the 'by the ml'. You purchase and receive the 100ml bottles. At some point you replenish the 'by the ml' stock by doing two stock transactions, one to reduce the stock of the 100 ml bottles by 1 (or more) and and a matching one to increase the stock of the 'by the ml' product by 100 (or more). If you want to be a bit more 'auditable', you could do as it says in http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.7/concepts/stockControl
"one can have a stock location not attached to a practice location. This can be used as a mechanism to keep a record of written-off stock, ie create a stock location called Write-offs unlinked to any practice location, and transfer written-off stock to it. Similarly, to support conversion of one product into another, you could create a Conversion-out and a Conversion-in location, and transfer 10 cartons of pet food to Conversion-out and then transfer 10x12=120 cans of pet-food in from Conversion-in."
Regards, Tim G
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
This might be a bit late, I'm a bit behind, but...
What we have done for years, where drug packaging allows, is to have one size bottle for regular farmers and another for in-clinic use. For example Engemycin and Propercillin come in 100ml and 250ml bottles. The 100ml ml is for in-clinic use or for farm cases who are not regulars and is charged by the ml. Even if 1 animal needs the full bottle for a course of treatment, it is charged as 100 x mls. The 250ml size is charged per bottle for regulars. This also makes it easier for staff. The condition here is brand choice, but fits nicely into OpenVPMS product structure
Hope this helps, Simon.
Simon Slater
Registered Linux User #463789 @ http://linuxcounter.net
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Simon - that is actually a great idea. Enforce that certain brands must be sold by the ml, and others by the bottle with no cross over. I think we will run with that.
Cheers.
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
I might be missing the point - but I assume that you sell the 100ml at a lower per ml price than you inject it for.
One option might be 1 product but multiple fixed fees. or No fixed fee when you sell at the 100ml price
ie Cost 0.10c per ml so you place a markup of 100% and sell at 0.20c per ml
100ml costs $20.00 - this is the farm price (maybe you mark up more Idk) - you remove any fixed price setting
when you inject it you leave a 30.00 fixed price in place meaning an injection given by the vet of say 1ml costs the client $30.20c
Stock is managed and kept in track.
I think one addition that could be made to product sales is a drop down for unit price - currently it just uses the most recent price. Another alternative is quantity breaks
http://www.openvpms.org/project/quantity-breaks - this might be the sort of project you might want to contribute too.
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Ben,
I like the idea of a single product with multiple fixed fees, but how would you distinguish between the fixed fees when invoicing?
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Cahir - see the 'Multiple Prices' section in http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.7/concepts/pricing
You could have also pressed Alt-F1 on the invoicing screen and you would have read:
Fixed Price - this will be set from the fixed price for the product, but you can overide this. If the product has multiple fixed prices (for say Simple, Standard, Complicated) there will be a pull-down so you can select the appropriate one. See also Concepts|Pricing.
Regards, Tim G
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Guys,
Sorry to raise this "unit pricing" issue again, but I'm still not getting it.
Below I have pasted an example screenshot for a product (Synulox) that is purchased as a box of 100 tablets. However, we sell it as individual tablets. How do I adjust the unit price settings so that the final price per tablet equates to something like one one hundredth of the box cost?
We need to maintain the supplier's code for the box so that any price changes can be applied to the product with the same code. I have tried changing the selling units, and the unity type, but when I select the product on an invoice, it just gives me the cost of 100 tablets.
As ever, help gratefully appreciated.
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Cahir - the 'buy-in' details are set on the supplier tab. Here are some tablets that we buy in in packets of 30. regards, Tim G
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Tim - thanks for clarifying the "buy in" bit. Fair enough, in my example we would set the amount to 100 units. But say our wholesaler sends out a price update on that product, and the cost price rises 10%.
Presumably I have set the price of a unit of this particular product for one tablet. How will I automatically update the price, given that the wholesaler update will only apply to a box of this product containing 100 units?
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Pricing updates are handled by the supplier tab in a product
http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.8/product/tabs#supplier
Package Size - this field is not shown on the order. The system uses the Package Size field to do things like "need to order 37 cans, but the package size is 24 so I will order 2".
Basically when you set the package size correctly and an order comes in the listprice will be divided by the package size to get the costprice per unit.
So make sure you have the package size set correctly in the example you give it should be 100. Make sure you have autoupdate ticked.
then the unit price will update.
from the page above.
In order for prices to update, the product must have:
The product's prices are updated as follows:
Notes:
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
I will point out 2 issues with the screenshot you have
1. Synulox is a prescription medication and should not be sold as merchandise
2. The name should not have 1 x 100 in it ...unless you want to sell 100 every time IN which case the package qty is 1 and the SELLING UNIT should be BOX
Merchandise does NOT have to have a patient associated with it and can be sold OTC
Medications do have to have a patient and cannot be sold OTC (unless attaced to a client/patient file)
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
Ben - improvements noted (we don't currently stock Synulox, hence why its info was not updated).
One final query - our wholesaler stocks different sized boxes containing the same product, say a "flea treatment". Regardless of the box order size, we sell this product by the single unit, never a whole box. The unit price of the product is lower, the larger the box size ordered.
How do folks deal with this issue? In the product catalogue we will have 3 different entries for the same product, potentially all with different prices depending on the stock size it is ordered from unless we update the markup for each stock size.
Re: How to deal with a stock item that is sold both by the ...
While I understand this issue - I would say my answer is not an OpenVPMS problem so much as - make sure your staff NEVER order the more expensive sizes and price accordingly OR untick AUTO PRICE UPDATE. And make sure your margin covers 1-2% price hikes then make it a policy to check that product monthly for price increases.
Our supplier here actually sends an email out if a price changes from when you last ordered it. So if a product was flagged we would manually update the price. I now use the ESCI ordering in OpenVPMS so we really dont run into this issue so much.