Product Equivalents best practice and usage
I would love to get ideas about the usage of Product Equivalents -
In my particular example
Surolan 15ml is placed on backorder for 4mths - the equivalent product is Apex PMP Ear Suspension
is it possible to have some setup that lets the user know Suro is out of stock and APEX is the replacement...
How do Product equivalents work?
Re: Product Equivalents best practice and usage
Ben as it says at http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.7/product/tabs#equivalent this is currently a documentation only facility.
For full use of an equivalents facility one probably needs:
a) add a facility to also display equivalents when doing a product search
b) enhance the invoice line item entry to look for out of stock conditions and display equivalents that are in stock
c) add a 'find stock of' facility that looks for stocks of the specified product in all stock locations and and equivalents in all stock locations.
I suspect that just doing a) might be enough.
I also suspect that most practices use 'after the fact' invoicing - ie you have already given the tablets when you create the invoice, so b) is probably not useful. [However it might be nice to have a negative stock warning - ie if you have given out 10 tablets and enter the invoice line item, the system could warn if the current stock is less than 10 (since this implies a stock count error).
Regards, Tim G
Re: Product Equivalents best practice and usage
I highly doubt practices use after the fact invoicing for 2 reasons:
1. You have to invoice an item to print a label.
2. It is illegal in qld (not sure on other states) for any veterinary practice employee except a veterinarian to hand a labelled bottle of medication to a client.
I think a stock warning would be ideal and maybe a popup showing equivalents. Otherwise remove the tab ...it just takes up screen real estate.
Re: Product Equivalents best practice and usage
I've updated the Out of Stock Warning project to include product equivalents.
-Tim A