We manufacture and sell products – both in ‘singles’ and in ‘cases’. The price of a case is not the quantity x the single price. Consider the example of buying a 6-pack of beer for $12, but an individual can costs $2.50
We are somewhat new to Odoo (odoo.sh, v16) but we were advised to use a “Kit BOM” to address this need:
- BeerA is an item - stocked per unit.
- BeerA-6pk is an item that has a BOM that is a Kit that contains product BeerA x 6.
We have a list price for BeerA-6pk ($12/pk), and a list price for a BeerA ($2.50/unit), but we have some customers who buy a lot, so we give them prices of $10.50/pk, $1.90/unit, or both. A customer with unit pricing pays that whether they buy a case qty or not – that is, $1.90 for one, $11.40 for six, and $114.00 for sixty.
But this solution has left a few problems:
- When
entering an order, the price will either be $2.50/unit, $12/pk, or, if the
customer has contract pricing, 1.90/unit, or maybe $10.50/pk. So, when the customer orders “Twelve BeerA, please” we don’t know if it
needs to be entered as item BeerA-6pk x 2, or as item BeerA
x 12, and depending on their pricing, they’ll either be charged $24 (list price), $22.80 (contract
unit price), or $21 (contract case price).
Our Sales person has to enter both items – BeerA-6pk, and BeerA to
see if they have better pricing on one or the other.
- When entering an order for the 6pk, because it’s a kit BOM, the OnHand Quantity doesn’t show up on the order line, so the sales person can’t tell, without going to another screen, how many are in stock. They have to open the single item and check stock on it to know if there’s enough to fulfill the order.
- When
looking at sales order margins, the Kit BOM has no cost associated with it. Although the CoGS accounting is correct
when the invoice is processed, the sale order margins for 6-pk sales are all at 100%,
because the cost of the item that has a BOM Kit is $0 and isn’t
automatically updated when new products (the components of the BOM) are manufactured.
- Lastly (at least as far as we’ve found so far) because the items – BeerA and BeerA-6pk are, to Odoo, completely different items, when we activate them on the Website, they are two completely different items. I should expect that when you’ve found a product on our website, you can then decide if you want a single or a 6-pack (or, for that matter, any of the other sizes available, like a 2L bottle, a keg, etc).
We looked at variants, but as I understand it, you can’t set
different prices for variants – you can have a “price premium” for a variant,
but that doesn’t work if BeerA is available, for example, in bottles, cans, 6-pk
bottles, 6pk cans, 24-pk (both), 2L, 50L keg. Setting the 'price premium' for a 50L keg over a single can is crazy.
Did we go down the wrong road with the “KitBOM” for products in cases? Surely we can’t be the only ones with products that are sold in cases?
Can anyone advise how they’re doing it, if they are?
Defining UoM or use of product packaging might be other available options. In both cases there is only 1 product, so the margin, product availability and sales analysis would function as per expectation.
Downside is that differential pricing cannot be applied for a product packaging, however a barcode can be defined.
From the post it seems that pricing is applied based on multiple of units or by customer contracts which it is possible to do so with pricelists.
There is limitations on website shop with product packaging, for that you would need to have 1 can or 6 pack or keg as a variant or completely different product. The customer then buys these in multiples e.g 3 units of 6pack.
Seems you might need to have a combination of solution. Use of a regular BoM over KiT might have its advantages as well. (margin analysis) as well as tracking product qty.