assets and inventory

[Hans Bakker]

if we have assets, shouldn't there be a relationship to inventory item,
to be able to know what is in inventory?

This is in relation to to the rental of assets, which need to be shipped
and returned.

some background:

A new product type in ofbiz: rental of items which need to be shipped.

Currently we have the function in the system to be able to rent hotel
rooms which obviously stay in house and do not need to be shipped. If
however you would like to rent video's or cars or motorcycles the system
should support its delivery with a shipment and return process.

So when a shippable rental product is ordered, there will be created
automatically a return when the order is completed. The order and
shipment slip will list the product and the asset number, so the
warehouse knows where to find the item. (if there would be a link
between asset and inventory item)

This shipment and return process however should not affect accounting
what it currently does. Further it is required to ship 'assets' and not
'products' because they are an asset of the company which is rented.







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Quality OFBiz support for competitive rates....

[Anne Jessel]

Hi Hans

We looked at something similar to this a long time ago, but the client
decided not to go ahead. If they had, we would have discussed this in
detail on the mailing list before proceeding. Seeing the client didn't
go ahead, we never went past a rough idea of how we might do it.

From memory, here's some of the conclusions and ideas we had.

The items to be rented would be FixedAssets, but associated with
products. No inventory. The productTypeId was ASSET_USAGE. The
FixedAsset entity has an instanceOfProductId field which we would have
used.

There's code there currently that is not general, but specifically for
accommodation reservations. As some of our rental items could be
booked ahead of time for 30 minute increments, we were wondering about
generalising that code. My own opinion was that the existing code was
so specific to accommodation that it would be simpler starting again,
but more research was needed before we would know whether I was right.

When a customer rented an asset, they would be assigned to that asset
using a role via PartyFixedAssetAssignment. So an asset without a
current PartyFixedAssetAssignment of the right roleType would be free
for renting.

If we did replace the existing reservation code, we were thinking of
using Requirements, as they seemed ideal for managing the relevant
important details. Namely, that a customer requires a specific fixed
asset for a specified span of time. Once confirmed/approved this could
become a PartyFixedAssetAssignment. This could of course work for
accommodation as well as lots of other things.

We weren't intending to use the existing Order system, as rental of
the non-booked items was to be on-going, invoiced monthly. And any
bookable items rented during a month were added to the monthly
invoice. Using Orders would have been unneccessarily complicated. The
clients wanted one invoice per customer per month. They didn't want to
know about orders or anything like that. So we were thinking of a
service that ran monthly, looking at all current
PartyFixedAssetAssignments plus those that ended during the month, and
generating an invoice based on that information.

We didn't look closely at shipments, but did notice that the
ShipmentItem refers to an ItemIssuance entity that includes a
fixedAssetId, so we assumed the data structures would support it, even
if the code didn't yet exist for it. I am guessing this was originally
meant for shipping assets somewhere for maintenance, but I didn't see
much difference at the shipment level between shipping an asset for
maintenance or for temporary use by a customer.

Because we weren't intending to use the Order system, we wouldn't be
handling returns via it either. When a rental item was returned, the
PartyFixedAssetAssignment would be expired. The invoice generation
service would include it at the end of the month, or the user could
trigger an invoice run immediately for a specific customer.

I don't know how much of the above we would have actually done that
way had the project proceeded. But I hope it's given you some ideas.

Cheers,
Anne.


On 1 September 2011 14:20, Hans Bakker <[hidden email]> wrote:

> if we have assets, shouldn't there be a relationship to inventory item,
> to be able to know what is in inventory?
>
> This is in relation to to the rental of assets, which need to be shipped
> and returned.
>
> some background:
>
> A new product type in ofbiz: rental of items which need to be shipped.
>
> Currently we have the function in the system to be able to rent hotel
> rooms which obviously stay in house and do not need to be shipped. If
> however you would like to rent video's or cars or motorcycles the system
> should support its delivery with a shipment and return process.
>
> So when a shippable rental product is ordered, there will be created
> automatically a return when the order is completed. The order and
> shipment slip will list the product and the asset number, so the
> warehouse knows where to find the item. (if there would be a link
> between asset and inventory item)
>
> This shipment and return process however should not affect accounting
> what it currently does. Further it is required to ship 'assets' and not
> 'products' because they are an asset of the company which is rented.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> http://www.antwebsystems.com :
> Quality OFBiz support for competitive rates....
>
>

--
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PO Box 2773
Cheltenham Vic 3192
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Web: http://www.cohsoft.com.au/
Email: [hidden email]

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http://www.bonsaierp.com.au/

[hans_bakker]

Hi Anne, thanks for the long email. Our intention is to use as much as
possible existing functions and to be able to order rented and sell-able
items the same way.

Currently the rental only works on a daily schedule and now in smaller
time increments.

Regards,
Hans

On Fri, 2011-09-02 at 16:44 +1000, Anne wrote:

> Hi Hans
>
> We looked at something similar to this a long time ago, but the client
> decided not to go ahead. If they had, we would have discussed this in
> detail on the mailing list before proceeding. Seeing the client didn't
> go ahead, we never went past a rough idea of how we might do it.
>
> >From memory, here's some of the conclusions and ideas we had.
>
> The items to be rented would be FixedAssets, but associated with
> products. No inventory. The productTypeId was ASSET_USAGE. The
> FixedAsset entity has an instanceOfProductId field which we would have
> used.
>
> There's code there currently that is not general, but specifically for
> accommodation reservations. As some of our rental items could be
> booked ahead of time for 30 minute increments, we were wondering about
> generalising that code. My own opinion was that the existing code was
> so specific to accommodation that it would be simpler starting again,
> but more research was needed before we would know whether I was right.
>
> When a customer rented an asset, they would be assigned to that asset
> using a role via PartyFixedAssetAssignment. So an asset without a
> current PartyFixedAssetAssignment of the right roleType would be free
> for renting.
>
> If we did replace the existing reservation code, we were thinking of
> using Requirements, as they seemed ideal for managing the relevant
> important details. Namely, that a customer requires a specific fixed
> asset for a specified span of time. Once confirmed/approved this could
> become a PartyFixedAssetAssignment. This could of course work for
> accommodation as well as lots of other things.
>
> We weren't intending to use the existing Order system, as rental of
> the non-booked items was to be on-going, invoiced monthly. And any
> bookable items rented during a month were added to the monthly
> invoice. Using Orders would have been unneccessarily complicated. The
> clients wanted one invoice per customer per month. They didn't want to
> know about orders or anything like that. So we were thinking of a
> service that ran monthly, looking at all current
> PartyFixedAssetAssignments plus those that ended during the month, and
> generating an invoice based on that information.
>
> We didn't look closely at shipments, but did notice that the
> ShipmentItem refers to an ItemIssuance entity that includes a
> fixedAssetId, so we assumed the data structures would support it, even
> if the code didn't yet exist for it. I am guessing this was originally
> meant for shipping assets somewhere for maintenance, but I didn't see
> much difference at the shipment level between shipping an asset for
> maintenance or for temporary use by a customer.
>
> Because we weren't intending to use the Order system, we wouldn't be
> handling returns via it either. When a rental item was returned, the
> PartyFixedAssetAssignment would be expired. The invoice generation
> service would include it at the end of the month, or the user could
> trigger an invoice run immediately for a specific customer.
>
> I don't know how much of the above we would have actually done that
> way had the project proceeded. But I hope it's given you some ideas.
>
> Cheers,
> Anne.
>
>
> On 1 September 2011 14:20, Hans Bakker <[hidden email]> wrote:
> > if we have assets, shouldn't there be a relationship to inventory item,
> > to be able to know what is in inventory?
> >
> > This is in relation to to the rental of assets, which need to be shipped
> > and returned.
> >
> > some background:
> >
> > A new product type in ofbiz: rental of items which need to be shipped.
> >
> > Currently we have the function in the system to be able to rent hotel
> > rooms which obviously stay in house and do not need to be shipped. If
> > however you would like to rent video's or cars or motorcycles the system
> > should support its delivery with a shipment and return process.
> >
> > So when a shippable rental product is ordered, there will be created
> > automatically a return when the order is completed. The order and
> > shipment slip will list the product and the asset number, so the
> > warehouse knows where to find the item. (if there would be a link
> > between asset and inventory item)
> >
> > This shipment and return process however should not affect accounting
> > what it currently does. Further it is required to ship 'assets' and not
> > 'products' because they are an asset of the company which is rented.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://www.antwebsystems.com :
> > Quality OFBiz support for competitive rates....
> >
> >
>
>
>

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