Hello, I am trying to use Ofbiz in a testing environment, to prototype some of our company processes, with an eye to replacing multiple systems with an integrated package. We predominantly make and install concrete products, so the e-commerce side of Ofbiz is of little interest to us at this point. A small percentage of our sales would be considered retail sales (brick-and-mortar); the remainder would be intercompany sales to various regional offices, who in turn offer our product installed, as a service.
To give a generalized view of our concrete products, we might offer two different pieces for a given installation project; for instance, a flat piece of block, and then an L-shaped piece of block. Each piece can come in multiple styles and in multiple colors and all styles and colors are interchangeable (five styles and five colors would result in 50 different products - 25 flat pieces and 25 L-shaped pieces). For my catalog, I have created two virtual variant products, one for the flat pieces and one for the L-shaped pieces, and then used the style and colors as the features. I'm struggling to figure out how to setup a bill of materials, so that when an office orders pieces (which can be variable in size and are not ordered by the piece, but by either square footage or by linear feet), we can generate production runs. The materials used to make the pieces are all raw materials - sand, cement, and aggregate, and there is not a precise formula that says in order to get one piece, use this much sand, this much cement and this much aggregate. At the same time, it does not seem that I can create a production run for a finished/manufactured product without a bill of materials. This may sound stupid, but is there a way to create a dummy bill of materials, that essentially requires time but not materials, with the end result being a finished product? Second, once an office orders an item and we make it, we ship it to them, usually using our own fleet, so I will need to investigate and likely have the shipping options extended. What I'm trying to figure out is how to account for these intercompany sales and shipments. Is it possible to have a payment type that essentially functions as a journal entry, since we are in essence moving funds from one pocket to another? Once we receive the product on the installation side, I am viewing the WorkEffort piece as the piece needed for scheduling and tracking the installation cost of the job. General questions: Are there any reference sites that are using Ofbiz for their primary accounting software? Are there any reference sites that are using Ofbiz that are NOT in the e-commerce business? Thanks, Kevin
