I make paper lamps.
A customer ordered 30 lamps.
Some of them I already sold before.
But several will be custom made.
Even though I am already working on this order, I still didn’t record it in ERPNext because I don’t know how to. Because:
I have sent him an estimate quotation for the 30 lamps
For which I estimated a total amount
But I still haven’t invented most of them
How do I create a quotation for about 30 items for which I can estimate the total but for which I still don’t have the exact total?
Regarding the sales order: since I’m already manufacturing some of the lamps… I should be keeping track of what I’m doing. Should I create a sales order as an evolving draft to which I’ll be adding the items as I manufacture them and only commit it when it reaches it final state?
You can create one or as many as you want “Custom paper lamp” items. Then when it is ordered you choose one for your quoted item and set your estimated price. I would add a terms and conditions note that the custom items are an estimated price. When accepted, submit and send the sales order. Manufacture against those items. Then when the prices are determined, create the new items if they will be catalog or stock items and amend the sales order with final prices and item names if the named are changing. Re-send to the client, invoice normally.
couldn;t you also request payment against a Quotation? Then you can make the SO once pricing is confirmed and spare the procedure of cancelling/amending the SO.
Maybe you’d want to comment on the SO then about the price changes from the QUOTATION
@Dbone but… if I create a lot of “custom paper lamps” which I will end up not using my item catalog will be scattered with useless items.
For example, if I create 10 different ones just for this quotation and then they just buy 3… I’ll have 7 useless items hanging there forever.
What if I created just one “Custom lamp” item without stock which I add several times to the Quotation with different prices to reflect my intentions and add the specific details of each one in the item description instead? Would it work?
@Pawan thanks. I did try item variants before but ended up not finding them useful for my scenarios. Too many input variables, new input variables keep coming up, etc.
Regarding multiple price lists… I don’t see how I could use them here since I still don’t really know what items I’ll end up manufacturing and selling. Can you elaborate?
@vrms my concern is not the payment. I am concerned about keeping an accurate record of what I potentially have to manufacture and sell.
Actually, I don’t really use ERPNext to handle my accountancy because it is not officially recognized in Portugal. I just use it to keep track of everything.
One works just fine, you lose the benefit of being able to save all the initial quoted prices in the price list since it will only save one. But in your case that shouldn’t matter much since it’s an estimate and the quotation has that info saved if you ever want to look back. You can add as many as you want of the single “Custom Paper Lamp” item, give them different prices, and different descriptions.
You will get a warning when saving that the document contains the same item multiple times, but it won’t stop you from saving and submitting.