Made to order custom items with child items in sales orders and quotations

ERPNext
1

I am evaluating ERPNext for a custom manufacturer. Everything we do is a one off. In other software we have built estimates and invoices using item groups. The item group is given the description of what we are making and then we add or remove from the default child items to price the item correctly. The child items are not visible to the customer but allow us to track costs more accurately. Is there a way to do this in ERPNext? I have found product bundles but that doesn’t work for us since they are set bundles and cannot be edited on the fly. I need a way to build custom bundles directly in the quotation/sales order UI and I have not been able to find it.

1 Like
2

ERPNext doesn’t have the bundle-building-on-the-fly capability you’re seeking. You’d have to make some code modifications to Sales Quotations and Sales Orders.

3

How serious of code modifications are we talking? Just customization from inside the web UI with forms & scripts? Underlying real code changes? I have limited skill in that area (mostly enough to be dangerous) and I would like to avoid giving myself an ongoing maintenance problem every time there is an update.

4

Depends on how serious your UI requirements are. A less-intrusive solution might consist of just 1 new button named “Build a Bundle” on Sales Order:

  • Click the button.
  • New dialog opens.
  • Use the dialog UI to construct the custom bundle.
  • Close the dialog, and the bundle is added to that Sales Order as a line item.

This avoids having to modify the Sales Order web page layout or design. Your modifications are all contained in perhaps 1 JS file for the dialog, and 1 Python file for data operations.

Certainly not the prettiest solution, but you don’t have to worry about altering standard code or functionality.

5

First, thank you for your time. I appreciate the thought you put into it.

It would really need to be all in the one UI page. Since this is all we do, adding friction to the quoting and invoicing process for every single entry is a non-starter. Unfortunately it sounds like I would need to do more than just surface changes to get this to work with the level of UI polish we need. I am not willing to maintain code outside of what is officially released. This is a critical feature for us so I guess I will have to keep looking. Is there a feature request system here? If so, is this already a requested feature?

6

You’re very welcome! You can create a Feature Request on the official GitHub for ERPNext.

  • ERPNext GitHub
  • Click the “New Issue” button at the top-right.
  • Select “Feature Request”
  • Follow the template and create your request.