Dealing with "stale inventory" definitions on quotes?
Like many of you, we have repeat business. When last year's event comes around for this year, our account execs will copy the quote that most closely matches the new event.
At the same time, we are constantly improving our inventory practices, which can cause some problems and inconsistencies when these quotes become pull lists and manifests.
Say we have a speaker, which when it was first built, has a specific accessory, a 6' Powercon. A quote is built using this definition. The show goes out, is successful, and comes back in.
During the next year, we determine that we'd rather have 10' Powercon/XLR Looms as an accessory to the model. so we replace the 6' with the 10' loom in the Accessories tab. When the new quote is made from the old quote, models on the quote have the accessories from the old definition, which makes it a manual effort on the Quote-builder to replace the model, or a manual step on the warehouse's side to catch that the 6' Powercon isn't what we really want fulfilled.
I don't know if the same thing applies to things like Storage Containers with Permanent Items which we regularly use.
I have advised our warehouse that when they find a model which they think has definition problems they should create new models and move old inventory to the new model and add a substitution for the new one in the old model which now has no inventory, but that doesn't fix the root cause, which is that the old definition is copied from quote to quote.
What are best practices to avoid this?
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Hey Tom,
This is a common problem. Packages change and copying from an old quote won't reflect that. There's no easy fix to this. It's the nature of copying from old jobs. It's basically a question of whether copying from an old job is worth it or not.
"I don't know if the same thing applies to things like Storage Containers with Permanent Items which we regularly use."
I'm not sure I understand this. Please chime back with further explanation."I have advised our warehouse that when they find a model which they think has definition problems they should create new models and move old inventory to the new model and add a substitution for the new one in the old model which now has no inventory, but that doesn't fix the root cause, which is that the old definition is copied from quote to quote."
I am confused by this as well. What do you mean by "definition problems"? I would hope that you wouldn't have to regularly make new models and move the inventory to it.Aaron Horn
Consultant (Flex endorsed)
aaronjhorn@gmail.com
615.335.1225 -
Hi Tom-
Good questions. First of all let me say I do not like your method of creating a new inventory model to disengage it from the old one which is in many old quotes. You lose your ROI / Utilization data this way and it seems like unnecessary fiddling.
I like using well-developed packages as an alternative to copying quotes. If you have enough packages and they are kept up-to-date, it can be just as quick and easy for a quote builder to build a new job via packages as it is to copy an old quote.
By packages I mean virtual items with suggestions. I would classify these into 3 main groups:
Standard event packages like 'Small band stage' , 'DJ Lighting' , 'Festival monitors' , 'Wedding uplighting'
Venue or client-specific packages like 'BigBucks Corp Monthly General Meeting' or 'Town Hall Exterior Uplighting'.
Inventory selection packages - generic groupings of items using tabs in the suggestions pop-up to make items easy to find and add to a job in bulk. Examples like 'Cable Picker' , 'FOH Package' , 'Choose a Speaker' , 'Moving Light Selection Package' etc..
I especially like putting packages as suggestions of packages so you end up with a whole cascading tree of suggestion packages, such that you can drag a single 'Quote Package' item into a quote, and add everything you need into the job without exiting the suggestions popup.
Rather than copying old quotes, just get your staff to build packages for recurring jobs. Because these packages will only include the important items and not their contents/accessories, those contents will be added fresh to every job when the package is used. So you can change contents all the time and quote builders are always adding the latest edition to their job.
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
Bigs
Endorsed Independent Consultant
bigs@squarewave.com.au
www.squarewave.com.au -
Regarding Storage Containers with Permanent Items, when I was supposing above, I didn't have Flex open and couldn't remember if the Storage Requirements was copied into the quote as contents, or if the copy was done at the time of Pull List creation.
It is the latter, so we can change these as we like.
I think that changing the "front-end" of our inventory is a worthy goal, and I may use some of your suggestions to build tests to see if those routes will be palatable.
We have a structural issue at play as well, in that we are both a production company and a equipment rental and staging company, and internally the warehouse bills the projects, so we really need to abstract the Sales Quote from the Production Quote, and they both need to have financial info. We are less concerned about availability of inventory at the Sales Quote level.
I mention this because abstracting the Sales Quote from the Production Quote might require we build a virtual, generic inventory as well.
Since we're in the throes of COVID-19 work stoppage, I will probably be contacting you off-forum to discuss the Flex projects we've been thinking about.
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Hey Tom,
Yeah, Storage Requirements have nothing to do with Quote or Pull Sheet building. They are strictly a warehouse function to provide accountability when you're building a container. Once you have "contents" in a unit, they will auto scan out with the container onto a manifest in the Prep Screen.
Good luck Tom! Sounds like Bigs has you covered.
- Aaron Horn
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