openerp-community team mailing list archive

[Alan Lord <alanslists@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 12/12/12 17:34, Olivier Dony wrote:
> Thanks for the feedback. Let's see each case separately:

Thanks for the swift follow up!

> = Invoices =
>
> I've just tested and the sequence and descriptions seem to propagate
> well between SO and Customer Invoice. On a side note the "handle" to
> reorder invoice lines is still missing, that will be fixed soon.

OK Great, but what about the flow: SO -> DO -> INV. IMHO it needs to be 
retained all the way through the system.

> = Delivery Orders =
>
> - Multiline descriptions -
> The long description *is* propagated to delivery orders, but it is
> currently not displayed unless you open the full form view of each line.
> It's a question of displaying the right information to the right person,
> and I'm not sure what is the best choice in the case of stock moves:
> - if we only display the multiline descriptions, it will be a waste of
> time and screen estate for warehouse officers, who are presumably more
> interested by product codes and names (at least in 90% of the cases, and
> they can open the full form view for the other cases)
> - if we only display multiline descriptions it will also be quite
> strange on all the reporting/analysis screens where you're querying the
> inventory content based on product names
> - if we display both the "product" column and the multi-line
> descriptions, the duplication of information will annoy everybody and
> waste even more screen estate

We are slightly at cross purposes here...

On a sale.order, add a multiline "comment", e.g. a line item with zero 
qty and no product/cost. It is *this* kind of comment that my customer 
wants to see in the Delivery Order... (A note in the _layout module)

I *know* this might seem odd, but I will explain their use case.

They create long and complex quotes. They need to include notes and 
comments in sections of the quote to explain where a block of items 
should be installed. (Imagine a quote for hundreds of new Light 
assemblies to go into a multi-storey superstore).

When their customer confirms the Quote and they confirm the sale.order, 
the main document they use from that point forward is the delivery order 
(stock.picking). They can't amend the sale.order now as it has been 
confirmed, but the actual quantities and specifications often change 
between order acceptance and delivery (this is often several months).

When they start to deliver portions of the order, the Delivery Note 
should show to the installers and receivers of the goods exactly where 
items are to go, e.g. First Floor, Underwear section. Ground Floor, 
Fruit & Vegetables etc. (Remember, they have already entered all this 
information once already on the Quote.)

This is why maintenance of the line ordering is very important. It can 
take quite a long time to create a complex sale.order. When the line 
ordering and notes etc. get lost after confirmation, it just means they 
have to repeat that work again (usually in a spreadsheet, to provide 
this important information to the their client.

If there is a better way to do what they need then I'd like to know 
about it, but OpenERP as it now (they are on 6.0) is not optimal due 
these arbitrary decisions on when and how line ordering and line notes 
get used.

> - Line ordering -
> Lines are ordered based on the expected delivery date rather than the
> original sequence, because that's what warehouse officers will care
> about, especially for long delivery orders. Should we change that in
> favor of the sequence used on the SO, given that in many cases it will
> be completely arbitrary/random? I don't think it's a good idea.

See above. For the Delivery Note that accompanies the goods, the order 
of items as originally set on the sale.order is the important way - not 
so much the delivery dates.

> For the various Delivery Slip/Receipt Slip print reports we should
> indeed use the multiline description, but should it replace the product
> name? Probably yes, because if we use both we'll waste a lot of space
> again. And what about the line ordering? Should we use the order of the
> SO, and be inconsistent with the way we display it in list views? I'm
> not sure.
>
> What do you think?

Printing is not really an issue. *All* our customers use Aeroo and 
heavily customised reports anyway. I know of none that use the default 
templates. As long as the data is in the system as we can access it with 
a decent reporting tool then that's fine.

> > One disappointing aspect though is that these notes/comment lines do not
> > get propagated to the DN. If you are shipping a large order and need to
> > make comments or identify blocks of products within a shipment this make
> > OpenERP very hard to use for my customers.

> The information is propagated already, it's in the 'name' column of the
> stock moves, ready to be used in any report, including the built-in one.
> But the issues described above apply.

It isn't. Only if it is a product line. Empty product lines do not, yet 
they contain *important* information for the people who *receive* the 
goods. That is what Delivery Notes are for; not for the warehouse 
dispatcher...

The same applies when the DO is used to create an Invoice. Although it 
is not so important, our customer would like the Invoice to reflect the 
same ordering and notes etc, so their customer can see what exactly they 
are paying for ;-)

I appreciate this might not be a hugely typical use-case but I don't see 
it as being that unusual either.

Cheers

Al