Bill of materials

Bill of materials

Hello,

I love the zoho modules, but I'm having some issues with inventory that seem to have very messy workarounds to do what we need with it.  Some of the problems we have:

Composite items-You cannot track inventory on the associated items.  This is extremely messy for tracking a product that we manufacture in house.  From a bill of materials standpoint, it is much more logical to have all of the components that make up that item be listed as associated items, and track the inventory of each item.  I have a hard time coming up with a scenario where I would want to associate items to a composite item, but not have the inventory of those items be tracked.  We are trying to use bundles to work around this because you can track inventory on those items, but it is messy.

Bundles- this seems to be the only way you can track inventory for the associated items in a composite item.  What is the bundle number used for?  Why cant i search for a bundle in estimates or invoices?  This seems like it should be an independent category of item that can be made with composite, inventoried, and/or non-inventoried items as a true kit.

Inventoried items-You cannot inventory an item if you do not elect to include sales information.  In the manufacturing environment, this is a problem.  We make several products that we purchase raw material to build, but will not sell the raw material.  We still need to keep inventory of the raw material for ordering purposes.  

Is there any near term plans to correct any of these features or make major changes to the inventory module?  I would hate to start using these messy workarounds only to have to recreate items again that function more seamlessly.

Thanks!