Composite Items & Purchase Orders

The Composite Item is great way to bundle different products and services into a single line and sell it as a single line item in Estimates, Sales Orders and Invoices.

However, on the other side - i,e,. Purchasing - this item creates quite a bit of a mess and is completely useless (unless I really don't understand how to use it 😉).

ISSUE #1

The composite item, could potentially, include items from different vendors. This would require creating a purchase order for each vendor with the relevant items. However, this is not possible because when placing the composite item in a purchase order - It shows the name and SKU number of the composite number which is meaningless to the vendor.

There is a workaround to copy the description of the items - when editing the composite item - into the composite item's description. This will list the items and their SKU numbers which you can then cut and paste into the purchase description. However, as I mentioned before, if the composite item includes items from different vendors then this method gets messy and confusing to the vendors as they will see unrelated SKU numbers next to their SKU numbers.

Let's continue to the next issue.....

ISSUE #2

Let's ignore for a second the 1st issue....

Assuming we have a composite item, containing 2 items from the same vendor.

We place the item in a purchase order and send it to the vendor. The purchase order contains a single line item, showing the composite part number and SKU number that we created.

Now, we received 1 out of the 2 items in the composite item. When trying to process "Received Items" there is no way to update the PO because the item we received doesn't match the PO which contains only 1 composite item.

Furthermore, imagine you sent multiple purchase orders with multiple composite items. When you start to receive the actual items - there is no way to know to which PO they belong or to in which composite item they belong.

and, since the system would not allow exceeding the ordered quantities - there is no way to receive these items.

Obviously, this issue needs to be rectified as the composite item cannot be used for Sales and Purchasing.

SUGGESTION

One way to resolve both issues is by allowing to break the composite item back into individual items when creating a purchase order. With this way, the user can delete the irrelevant items and create multiple purchase orders for multiple vendors.

When receiving items from the vendors, the user can then update the PO so it can be closed when all items have been received.

CONCLUSION

While the composite item is great for selling, it is almost useless for purchasing.

Not sure how Zoho missed this one but it should be fixed sooner rather than later.

Any thoughts?