Project-Based Inventory Consumption and Proforma Invoice in Zoho ERP

Project-Based Inventory Consumption and Proforma Invoice in Zoho ERP

While working with customers across different industries, we have identified a few functional questions and gaps that commonly arise—especially for project-based and service-oriented businesses.

Many organizations, such as those in shipping, construction, and service-based industries, receive customer orders in the form of projects, tenders, or bidding processes rather than standard item-based sales orders. For example, in the shipping industry, companies may receive an order to build a ship through a tender or project-based contract.

In such scenarios:

  • The sales order is created as a service or project, not with individual inventory items.

  • These companies procure thousands of materials from multiple vendors and maintain them in inventory.

  • However, during project execution, it is not practical or feasible to add all consumed items to the original sales order.

The key challenge here is inventory consumption:

  • Materials are issued and consumed against a project.

  • Inventory levels should reduce accordingly.

  • Consumption costs should be accurately tracked against the project for proper project costing and profitability analysis.

Currently, there does not appear to be a clear option to consume inventory directly against a project or service-based sales order while ensuring correct inventory reduction and cost allocation.

Our second important point is regarding the Proforma Invoice:

  • Proforma Invoice is one of the most critical requirements across almost all industries.

  • Customers frequently request this document prior to final invoicing.

  • It is good to see that Proforma Invoice has been added to the system, as this is a highly demanded and widely used feature.

We would appreciate your clarification on how Zoho ERP plans to handle the following:

  1. Project-based inventory consumption without itemized sales orders

  2. Accurate project cost tracking along with inventory reduction

  3. Enhancements, roadmap, or best practices related to Proforma Invoice usage

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