Separate inventory for local pickup

[captainboom]

I have a business partner that runs the warehouse that we both ship from, and I use that warehouse inventory for my Miva store. He has a different web site (not Miva based) that uses the same inventory.

I recently purchased a retail building that will hold inventory separate from the warehouse (which is 2 hours away). I would like to have the functionality of allowing the customer to place an order for local pickup, choosing only from the inventory that is available locally. Something like the big box home stores do. e.g. Shop your local store at xxxx

I've had customers asking for this ability, and based on how much my wife likes ordering her groceries online for local pickup during the pandemic, this seems to be a very desirable feature.

I see three scenarios for any individual product:

1. Available in the warehouse and locally
2. Available warehouse only
3. Available local only.

We use the same stock number for each item, no matter the location. Items are available as an each or case, same stock number but different unit of measure.

What's the best way to achieve this in Miva? As a kludge workaround, we've populated a Square store with local inventory and send people there if they ask about it, but this is not ideal.

[dreamingdigital]

Thinking outside the box here, but retaining basic Miva inventory ability, why don't you use a numbering system as the inventory count. Break the count into 4 sections. Location 1 would be the first 4 numbers Location 2 would be the next 4 and Location 3 would be the last 4. Then 0 would still be zero. Your Web programmer would then split the inventory count into those 3 groups of 4 numbers and have the avail inventory counts for each store.
EX: TNT Sticks #29. Inventory: 505019012000
Location 1 has 5050
Location 2 has 1901
Location 3 has 2000

[captainboom]

I understand your idea, but I don't think that would work in this case. The case quantities are automagically tracked and managed via the available piece count. Might get ugly in a hurry. We currently use a custom app to sync the warehouse inventory with Miva via XML provisioning.

[William Davis]

Have you reached out to Miva yet, I am sure they have dealt with this issue before.

We have a product custom field called inventory storage location to manage the location (e.g.: bldg > rack > box, bind, binder or drawer) to keep track of 15k unique items (we don't keep the same item in different location like you do). Create one field for each location, and a number field for each one. The trick would be to get the number field to decrease after each purchase. I am sure they have a solution or can come up with one.

[Brennan]

A couple suggestions,

We've build custom inventory functionality like this before using custom product fields. This works great to store the per location inventory counts but does require some custom template code to update/ reduce inventory correctly when a location is selected.

Also we do have plans to add multi-location inventory to Miva which could then be used by this module: https://apps.miva.com/scheduled-pickup-delivery.html that may give you some of the scheduling pieces you're looking for.

[captainboom]

Brennan Thanks for the response. Where do I start in order to obtain said custom functionality?

I think multi location inventory is now very important, given the changes wrought or accelerated by the pandemic. i.e. It should be high on the list of new features to implement, IMO. I'm glad to hear it's already on your list.

I suspect it might be scope creep, but integrating physical store inventory easily with a POS system is also desirable. For my rapidly approaching high season, I'm probably going to use a Square POS and inventory in the store, and try to use the online Square store for local pickup orders, hopefully without screwing up my natural Google ranking, which is pretty good. I've already used Square in our seasonal tent.