Inventory Management - SKU, UPC, POS ID fields

Hi everybody,
I'm a new zenner, so please forgive the ignorance:

Overview:
If you are a 'brick and mortar' retailer becoming 'click and mortar,' you most likely will have POS (point of sale) system at your retail location. Each product will then be equipped with not only UPC, but possibly with vendor's SKU, manufacturer's ID, etc. (you may buy one product from various vendors, thus each vendor will have a unique SKU, and even sometimes more than one UPC: depending where the product comes from - and so on). On top of this the POS will have its own unique ID...

So, to make it short(er), for better inventory management, each product needs several identification fields.

Quest for Solution:
Such a fields are bread and butter in retail - I tried to find something on this issue, but if I do understand it correctly, there is no solution at this time (or is it?). Ideally, I would like not to substitute any fields (i.e. some recommendation I read, to substitute manufacturer fields).

Any Ideas:
I'm curious, how some of you with similar needs deal with that issue - could you please kindly respond with your ideas - thanks.

Zencart for UPC Delivered

Hello 0101101011, my name is Alex and I have something that might be exactly what you need! A while ago I made a UPC implementation for zencart, and it does NOT modify an existing field. Rather what it does do is clones the model field and renames the clone to UPC. This is quite safe if you follow my included instructions! I hope this can help you!

--Alex

Hi Alex - thanks for the note. I've checked the page: would the download also work on mac (guess what I'm using...)? I think I need to read the download instructions again to make sure I'm on the right track.

Two quick thoughts: 1. (question): there is a mod for UPC - are you familiar with it? From what I understand, it does create a database field, but that's it - no other display, customization, etc. Sounds like yours is quite different, but could you please comment on that?
2. Just for the discussion-sake: in retail, unfortunatelly, there are products that have more than one UPC. Is it possible with your solution, to multiply the UPC fields? I know, this is like splitting hair on the long side, but the retail reality is pretty harsh: UPC's SKU's, Vendor SKU's, Manufacturer's SKU's....

Thanks for your solution - I'm impatient to try it (as soon as I, or whith help, figure out how to install it).

Unfortunately I haven't written an admin mod yet. An admin mod is anything that modifies the admin-side of your zencart. This includes; adding new products, receiving new products... Unfortunately UPC mods work on the admin side when you enter items. And yes you can easily turn this into UPC1, UPC2, SKU, or whatever else you need. Also my mod doesn't ''automatically'' do anything except for the database, because the rest must be done manually following my README.txt file. I realize that the way of doing it by hand is rather tedious and annoying, but that's the only way to do it as of yet. Your only possible solution for simple installs is to follow the instructions in README.txt and put that PHP file in your website and check if you have a ''clean'' install. If that's the case then great, just follow my instructions on using patch.bat or .sh and you should have my mod working. Reason why you can't or shouldn't just do that without checking is, if you have other mods in place my mod will delete them making your file identical to my own. Mind you this is NOT what I nor you want, unfortunately this is the only way available for patching as of now. Also on a side note, the next version of Zencart should come with UPC and mabye SKU as well, but that's just what is expected. If you have any more questions about instructions I provide in my README.txt ill be more than happy to help!

--Alex