Multiple manufacturers and costs for same product

[kingramon0]

I'm creating a site to sell some of my photography and my wife's art. I have two, or three, printers that I want to use to make prints depending on the composition of the order the customer makes. Is there a way I can define more than one manufacturer for a product, with a corresponding cost for that item and manufacturer? The final price of the item would be the same no matter what, but I would go in and change the manufacturer/cost for the order based on who I am ordering it from.

The reason I want to do this is to avoid double book-keeping. Otherwise, I'll have to enter every order into something else, like Quickbooks, in order to track my profit and whatnot for tax purposes.

[balai]

Try using custom fields instead of Manufacturers.
Create a custom field named Printers and assign it to your products

[kingramon0]

But then how do I change the value of the field per-order? I won't know what printer I am ordering from until I see what the customer ordered, so I can get the best cost. I can't even see the custom fields when I open an order in the backend.

I'm thinking I'm going to end up tracking it all by hand. Virtuemart has about 80% of the functionality needed in just about every area. I wish I didn't have to get so many add-ons to get all the functionality I want.

[balai]

But then how do I change the value of the field per-order? I won't know what printer I am ordering from until I see what the customer ordered, so I can get the best cost. I can't even see the custom fields when I open an order in the backend.

I'm thinking I'm going to end up tracking it all by hand. Virtuemart has about 80% of the functionality needed in just about every area. I wish I didn't have to get so many add-ons to get all the functionality I want.

If you set your custom field as cart attribute, this will be visible in your order too.

Also you can use child products. You can create a main product as pattern e.g. Landscape Photo
Then use the stockable variants plugin to create child products of the main one based on a feature
e.g. Landscape Photo- laser printer, Landscape Photo- inkjet printer

[kingramon0]

But then how do I change the value of the field per-order? I won't know what printer I am ordering from until I see what the customer ordered, so I can get the best cost. I can't even see the custom fields when I open an order in the backend.

I'm thinking I'm going to end up tracking it all by hand. Virtuemart has about 80% of the functionality needed in just about every area. I wish I didn't have to get so many add-ons to get all the functionality I want.

If you set your custom field as cart attribute, this will be visible in your order too.

Also you can use child products. You can create a main product as pattern e.g. Landscape Photo
Then use the stockable variants plugin to create child products of the main one based on a feature
e.g. Landscape Photo- laser printer, Landscape Photo- inkjet printer

I'm afraid I haven't been very clear on what I'm trying to do. I don't want the customer to know anything about where the photo is coming from. I'm already using generic child variants.

I'll walk through what I expect the whole process to look like:
A customer goes to the site and browses the photos for sale. They find one they like, and choose in the drop-down box what size and/or features they would like. Let's suppose they choose an 8x12 print with matte finish. Now they go through the cart and pay for the product. I will get a message notifying me of a new order. I already have this much worked out.

Now I have to fulfill this order. I have two labs that I order prints from. So I'm going to go look at 'Photo Lab A' and 'Photo Lab B' to see where I can get the best price on an 8x12 print with a matte finish. Photo Lab A has a minimum order requirement, so if the customer ordered less than the minimum, I might be better off ordering from Lab B. The customer should know nothing about this.

Now, for book keeping, I have to track what my cost is so I know how much profit to report. So, if I can't, at this point, go into Virtuemart and set what my cost was for that order, then I won't be able to use reporting in VM at all. I'll have to record every order by hand in another product, like Quickbooks, that can properly keep track of the financials.

In my day job, I work at a manufacturing company. When we order parts for our products, we have to record the cost in our ERP, which can be different every single time we order parts and goes into the cost/profit reporting. I need to be able to do this, too. So far, it seems like I can only specify the cost once in the product setup and it stays the same all the time.