Samples feature - similar to Sale with triggered Auto-Assemblies and Write-off instead of COGS

Samples feature (similar to Sale with triggered Auto-Assemblies and Write-off instead of COGS)

Sending free product samples is an essential part of many product businesses.

Dealing with product samples in CORE is challenging, especially if there are auto-assemblies/kitting involved.  Using a sale with a 100% discount is not the way to go as it is recorded as a sale when that is not the case and will skew sales reporting and books COGS instead of the applicable samples account to which one wants to do the write-off.  Using an Inventory Write-off works for simple cases, but then you are separately keeping tracking of the shipping of the order and if you have any kitting then you need to figure out how you are going to do that before doing the inventory write-off.

It would be fantastic if there was a specific feature that made it easy.

The following are some of the basic requirements for this feature.  The process and forms would be similar to the CORE sale order.

1. The order is entered in a manner similar to a sale order, with header fields, including:

• Customer name, contact name, phone, email address
• Reference number
• Sales Rep/Company Contact
• Account for writing off the stock
• Location for fulfilling the order
• Order date
• Shipping address
• Shipping notes
• Required by (date)
• Carrier
• Notes
• Recipient notes

2. Order tab to specify the product(s) to be sent as samples, similar to a sale order, with fewer fields, including:

• Product
• Quantity
• Comment (optional)
• (include "Should be picked by" field for WMS)

3. When authorised, CORE would complete any auto-assemblies, as would be done for a sale order.

4. Pick tab, similar/same as the sale order Pick tab, to pick the stock to fulfill the samples order.

5. Pack tab, similar/same as the sale order Pack tab.

6. Ship tab, similar/same as the sale order Ship tab.  Ship tab would be integrated with shipping apps, for example, ShipStation.

7. When the ship step is authorised, CORE completes the write-off of the stock to the account specified.

8. Ability to assign additional attributes

9. Related orders tab, Manual journals tab, Attachments tab, Logs & Attributes tab, and Financials tab with the same function as with sale orders.