Pre Sales Questions

[ey3support]

We are looking at implementing Xeroom to handle inventory across our WooCommerce and Xero systems for a large number of products. Since we need to support back-ordering, our understanding is that we will need to keep WooCommerce as the primary source of inventory, but we also need to support over-the-counter sales through Xero and have those inventory changes reflected in WooCommerce.

My biggest question remains what happens to the current stock assigned in Xero? It looks like in Xeroom you need to use the same Inventory Asset Account and Cost of Goods Sold Account that you set up in Xero (at their current state, these accounts show incorrect balances and stock levels are unreliable).

My understanding is you can pick a master for stock recording and tracking: either Xero or Woocommerce. With Woocommerce set to be the master, the stock figure will be taken into Xero (wouldn’t this be adding to the current stock already recorded in Xero ?) . The product will be tracked and the necessary inventory movements made and purchase bills created to reflect the change. No invoice will be created in Xero if the order would take the inventory below 0 (I assume this is referring if 0 inventory recorded in Woocommerce and what happens to the current inventory balance in Xero, does Woocommerce override it?).

Thanks for your help!

[ey3support]

Also, it is essential for us that over-the-counter orders made through Xero will push the stock changes through to Woocommerce. Can you please provide some assurance that this will be the case, and a bit more detail on how exactly that happens?

[Peter Lloyd]

Hi – Thank you for your query.

1. The IA and COGS acs don’t have to be the existing one you can create and use new ones.
2. I don’t understand what you mean by stock assigned in Xero. Is this the xero inventory assigned to a project or what?
3. Your understanding is correct the inventory gets updated in Xero and the necessary adjustment purchase bill made.
4. If Woo is the Master for inventory then any OTC changes will not be reflected in Woo. For that you would need to set Xero to be the Master but obviously that would not permit backorders as Xero does not cater for that. The BO could be placed in Woo BUT the transaction would not synch to Xero as that condition would cause it to fail. Thus the inventory in Xero that could have part-filled the order is left untouched since the order is not posted.

Hopefully that makes it clearer!
Pete

[ey3support]

Thanks for your reply! Sorry about the delay in responding, but please see below:

1. That’s good news, thank you.

2. There are over 1500 items recorded in inventory in Xero already (all set to be tracked) with incorrect quantities. What happens to these items? With Woocommerce set to be the master will the inventory levels be updated in Xero overriding the current balances to reflect the true quantity? Or will it just add to the current balances recorded in Xero?

3. But the current inventory figures as recorded in Xero are incorrect. What happens to this stock/inventory? What adjustments will go into Xero once Woo is set as a master?

4. This could be a problem for us. What if we use a POS plugin to force all OTC orders to be made via Woo? This should force all inventory changes to go from Woo to Xero. It would possibly not fix the problem of BOs placed in Woo failing in Xero and not using the Xero inventory to part-fill the order though … is there any solution for this?

[ey3support]

Further to point 4 above, would you recommend that we use Woocommerce for all sales (OTC and online), stock control and then simply export data to Xero so that we simply are using Xero as an accounting system (ie it has nothing to do with the transaction process)?

[Peter Lloyd]

Hi – pls see my answers below:

2. How are you going to correct this inventory? Is it wrong in Woo as well? You can do a full update from a spreadsheet into Xero which will not make any bookkeeping adjustments. Or if it is correct in Woo then the global SKU synch feature in v2.0.5 will correct this. In this case since it is being tracked the inventory will be updated with the figures from Woo and the necessary adjustments to COGS made as if you were doing it manually in Xero.

3. This inventory will be adjusted as described in 2 above.

4. You could do that but as you guessed it would not be able to fix the issue of no back orders allowed in Xero. After thinking about it there is a way to do what you want. You can update the inventory in Woo for POS orders made in Xero with the new Global Inventory Synch feature but setting the master for the GIS to be Xero. This can be set to run hourly and would backflush all the inventory effects from the Xero POS only orders into Woo. Any website orders that are placed in Woo will update Xero inventory on an order by order basis and so everything would be perfectly synched and correct.

The only sacrifice though is that of no back orders. But what you could do as a workaround is to add dummy stock manually to Xero for any items that reach that point.

[ey3support]

Thanks for your help. Back orders are central to our business and we can’t sacrifice that capability by setting Xero as the master. And with thousands of products we can’t add dummy stock manually.

After thinking more about it at our end, we’re now thinking to use WC as the master for all inventory without using Xero for inventory at all. We can set up WC to track the financial side of things that Xero would normally do, like cost of goods vs. sales to find out revenue, and can force POS sales to all go through WC as well.
Do you think that would work?

Also another question for you – since our products in Xero are out of synch and need updating with what’s in WC, how do we best do that? Should we export from WC in a CSV and import into Xero, or is there a better way?

Thanks!

[ey3support]

Just realised your answer for 2 above answers my last question. When is v2.0.5 due to be released? We were hoping to go live next week.

[ey3support]

Hi Peter, hoping you’re still able to answer these questions for us?

After thinking more about it at our end, we’re now thinking to use WC as the master for all inventory without using Xero for inventory at all. We can set up WC to track the financial side of things that Xero would normally do, like cost of goods vs. sales to find out revenue, and can force POS sales to all go through WC as well.
Do you think that would work?

When is v2.0.5 due to be released? We were hoping to go live next week.

[Peter Lloyd]

Hi – we are hoping to complete v2.0.5 at the end of this week or early next as we are getting the final bug fixes done and tested. It is a big release so there was a lot more work than I expected.

You could just keep Woo as the master and have no tracked inventory in Xero. You will still have products in Xero with a sales price and COGS which is needed for your invoices and accounting since all your sales will go to Xero and COGS will still be calculated in Xero but there will be no “random” purchases of inventory made to follow any updates to inventory from Woo – I hope that makes sense!

Differences:
1. The only difference is that you will be permitted to have back orders in Woo (Xeroom won’t block that due to inventory in Xero being 0).
2. Non-tracked inventory in Xero is not synched or updated so your POS done directly from Xero will not have accurate inventory BUT if as you suggest this is done via Woo then no problem that will work fine.

So in conclusion you can either use Woo as the master and not track in Xero with ALL sales going through Woo or use Xero as the master with tracked inventory but will not be able to have backorders in Woo unless you manually add dummy stock in Xero for that item when it occurs, but you are able to take orders in directly to Xero – phew!

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