How to configure product in OpenERP ?

While discussing about Sales or Purchase in a business, Product comes into picture always.

Product is playing major role in any type of business. In OpenERP, a product can be anything. It may be selling of product, purchasing of product or providing service to customers. You can easily configure product as per your requirements.

You will find three major fields available into product form as displayed in below screen.

It determine the system’s behaviour when a product is required. The system will generate different documents depending on the configuration of these three fields

Now let’s see in detail for above fields.

(1) Product Type

Stockable Product: You have to maintain stock of particular product. You can’t do any further operation until you have sufficient stock.

Consumable: When you are configuring this type to product, you don’t have to worry to maintain stock for your product.

Service: This type of product will configure at time when your company is providing any type of services to your customers.

(2) Procurement Method

Make to Stock: your customers are supplied from available stock. If the quantities in stock are too low to fulfil the order, a Purchase Order (according the minimum stock rules) will be generated in order to get the products required.

Make to Order: when a customer order is confirmed, you procure or manufacture the products for this order. A customer order ‘Make to Order’ will not modify stock in the medium term because you restock with the exact amount that was ordered.

(3) Supply Method

OpenERP supports two types of supply methods:

Produce: It will define when you will producing product with/without help of other products or services with help of your resources.

Buy: It will define when you are buying product from your suppliers.

Now see how above combination work with product and make it work for real time.

Consequences of Procurement Methods Make to Stock (MTS) and Make To Order (MTO)

Procurement Method    Produce                       Buy
MTS                             Wait for availability         Wait for availability
MTO                             Production Order            Purchase Order

Consequences of Procurement Methods when using Services

Procurement Method    Produce                       Buy
MTS                              –                                   –
MTO                             Create task                   Subcontract