Hi,
I tried using this software to setup retail and the inventory section feels like double work to me. Can we integrated automatically to have the product database inside inventory so we don’t have to double entry the whole thing? Or is there an easier way to do this? I tried doing inventory on a retail shop with over 500+ product and it is exhausting to have creating a section for inventory, and a section for recipe with the same product name. Please enlighten me on issue. Thanks 
This has been brought up before there is a bulk product importer tool somewhere and pretty sure someone said it was working on latest V4.
To be honest SambaPOS is designed for restaurant environment. The recipe system seems odd when setting up for retail and we may get improvements here someday in the future but SambaPOS focus is restaurants. There are ways you can automate the process using PHP and SQL Queries.
I do agree that setting up the inventory is a double job with adding for each item a recipe.
For most of our items we don’t need the recipe, like the most Beverages or single items.
It would be nice to have a function that when we create a new Inventory Item to have the choice in a selection box what would copy this item direct in the recipe db.
No we won’t have this feature. You’ll create recipes for each product. I think you expect SambaPOS to map inventory item to product by name… Good for Coke maybe but you won’t want it if product name is Sausages or Bread.
Mapping items with recipes is the simplest solution. Existence of a recipe also defines your intention to track inventory for that product. You’ll configure it for once.
Thanks Emre,
Maybe I’m not to familiar with the recipes, but all out items including Sausages and Bread is counted by one each like the coke. It would maybe be different with the whole tenderloin were we cut steaks of 200/400/600 gram.
Have not had the option to ditch into this deep enough.
It does seem like a lot of work to set up products, inventory items, and then recipes. But any Inventory system for a Restaurant is going to have this level of complexity and is going to take a lot of time to implement properly since “most” Restaurant items are not 1:1 mappings, except for maybe canned/bottled beverages.
A Cheeseburger (Product) is made of (Recipe):
1 bun
8oz ground beef
Seasonings
Slice Cheese
Produce (slice Lettuce, slice Tomato, slice Onion, etc)
Condiments (1ml Ketchup, 1ml Mustard, etc)
You buy (Inventory):
12 pack buns
10 lbs ground beef
various seasonings
Case Cheese
Pounds, ounces, or other quantities of vegetables
Gallons/Litres of each condiment
If you have more of a retail-oriented business, then use the Bulk Importer in this case. It will map Products to Inventory Items to Recipes if you define your CSV file properly. JohnS originally designed it for this very reason - using SambaPOS for Retail 1:1:1 mappings. His example DB even shows this clearly for selling car parts and labor.
See further in the thread for updates and improvements by myself.
