Advice/Suggestion

[homespundrygood]

I'm looking for advice or a suggestion on how to remedy the following problem.

I use to Square Retail to run our family quilt shop. Our fabric from the bolt is input into inventory by yardage (.000yd). We'd also like to offer Fat Quarter options (fat quarters are 22"x18", which is only half a yard then cut in half again). Below are the solutions I've come up with so far, but if anyone has any suggestions, I am all ears. 

Solution A - The order is input as half a yard (.5yd) but then discounted 50%. Unfortunately this means I will need to add the remaining/spare Fat Quarter to our inventory as a new item at the end of the day, but our overall yardage inventory from the original bolt is accurate. 

Solution B - Only use a generic line item called Fat Quarter, set at a particular price. The drawback to this is that I'll need to keep track of each bolt that was used to make a Fat Quarter each day and manually adjust inventory at the end the day. This is my least preferable solution as some days we can cut up to 50 Fat Quarters from various bolts of fabric. 

Thank you in advance for anyone offering ideas or solutions! 

[HC_Charlie]

hello @homespundrygood thanks for your post. I don't know specifics about quilting and fabric (although I used to love to browse all of the patterns at my local shop!)...buy here's a suggestion, let me know if this may work for you...

In stead of starting with a YARD as your standard of measure, and then discounting anything LESS THAN a yard, maybe input all of your bolts as the "lowest common denominator", meaning if the least amount you'd charge is 1/4 of a yard, then set your basline measurement as 1/4 of a yard. Then when someone buys a Fat Quarter, you'd input and charge ONE unit (which would be 1/4 of a yard), and if someone buys a whole Yard, you would input the units as FOUR.

sorry if I messed up the measurements and misunderstood your calculations...but if you set the units at the minimum you could get out of a whole bolt, then just calculate how many of those minimums are purchased at a time. Hope this makes sense...   🙂

[homespundrygood]

Hi @HC_Charlie

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I've seen a couple of online shop sell this method and there are definitely benefits for online customers selling this way. They wouldn't be required to purchase a full yard, but any 1/4 yard increment. Unfortunately this wouldn't work when offering Fat Quarters from that same yardage. Even though the total square area of a 1/4 yard and a Fat Quarter are the same, they are cut differently. A 1/4 yard is roughly 9.5"xWidth of Fabric (usually 44") and a Fat Quarter is 18"x22". Quirks of the quilting industry. (I should probably look up why and how Fat Quarters started) I appreciate you taking the time to come up with a solution!

Best, Jess