Logistics Business Model in iDempiere

• Create an Project for each transaction that you perform on behalf of your customer.
• You create the project as complicated as you need to support a given transaction.
  • You can have a simple project with lines representing tasks or data.
  • You can have different phases, each phase with its own lines.
• Project templates for common tasks can be created and copied into a new project to make the process of creating projects more efficient.
• Once the project is created with all your details: customs, freight, warehousing, etc... you invoice your customer by tagging a given customer invoice line with that project (and phase if applicable). It does not matter if you use a Charge or a Product (configured with Product Type = "Service") on the invoice line.
• If you use project phases, you can invoice each phase on separate invoice lines (possibly across multiple invoices).
• The relationship between a project phase and a invoice line is such that the Invoice Line points to a specific Phase on a Project. NOTE: the Invoice windows => Line subtab => Project Phase field is not shown by default even though it exists in the database.
• How and when you create invoices from projects depends on your business model. Generally, you will create a process (button) on the project to generate invoices. Another option is to create a menu process to generate invoices for all completed phases/projects. This bullet is where almost all your customization will occur to support logistics operations.
• Pricing will be interesting since price depends on variables in your project (example: distance, number of stops, borders, volume, weight, hazardous material, etc...) . I envision you will need a pricing calculator to determine the price of each invoice line. This will be an iDempiere => Process.
• Vendor invoices will work the exact same way in that you tag a given invoice line with its associated project and phase if applicable.
• Workflow and notifications can be handled using Requests.
• Discussion on this topic