Seeking Suggestions: Shopping List across multiple projects

[A Collard 0]

I am organizing multiple projects that require components from various vendors. I would like to consolidate/coordinate my purchasing.

When I'm ready to order from Vendor A, I'd like to be able see all of the components to be ordered (regardless of project) and mark them as ordered.

This sounds like a good use for Tasks - each item as a Task, then IF they could be "tagged" by vendor it would be straightforward to locate and process them.

But, tasks can't be tagged (that I can see anyway)...

Suggestions on how to make this work efficiently in Evernote?

[agsteele 2,955]

Create a note for each vendor. Add the purchase tasks to the relevant vendor's note. You can tag the note as you wish.

[A Collard 0]

With the purchase tasks connected to the vendor, how would I know that an item has been ordered - When I look at my Project Notes?

Is there a way to make that connection? or would I need to duplicate the tasks?

[gazumped 11,704]

Without knowing a lot more about the projects and vendors - and please understand I'm not volunteering to find out - I don't think we can contribute much here. 

If your projects require a shopping list of items like bearings and fans  - all bearings from one supplier,  all fans from another - I'd think you might do some deals with suppliers along the lines of needing a total quantity of each item for all projects,  though you'll be ordering on a project-by-project basis.  You can assign each supplier a separate note,  and list components in project order so you can go through the notes and order from all suppliers,  ticking the boxes yourself.

I don't think it's possible (or advisable) to share notes with suppliers or allow them to indicate what has been ordered - you'll get varying levels of compliance and accuracy and everything will likely plunge into chaos fall apart (literally).

If you're also looking to have some sort of competitive edge - getting components from suppliers with the best price - then all bets are off;  you can have notes for projects,  and  notes for suppliers - but they'll just be records of what you're initiating,  not some form of job control keeping everything on track.

I could be wrong (again: not fully briefed on this) but I'd suggest you proceed with caution!

[Mike P 2,671]

As @gazumpedhas said it is difficult to comment without alot of information.particularly how your current notes are organised

If I try to imagine how I might tackle this sort of situation I would have a master note for each project. These notes would link to general notes about the project and notes about specific items I need to purchase using note links and tags. The notes about the components would include details of all the possible vendors etc. Projects could have their own notebook (optional) and a suitable tag. The components would be tagged with component, project (possibly more than one), vendors etc. You might need a note for each vendor with general info

Using search it would be possible to bring up notes for each component reqiuired in a project

I would probably want to add details of any purchases to this note (and possibly a link to an invoice in another note). I would then add a tag to indicate that it has been purchased and so could be excluded by that tag in future searches.

This network of tags allows you to do some nice searches - so all the components needed for Project A which have not been purchased is:

tag:project_A tag:component -tag:purchased

If I wanted to use tasks these would sit in the master project file but would be fairly high level - "Review components to be purchased". I would keep track of the individual components in their notes. Or I could just use a note reminder rather than tasks.

This might not be what you are looking for - it's just my ramblings of how I might tackle something similar to what I think you are doing

 

[Mike P 2,671]

Couple of other thoughts:

You can make your own DIY tags in tasks by just adding some special text e.g $project_A. You can then use the normal text search in the tasks search.

If you ended up putting tasks in the individual component notes the ability to filter notes by completed or uncompleted tasks might be handy. You can use the filter menu to do this or use the search syntax

contains:task
contains:taskCompleted
contains:taskNotCompleted

 

[A Collard 0]

I appreciate the ideas.

It sounds like some creative and liberal application of tags is in my near future...