Serial and Batch Tracking

A few questions, mostly about stock so I've put them all here ...

Not a inventory question first!
WebERP is the other potential candidate, but I think it lacks Dimensions/Cost Centres in the GL?, and using Prestashop as our eCommerce Cart, with probably SuiteCRM (a fork of SugarCRM) for our CRM ... so a Good API to allow integration is going to be key ... does FA have a really good API for this sort of integration? How Does the SimpleAPI (or others) compare to the WebERP API's ?

I don't feel that Prestashop or the two ERP products have the CRM features needed, and while not wanting to re-invent the wheel, feel that a strong CRM system with good links to marketing tools (email, social, blogs etc) is key. We would not be using the CRM to place/accept orders, this would be done via Prestashop. The CRM would/should show orders that have been completed. Any thoughts or advise on this would be welcome (ie anyone who has integrated with these or others, or has tried and failed etc).

We are in the final analysis of our new Accounts and ERP engine, and one of the things we need to track is LOT numbers and maybe in the future SERIAL numbers with the possibility of Expiry/Sell By Dates.

Having searched through the Forum posts, there appears to be much talk of implementing this, but it's not clear if anyone has indeed either done it in their own add-on or if it's in the core code?

Further we're in the UK, and we hold stock either as "Duty Paid" or "Duty Suspended" and sell the Duty Suspended as suspended or paid depending on the client and their wishes for that order. I assume (probably wrongly) that there is no existing functionality to allow or enable this and that I would need to develop or pay someone else to do this? If it can be done currently, please can someone explain.
The duty is calculated based on banded categories of product class (ie Fortified, still <5%, still >12%, Sparkling etc etc) and by volume ie per litre of fluid).

and finally, due to the range of products and descriptions, reviews, pricing and sources, competitor analysis etc we would probably have our own (non-financial) set of databases for products (live, and non live - either previous or potential) including pricing as this could exceed 100k products, per year verse an active range of maybe 5k products. Clearly something not to burden the accounting system or Ecommerce with when not needed.

Lots of questions, sorry, but any pointers or answers would be great.

Thanks