ORDER ENTRY

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Now that you have purchased inventory and paid your vendors for the goods, you need to sell some of those goods. The first step in doing so, at least in terms of The Application, is to get the order from the customer. The Application provides four reports to facilitate the order-taking process. We will first look at two of these reports, the Customer Order Guide (Figure 83), and the Customer Load Sheet (Figure 84). You might remember these two reports were mentioned in Section II K when discussing the Customer File Maintenance form (Figure 38). The Pricing tab on the Customer File Maintenance form has two buttons which allow you to Print Order Guide and Print Load Sheet. These two forms can also be accessed under Reports File Maintenance Reports Customer Order Guides. You can print these forms for use by CSR’s at your business to manually take orders from customers to later be input into the system, or they can be distributed to customers for them to write up the orders themselves before calling or faxing the orders in to your CSR.

In addition to the Customer Order Guide and the Customer Load Sheet, you also have the Call/Route Sheet to use in taking orders from customers. The Call/Route Sheet is found both under Sales Order Entry Call Sheet, and Reports Sales Reports Route/Call Sheet. This report can be printed in summary (Figure 85), or in detail (Figure 86).

The Call/Route Sheet report can be printed for an individual route, or you can select a day of the week and print all routes for that day.

When the Call/Route Sheet report is printed in summary, it lists each of the customers on the route in delivery order with a line to enter an invoice number and a line for any comments. This report can be used when the CSR is entering orders directly into the system, but wants a checklist to track which orders have been taken.

When the Call/Route Sheet report is printed in detail, it lists each customer on the route along with items that customer has ordered based on the customer profile. The detail report can be used if the CSR wishes to write the orders down on a worksheet and enter them into the system at a later time.

Once the customer’s order has been taken, using whatever means, the next step is to input the customer’s order on the Order Entry form (Figure 87) found under Sales Order Entry Generate an Order. Let’s take a look at that form quickly, but before using it we will want to look at another form that provides additional setup options not covered in Section II.

When entering a new order you will want to tab past the Invoice # field so The Application will assign the next number in the system. Entering a customer number in the Account field will populate the form to the extent seen in Figure 87. As you can see, some of the additional information the form asks for, even before you begin entering items ordered, are Route, Stop, P.O. #, Ship Via, and Freight (although none of these fields are required to complete the order). The P.O # will be provided to you by the customer. The Ship Via field has a drop-down arrow that allows you to select a shipping option from a list. The Freight field allows you to enter a dollar amount to charge the customer for delivery. Note that the Salesperson and Tax Code fields are already populated based on the information you entered in the Customer File Maintenance form. This leaves us with the Route and Stop fields, which require some additional setup before we can exploit the functionality they provide.

The Route and Stop fields will populate with the route number and stop number, respectively, for that customer for the delivery date specified once you have set up routes in the system. Routes are set up using the Route File Maintenance form (Figure 88) found under File Maintenance Route File. Close the Order Entry form for now and let’s look at the Route File Maintenance form.

Figure 88 shows you the Route File Maintenance form with some data already entered. For each route, you will need to assign a Route Number and a Route Name. You can use whatever numbering scheme makes sense to you, and you can give the routes any name you like. Most companies will want to use a name that is descriptive. The F3 key can be used in the Route Number field to select from existing routes.

After creating a route, you can identify the driver responsible for the route if you like. Then, in the upper right-hand corner, you need to identify the Call Day and the Delivery Day for this route. Below that, you should specify whether you want a Call/Route Sheet to print for this route, and, if so, whether you want it in Detail (Figure 86) or Summary (Figure 85).

Now you want to populate the grid with all the stops along this route. With the cursor in the Account column, you can use the F3 key to select from the customer file. Selecting a customer fills the Account, Name, Address and City fields. You then need to assign the customer a Stop number. The customers do not need to be selected in stop order as you are creating the route – you will establish the stop order by the numbers you select in the Stop column and the next time you bring up the route in the Route File Maintenance form the customers will be sorted by the stop order. The Status column allows you to show customers as Active or Inactive. The right-most column, Order Type, allows you to specify the means by which the order from this customer is obtained. The Status and Order Type columns provide information for the Call/Route Sheet. You can delete any customer on the route by positioning the cursor in the Account field of the customer you wish to delete, and then hitting the Delete key. The Application will ask you if you are sure you want to delete the customer, to which you can respond appropriately.

At the lower left of the form are two buttons helpful in the creation and maintenance of the route files. The first, Delete Route, allows you to delete an entire route. The second, Duplicate, allows you to create a new route using the currently displayed route as a template. When you click the Duplicate button, a dialog box will pop up asking you to enter the new route number. When you enter the new number and hit OK, The Application creates a new route identical to the one you were viewing, except for the route number. You can then modify any of the fields discussed above to set up the new route, without having to re-enter information the two routes have in common.

Once you have created routes in the system, the Route and Stop fields on the Order Entry form will automatically populate with the appropriate information once you enter the Ship Date. For instance, in Figure 89 above, we created a hypothetical Route # 44 showing a delivery to a customer named Lorena's Taquería as the sixth stop. Route # 44 is a Tuesday route. After creating this route, if you were to bring up the Order Entry form and enter the customer number for Lorena's Taquería in the Account field, and then enter 3/2/2004, a Tuesday date, in the Ship Date field, the Route and Stop fields would display 44 and 6 respectively.

Now that we have populated the Route and Stop fields, we are ready to continue processing the order on the Order Entry form. As you can see in Figure 90, the bottom half of the form is dominated by a grid allowing the input of inventory items ordered by the customer. By selecting the Item column in the grid and hitting F3, you can bring up a list of inventory items from which to select. Selecting the item fills the Item, Description, Sell Price and Unit Price columns in the grid. You can then enter the ordered amount in the Cases, Units or Weight columns and the Extended column will display the total price. If the item is a random-weight item (i.e., if the Random Weight checkbox was checked when this item was set up using the Inventory File Maintenance form), then you can enter an amount in the Weight column on the grid. If the item is not a random-weight item, The Application will not accept data entry in the Weight column. Note also the Redemption Value: and Tax: fields at the bottom of the grid update with the total redemption value and sales tax as you add items.

If any item on the Order Entry form is being sold at or below cost, that item will be highlighted in red to alert the CSR or anyone viewing the invoice later (Figure 90).

Above the grid to the left, you see a notation: F7 to Modify Line/F8 to Calculate Price. This tells you there are two additional function keys, besides the F3 SEARCH KEY, which can be used with the Order Entry form. You can hit the F7 MODIFY LINE key to bring up the Item Details form which provides some additional information regarding the inventory item. The Item Details form is shown in Figure 91.

The Item Details form gives you some additional information on G/L codes and cost, and provides you a second interface for entering the order for a particular item. Also, if you wish to change the description of the item as it appears on this one invoice, you can change the Description, Brand and Pack fields displayed on the Item Details form and those changes will be saved with this invoice. Making such a change does not affect the item’s master file – the changes are only reflected on this one invoice.

Hitting the F8 CALCULATE PRICE key brings up the Gross Profit Percentage Mark-Up form (Figure 92). Basically, this form gives you easy access to three more pricing options for the item. You can click the Use Last Price button to use the last price charged to this customer for this product the last time the customer bought the product. This price is displayed on the form along with the number and date of the invoice from which the price is taken. Alternatively, the form allows you to enter a gross-profit mark-up percentage to calculate the price as a percentage mark-up over the cost. Thirdly, you can simply enter a price for the item in the Sell field (and the form will calculate and display the percentage mark-up your price represents in the GL% field). The form also displays the total Extended Sell price for the item based on the quantities you have entered and the price you have selected.

If the item in the grid is a random weight item, you can bring up the Enter Catch Weights form (Figure 93) by clicking in the Weight column for that item. This can be a handy feature if you are entering catch weights for more than one case because The Application will calculate the total for you and enter the total in the Weight field when you click Ok.

You can delete an item from the grid before saving the invoice by clicking on the item with your mouse and hitting the Delete key.

Once you have populated the grid with the customer’s order, you can click the Save button to save the invoice. A dialog box will pop up giving you the assigned invoice number. You can then access the invoice for review or modification by entering that invoice number in the Invoice # field on the Order Entry form.

At the top right of the Order Entry form, you see the familiar Comments button, and two other buttons which allow you to print the invoice or print a picklist based on the invoice. The picklist is a report which provides the warehouse with a list of inventory items that need to be loaded for this order. Printing invoices and picklists is something you will probably usually want to do in batches by route or date, and you have the ability to do this using another form as we will see below.

Among the buttons that run along the bottom of the Order Entry form, there is a button that allows you to Delete the entire order, and a button with the caption Fill Order which we will discuss below as well.

Once you have saved the orders, you can run reports to allow warehousing and distribution to load and ship inventory based on those orders. You access these reports using the Route Management form (Figure 94) found under Sales Order Entry Routing.

Entering a Shipping Date brings up all the routes scheduled for that day, and shows you the total cases on each route, and the total number of stops and pickups on each route.

Incidentally, double-clicking on one of the routes listed on the Route Management form will bring up the Routing form (Figure 95), which lists the invoices and customers for that route.

Going back to the Route Management form itself (Figure 94), you can now print picklists (or “load sheets”) in detail or summary for any single route or for all the routes listed for that day. If you choose the Print Selected Route and Detailed Picklist options and leave the Single Stop Per Page checkbox unchecked, you get a Route Cover Sheet similar to that shown in Figure 96, and a Detailed Load Sheet similar to that shown in Figure 97.

Printing the reports with the Summary Picklist option selected generates a Summary Load Sheet similar to that in Figure 98.

These reports should be run before posting the invoices as described below. Once the invoices have been posted, you will not be able to run the reports provided by the Route Management form.

After creating and saving an order, you need to post the order before it actually is recorded in the system’s files as a receivable. You will normally want to do this in batches using the Print & Post Invoices form (Figure 99) found under Sales Order Entry Print and Post Order.

As you can see in Figure 99, the Print & Post Invoices form allows you to print and/or post invoices by listing individual invoices, by selecting a route, or by selecting a ship date. You can choose the By Route option to print bills of lading for a given route, and you may want to deselect the Include Prices on Invoices checkbox at the bottom left of the form if you do not want prices to print on the shipping documents. You can choose the By Ship Date option to print invoices for billing.

The two checkboxes at the top left of the form allow you to choose whether you will print the invoices, post the invoices, or both.

The grid displays information for each invoice selected. If you are selecting individual invoices, you can use the F3 key in the Invoice column to look up invoice numbers. The Status column gives you the current status of each invoice (e.g., Open, Printed, Posted, etc.), and the Weights column verifies that weights have been entered on all random-weight inventory items. If an invoice contains a random-weight inventory item and no weight was entered for that item on the Order Entry form, the Weights column will display a stop sign image in place of the check (Figure 99).

Once you have selected invoices and checked or unchecked all appropriate checkboxes, you can click the Continue button to execute the processes you have designated.

The above outlines the basic process of creating a simple order, but there is some additional functionality and flexibility in the order entry process which we should examine. For one thing, as nifty as the F3 SEARCH KEY may be, you no doubt see that having to select each inventory item from a list when entering orders is going to be time-consuming and awkward from a data entry standpoint. During the order-entry process, time is usually of the essence, and a customer service representative is probably going to need a more efficient way of populating the Order Entry form with ordered items. Fortunately, The Application provides a way of anticipating the customer’s order and populating the grid beforehand with inventory items the customer is likely to order. It does this by tracking the customer’s order history and keeping a list of items the customer has ordered in the past. You can modify this list, adding or subtracting items or deactivating items for a period of time, and you can even set up the list manually before the customer has ever placed an order. This list is also updated if you create a negotiated pricing file for the customer – any items added to the negotiated pricing file will be added to the list. This list is the Customer Profile, and The Application maintains it automatically in conjunction with any manual input by users.

You use the Customer Profile to populate the grid on the Order Entry form by clicking the Fill Order button. You don’t have to use the items which appear in the grid – if you enter no quantities or weights the item is ignored, and you can add any additional items to those that appear on the grid if the customer orders something new. Once you have posted a new order containing new items, those new items automatically become part of the profile.

If you want to modify the Customer Profile, or set it up in the first place before any orders have been posted, you can use the Customer Profile Maintenance form (Figure 100) found under File Maintenance Customer Profile.

When you enter a customer number in the Customer Account field, the form populates with the customer’s name and address and the current profile. The grid tells you the First and Last time the customer ordered the item and what Quantity was ordered.

The Seq column allows you to order the items in any sequence you like for display on the Order Entry form and the Customer Order Guide. You can manually enter numbers in this column and click the Save button, or you can click the Update Sequence button and The Application will take the existing order and replace the numbers with increments of ten starting with 10. This allows you to insert sequence numbers between the existing numbers in the sequence (then you can click the Update Sequence button again to set the numbers of the new sequence to increments of ten again).

To the right of the grid, you find two columns with checkboxes you can check and un-check. The first column, Fill Order, allows you to select and deselect the item for display on the Order Entry form. Deselecting the item means it will not show up when you click the Fill Order button on the Order Entry form, even thought the item will remain on the Customer Profile list. You may want to deselect and later reselect items that the customer buys on a seasonal basis. The second column, Fax Price, is a flag relating to functionality not yet implemented in the system and it can be ignored for the time being.

The Customer Profile Maintenance form allows you to add any items you like to the customer profile. You can use the F3 key in the Item column to bring up a list from which to select, and then you need to check the box in the Fill Order column. You can delete any item in the profile by selecting that item and clicking the Delete button, or highlighting the item’s row and hitting the Delete key. You can also click the Copy Profile button to create a copy of the profile and save it to another customer. When you are finished, click the Save button to save any changes you have made.

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Accounts Payable and Disbursements

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Accounts Receivable