• Enables High-Volume Order Entry Efficiency
• Provides Immediate and Reliable Customer Promise Dates
• Eliminates Manual Pricing of Orders
• Minimizes Order Clerical Time
• Improves Shipping Performance

This module consists of the following functions: Sales Order Processing, Shipping and Invoicing, and Customer Service. Sales Order Processing concerns the tasks of entering and tracking sales orders, quotations, warehouse transfer orders, debit orders, and credit orders. A rich assortment of queries are available to facilitate the order processing cycle, including customer inquiries, order inquiries, inventory availability inquiries, pricing inquiries, and line item inquiries.

Order Entry Setup

A variety of master tables must be predefined in order to support the order entry and invoicing processes. Sales Divisions are used to differentiate the customer base geographically by major sales area. Sales Territories identify each sales representative along with the rep’s quota and sales commission percentage.

The Customer Discount matrix defines price breaks for an item or product code by customer class. Contract price breaks can also be defined for an item or product code by either customer or national account. Promotional pricing can be defined by promo ID, which is tracked from line item entry to shipping to sales analysis.

The Item Master is crucial to the order entry process and contains various parameters regarding pricing, kitting, inventory allocation, multiple selling Units of Measure, etc. Marketing Notes can be defined for an item to extend the item description. Customer Item Masters can be defined to associate an internal item number to a customer’s item number; this feature in turn provides the foundation for line item entry by customer item number.

Customer Bill-to masters identify the bill-to address and the default ship-to address for each customer. Customer ship-to masters are used to predefine additional shipping addresses and invoice mailing addresses for a customer bill-to.

The Invoice Terms table defines the discount percentage, the number of days the discount is valid, and the net payment days. Tax Districts are defined if sales tax must be collected.

Order Entry

The order entry process can begin by browsing through the list of available customers and selecting the appropriate customer record. Customers can be searched in customer short name, telephone number, or zip code sequence. Customers on credit hold and customers with incomplete master table definitions are highlighted for subsequent follow-up.

The Order Processing function allows the entry of regular sales orders, quotation orders, warehouse transfer orders, ship direct orders, debit orders and credit orders. In a multi-site/warehouse environment, the system can automatically select the optimum shipping site/warehouse based on the customer’s ship-to zip code.

At the beginning of the order entry process, the age of the customer’s oldest open invoice is compared to the maximum age allowed. The sales order is placed on credit hold if the age of the oldest open invoice is greater than the maximum age allowed; unless, of course, the customer has been granted unlimited credit.

Once the order entry process has been initiated, the default customer parameters are automatically copied to the sales order header. This capability allows you to optionally modify the customer parameters for this specific order without affecting the customer master table.

When the line item entry process has been completed, the value of the order is compared to the customer’s available credit. If the value of the order is greater than the customer’s available credit, the sales order is automatically placed on credit hold by the system.

Line Item Entry

A variety of line item entry screens are available, any of which can be used to enter line items on the sales order. At one extreme is a high-volume data entry screen that maximizes the number of line items per screen and minimizes the amount of default information that can be overridden per line. At the opposite end is a single line item entry screen that provides for maximum override capability.

In between these two extremes are a variety of line item entry modes that offer different methods of line item entry and different override capabilities. Items can be entered by simply browsing through a list of items for a given product code and selecting those items the customer wishes to order. Suggestive ordering is also supported via a customer shopping list that allows you to browse through items previously purchased by the customer for easy selection of re-ordered material.

Order header and footer comments can also be entered, in addition to comments for each line item. You can also specify the document(s) on which each comment to appear.

Inventory Allocation

During the line item entry process, available inventory will be allocated for shipment depending on several factors. If the item has been set up so that inventory must be manually allocated, the system will not automatically allocate inventory to the line item.

If inventory can be automatically allocated to the item, the site master of the shipping location is checked to determine the timing of inventory allocation. Some operating environments print shipping documents in anticipation of inventory receipts that will satisfy customer requirements. Other environments allocate inventory a predefined number of days before the ship date and allocate on a first-come, first-served basis. The inventory will be allocated during the line item entry process if appropriate; otherwise, it will be allocated as the shipping documents are generated.

Inventory that was originally allocated during the line item entry process can be allocated to another sales order during the generation of shipping documents. This procedure includes automatic de-allocation of inventory from one sales order and automatic re-allocation to another based on order priority and due date requirements.

Order Support

An exhaustive assortment of queries support the order entry process. In addition to the customer browses mentioned earlier, order browse inquiries by customer, by item number, by sales order and by Purchase Order number are also available for quick order retrieval by Customer Service. Price browse inquiries by customer and item reflect the price break quantities and contract pricing for the customer; thereby improving the accuracy of quotations. The inventory browse by site reflects the available inventory for an item at all sites to accommodate shipping from an alternate location. A kit availability inquiry computes the available to promise date for a specified kit quantity. The calculated date utilizes kit component inventory, the due date of supply orders, component lead time, and final assembly time.