Understanding Sales Order Entry Using Order Guides
In may organizations, customer service representatives and sales representatives are responsible for selling certain products or product lines to a specific set of customers. In many cases, these customers order similar items or quantities each time they place an order with your organization.
To facilitate the entry of these orders, you can use the Order Guides feature. This feature enables sales personnel to use the My Customers application (P42470) to view a list of customers to which they are assigned. They can then click the Create Order icon to access the Enter New Order form. The Sold To and Branch/Plant fields are automatically populated. If the Order Guides feature is activated, when the user clicks anywhere in the detailed grid area of the form, the system opens the Order Guides Power Edit program (P4015PE).
The order guides feature provide the sales representative with:
A list of available order templates to use when creating the order.
Users can view available order templates for the sold to customer, ship to customer, any customer, or logged-in sales representative. Users can click on a template to load the detail area of the form with the items included in the template.
The customer's credit and order details.
Users can see the customer's available credit limit, total exposure, current order total, and the amount of credit that is available. As the order is updated, the system recalculates the order total and available credit amounts. All amounts are displayed using the base currency associated with the current transaction.
The ability to automatically update the Quantity Ordered field for each item in the detail area with predetermined values by clicking the Usual Quantities button.
For example, you might define a usual quantity of 100 cases if you have a customer who typically orders 100 cases of paper every month. You can update the quantity as needed. If you have entered a quantity before you click the button, the system does not override the value you entered.
The ability to view and update the price and profit margin for each line in the detail area.
Users can enter an override price, and the system automatically calculates the profit margin. Alternatively, users can enter a specific profit margin, and the system will calculate the override price. The system displays the profit margin using colors so users can quickly determine whether the profit margin for the item is acceptable.
The ability to change the displayed data.
Users can view items that were ordered by the customer during a previous time frame, such as items ordered, or not ordered, in the last 30 days. Users can also view all of the items associated with any of the displayed order templates, or only those items that currently contain a value in the Quantity Ordered field.
The ability to update templates during order entry.
Using the Item Search feature, users can search for an item, and add it to the selected order template. Once the item is included in the order template, it can be displayed in the detail area of the form, and added to the order details. Additionally, users can delete an order template. For example, if a customer tells the sales representative that they are no longer going to be buying a particular type of product, the sales representative can delete the order guide for those products so that it does not appear for that customer going forward. Lastly, users can click the Order Templates button to go directly to the Order Templates program (P4015) and update template information.
After the sales representative enters the information about the order on the Select Items Via Order Guides form, they can click OK to return to the Enter New Order form. At this point, the sales order can be updated and completed using the standard sales order entry process.