Sales Orders

From PERPWiki

Overview
Definitions
Chronology
Setting Pricing
Sales Orders
Shipping an order
Invoicing an order
- Receiving payment for an order??
Sales Reports > 9.4.5
Order Preferences > 10.5.6
FAQ

1 Overview
2 Definitions
3 Chronology
4 FAQ
- 4.1 How do I add stock items to a parts price list?

Overview

The Sales Orders user section consists of five main parts.

The Preferences section allows you some control over how Sales Orders appear on your home screen.
The Price Lists section allows you to assign merchandise (finished goods and parts) to a pricing structure set by the Administrator.
The Order Lists section allows you to enter and process customer orders.
The Reports section generates various sales and order reports.
The Preferences section allows you some control over how Sales Orders appear on your home screen.

pERP will require some changes in how you think about price lists. The printed price lists we're accustomed to will be more for internal use. You can still print them out and give them to a dealer or to the sales team, but they will no longer be necessary for that purpose.

Definitions

It may be helpful to first explain some terminology. The pricing section in Administration allows control over the pricing structure for the sale of products and services. These fields must be set by an Administrator with high level access.

Here is a definition of the main fields in this section.

Sales Areas might be better named Price Areas. This field permits definition of geographical areas where a particular pricing structure is in effect, such as US West, US East, US Mid-west, and US South. This will allow for four different price lists, one for each area. Or you might define two sales divisions, "Corporate Stores" and "Independent Dealers" with differential pricing for each division.

NOTE: Sales Area has nothing to do with physical territories covered by sales agents. These are called Sales Territories. You might have a dozen agents in California, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona, all using the same US West pricing structure.

Sales Types again might better be named Price Types. This field allows you to set different pricing levels, such as Dealer, Wholesale, High Volume, Factory Discount, and MSRP. Each price type can vary within a Sales Area. The four sales areas given above, multiplied by the five sales types here, can give a total of up to 20 different price lists that could go into a national sales agent's price book.

Sales Category (or Price Category) allows you to specify pricing for different product lines. Suppose that Sample Manufacturing Company begins producing a line of high-end luxury super-widgets. They might then have a Standard Widget Price Book, and a Super Widget Price Book. Each of these price books could have a different price list for each area and type. However, they could also just have a single Widgets category and expand it to include both widget types. FK Spa Manufacturing might have the categories Spas, Bathtubs, Parts and Accessories. Fresno Computers might use categories of Sales, Service, and Consulting.

You can see that these three fields have the flexibility to meet the needs of any business, retail or wholesale, from providing an extremely simple structure (Canadian, Dealer and MSRP, one product line) to handling the needs of a complex international pricing structure such as that used by Blue Falls Manufacturing.

Chronology

Chronology is important in pricing. Users always see the current price list. Any orders, sales, etc. that come in will always use the current price list, that is, the list that is in effect on the date of the order.

A current price list is one that is in effect, and has an Effective From date that is equal to or before today's date and an Effective to date that is blank or is after today's date. A price list becomes current at 00:00:01 (one second after midnight) on the Effective From date and will remain current until 24:00:00 (midnight) on the Effective To date.

When you edit a current list and save your edits, pERP will automatically close out the price list you edited and create a new one with your changes. Unless you specify otherwise, the new price list will become effective 24 hours from the time you save your edits. It is important to pay careful attention to the dating whenever you edit a price list. If you want prices to come into effect immediately (not advised), you must give yourself enough lead time to complete all the edits.

The chronology can be turned off, and this is recommended for the startup. However, once you have pERP configured and your people trained in its use, you should consider turning this back on for proper maintenance of pricing records.