Category Archives: Tech Line

Order Audit

TechLine

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

Question:

There are times when an order, quote or invoice gets deleted or maybe the prices have been changed and it would be nice to know who deleted or changed pricing, etc . It would be helpful to have a way to know exactly what happened to a document in these situations.

Answer:

Total Order Plus has order audit trails in both order and invoice data entry.

If you enter an order, quote or invoice on the Order Entry System Menu, there is now a new selection on the sub-menu –  ‘Order Audit’ and ‘Invoice Audit’. It will display every action that has been processed on that document.

You can also see the audit trail in the Find Order/Invoice Utility on an order, invoice or quote and history invoices. Below is an example of the Order Audit option.

OrderAudit

Accounts Receivable Credit Codes

TechLine

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

Question:

Several of our customers are having credit issues on paying their invoices. Some of them are past due by many months, some are making partial payments, others on a payment plan, etc.  How can we designate which ones have these different issues?

Answer:

Total Order Plus allows you to set up various credit codes in Credit Code Maintenance on the A/R Options Menu. If you have a customer that is past due by many months, you should assign the credit code CH (Credit Hold) to their account by accessing the Credit Code field under Customer Status Maintenance on the Customer Master Sub-Menu. TOP will not allow any orders or invoices to be processed for that customer until the code is altered or removed. Any credit code that has a ‘C’ as the first character will be treated as a Credit Hold during Invoice Entry but not Order Entry.

CH can be automatically set using the Credit Hold Update on the A/R System Menu. It uses the Order Entry Terms Code Maintenance Credit Hold value for the number of days before putting an account on credit hold. There is an override flag in the Customer Master (Update CH) that allows you to bypass an account during the Credit Hold Update.

To categorize the other customers, you can set up multiple credit codes to describe their situation. For example, CO – Collections, PP – Payment Plan, WO – Write Off, etc.

AR_Credit_Code

Email Invoice Reminder

TechLine

 

 

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

Question:

Several of our customers want their invoices sent via email. We have customer contact records set up with an email address for those customers that have requested it. When we are doing invoicing, we have no way of knowing which customers want their invoices sent by email or which ones want a hardcopy. Could there be a way to have a ‘reminder’?

Answer:

In Total Order Plus 2012, there has been a modification to the O/E Interface Maintenance on the customer sub-menu (See Below). In the Print Invoice field, you have the option to always print an invoice for this customer, not to print an invoice or email invoices to this customer. Once this flag is set, every time you enter an invoice the invoice sub-menu will either display ‘Print Invoice’ or ‘Email Invoice’.

AR_Cust_OE_Interface

Replace Contract Price Item Description

TechLine

 

 

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

Question:

We have numerous contract prices for most of our customers. We sometimes edit the item description in the contract pricing file. There are times when we enter an order or invoice that we would like to be able to replace it with the actual item description from the item master.

Answer:

In Total Order Plus 2012, there has been a modification to order and invoice data entry. After entering an item code and the quantity, you will see the contract item description display on your screen. You can press the F3 key to move your cursor to the item description field. If you want to replace the item description, you press the F1 key to insert the item description from the item master.

You can always edit an item description with your own description as well. If you start to enter your description and decide you want the original description back, don’t press the Enter key but press the ESC key to restore the description. This ESC key option also applies to Special and Message lines and most text input fields that have the [brackets].

A/R Statement Options

TechLineThe Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

Question:

During the Accounts Receivable Period-End Processing, I would like to have the option to either print or email customer statements.

Answer:

In Total Order Plus 2012, the Statement Printing allows you three options: print and email all statements, print only hardcopy statements or email only statements.

If you need to email a statement to just one customer, the Email Statements option will not be available on the input screen, but does allow you to email one statement by selecting the ‘Print to a Adobe PDF’ option on the TOP printer menu, the same procedure you would use to email a customer’s individual invoice.

 

Sending Attachments From TOP

TechLineThe Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

 

 

Question:

Several times a year we mail out fliers listing new products with pricing, items that are currently on sale, other documents like credit applications, etc. It would be cost efficient if we could send them as an attachment to an email from within Total Order Plus.

Answer:

TOP provides sending attachments within an email in multiple places. You can attach up to two files to each purchase order, quote, order, invoice or statement. The file(s) must be placed in the EXPORT folder (U drive). When you are sending an attachment, you will include the name of the file as displayed in the input screen below:

OE_CREDIT_APP

 

Editing Customer Name/Address on Open Orders/Invoices

TechLine

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

 

 

Question:

When a customer calls with a change of address, it is time consuming to have to go into every order and invoice and edit the bill-to address. Has this been addressed in the new version of TOP2012?

Answer:

You would go into the customer master and edit the customer name and address. Upon exiting the Customer Status Maintenance screen, you will be prompted with ‘Change O/E order and invoice customer name and address also? (Y)es or (N)o:’. You need to answer yes to have TOP change the bill-to name and address on all open orders and invoices for that customer.

If you answer no, you would have to manually change the bill-to address on each individual order and invoice. TOP now allows you to press F2 at the ship-to name field to access the contact name and F2 again to access the bill-to name and address. You will notice that a third address line has been added to both the bill-to and ship-to address and the customer master address. Each line is now 35 characters in length.

Deleting An Inventory Item

TechLine

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

 

 

Question:

When I delete an inventory item, I have to spend a lot of time going to each customer’s contract pricing file and remove that item manually. Isn’t there a way to include that file in the deletion process?

Answer:

When an item is deleted in inventory, TOP does a series of checks before removing that item in other files. The item ending balance must be equal to zero and there cannot be any order, invoice or purchase order committed quantities. You will be prompted to answer yes if you want to delete the item if it is a kit component and if you want to confirm the removal of contract prices for that item.

Credit Card Access in TOP

TechLine
Question:

When I enter credit card information for customers, I only want my customer service reps to see the entire credit card number. Can this be added to Total Order Plus for additional security?

Answer:

TOP now has a separate maintenance program for credit card information that allows password protection on the Customer Sub-Menu. In addition, you can set up a group code in the A/R Parameters and the group code can be put in the customer rep’s User Maintenance record for the reps you want to be able to see the entire credit card number. When the credit card displays anywhere in the system, it checks the group code to see if the group code matches. If the group code doesn’t match, the credit card is displayed with *’s. If a user without a group code tries to enter maintenance on a credit card record, a warning message will be displayed.

AR_Card_Access

Inventory Physical Count

 

TechLine

The Tech Line, by Joanne Simmons

 Question:

When I do an inventory physical count, it would be nice to be able to select which item types I want to include on the count sheets.

Answer:

The ‘Create Inventory Count Sheets’ program allows you to select whether or not you want to include inventory items not currently tracked in inventory or you can select to include all inventory items except for kit items. There is also a new option whether to include discontinued inventory items on the count sheets.