Vendors - Managing and Sending Orders

System-generated and user-generated Vendor orders can be sent from the Order Listing screen.

On the right-hand side of the screen, you can search for open orders by Vendor, all orders Above Minimum, New Releases or choose to show All of them.  When you choose to view a certain vendor or new releases, all orders relating to these options will be displayed, not just those that are above the minimum.

The top portion of the screen has information about the different open orders.

• Order Number:             Number assigned to the order - !HOLD indicates that the order has been created but not sent
• PO Number:                  Purchase order number generated by FieldStack for the order (the beginning of the PO is the store number)
• Qty:                                 How many total units are being ordered
• Store:                               For which store the order is intended
• Vendor:                            With whom the order is to be placed
• Order Bin:                        For what bin (area) the items are being ordered
• Print:                               Option to print or generate a PDF of the order
• Email:                              Option to e-mail the order to the vendor as a text-based FieldStack-generated order (if the vendor email is entered in Manage Vendors.)
• EDI:                                 Option to electronically submit order to the vendor (if electronic data interchange has been set up with the vendor)

Bins

"Bins" are purchase order identifiers that split items out by various means. Multiple bin options exist to keep types of product from being ordered together.  Some of the most commonly used bins include:

• General                            Items being re-ordered from a vendor
• Seasonal                         Holiday-themed product
• Deal                                 Items being purchased due to a vendor-offered deal
• Store Transfer                  Items to be moved from one store location to another

The bottom portion of the screen shows details about the items that are waiting in the order that is selected in the top portion of the screen.

• Qty:                                  Number of units to be ordered
  • The quantity to order can be edited here. Updating the quantity will also update the name noted in the Buyer column.
  •  If there is an item you want to remove, change the quantity to 0. If the system deems the item to be eligible for restock, it may be added to an open purchase order over night.
• Cost:                                How much the vendor charges for the item
  • If a deal is in place and uploaded to the system, the discounted cost will be reflected here.
  • The cost in this column can be edited if the setting "Is the Cost Price on Order Editable" is set to True.

*The above columns are totaled at the bottom of the window*

• Item Name:                      Item Information
• Description:                   Additional item information
• Rule:                               Why the item is being ordered
• Category:                      Primary category of the item
• Deal:                                Any deal of which the item may be a part
• Buyer:                             Who placed the item on order or last edited the quantity
• On Hand:                         How many units the location already has on hand of the item
• UPC W/Check Digit:         Primary UPC number of the item
• Sales                               The sales per month shown as a comma-separated number series. The most recent completed month appears first in the series.

Column chooser: Right-click any column header to access other columns that can be added for reference. These include but are not limited to Chain rating, location rating, box quantity, and item number.

Sending Orders

Select the order(s) you would like to send.  Click the delivery method(s) you’d like to use to send the order(s): Print, Email, or EDI. Depending on vendor set-up, E-mail and EDI may not be available to select and will have a red crossed-out circlein them if this is the case.

*Note: E-mail ordering may be set-up in the Manage Vendors area of the system.  If you would like EDI set-up for a vendor, please contact FieldStack and we’ll try to establish the connection.

Click Send Order(s) to deliver and activate the orders that have a delivery method selected.  Once an order is activated, the system will consider it on its way and likely will not order the items again unless demand rises or the order expires. This is primarilly driven by the expiration date on the line items that generates when an order is generated.  Order expiration is set on the Manage Vendors screen.  The listing will disappear from the Waiting window once sent and will appear in the Orders (Active) window.

Consolidating Orders

When you want to consolidate orders from a single vendor to all go to one store rather than several, click the Consolidation Wizard button on the right-side of the screen.  This function is useful when dealing with smaller vendors where it may take weeks or months for a single store to meet the vendor’s minimum quantity requirements.

All the orders will be consolidated to go to the store that functions as the warehouse.  If you are not set-up for this functionality, please contact FieldStack and we’ll assist in getting you going.

• Vendor:                                     Select the vendor whose orders you want to consolidate (only vendors with waiting orders will be displayed)
• Possible Transmission Methods:          Click the method by which you want to submit the order.  Only methods available for the selected vendor can be chosen 
• Order Bin:                                 Select the order bin from the vendor that you want to consolidate (only bins with waiting orders will be displayed)
• Stores With Orders Waiting:      From this list of stores with orders to be placed with the selected vendor, choose the ones you wish to consolidate
•  Manual Break and Ship:           This option will consolidate the selected orders being sent to the vendor, but will keep the orders separate in the system.  You may then print out each order individually for your future reference.  Use this option if you don’t want to receive items into the warehouse.  You will need to break out the order by hand (based on the printed reference) when it arrives. The items should then be shipped to each destination location and received by that location in the standard way.

Verify in the Orders To Be Sent With (store)’s window that the selections you have made are correct.  When you are done, click the Send Order button.

Splitting Orders

If you need to split certain order items into a separate bin/purchase order, right-click on the order and choose Split order. The screen below allows you to select what items you want to move and to what order bin.  Upon completing this, the Order list screen will refresh and you’ll be able to send those as a separate order.   If there are already items in the order bin you move items to, these items will be added to the order and existing items will be maintained in that destination order bin.

How to map an item to a vendor

The Product Source Group on an item binds all items with that PSG to a Vendor.  To see what vendor a product source group is mapped to, click on the Vendor Mapping button on the Item Edit screen. 

If you wanted to map a single item from one vendor to another, you would edit the item and change the Product Source Group to a product source group that is mapped to that vendor.  You would not remap the PSG as that will change all items with that Product Source Group to be re-assigned to a new vendor. That should only be done if an entire product group is being moved from one vendor to another. Example: One company is no longer going to sell their items directly and everything mapped to them need to be assigned to an existing vendor.

Find all items with a Product Source Group

On the Retail tab, click on Find Item (Advanced).  Click on the Advanced button and enter in the product source group.   You will likely want to increase your max search results to 15,000. This search results value will stick once set.

Item Order Quantities (Cases/Layers/Pallets)

On the item edit screen the default ordering quantity can be found on the Additional Details tab.  If this value is set, the item can only be ordered in quantities of that amount, regardless of where it is coming from.   If a vendor has a specific ordering quantity for warehouse ordering, it can be set at the vendor level via the Buying tab.  In the screen shots below, this item is ordered in lots of 12 by default, so if ordering from the warehouse, it would order in 12’s.  If you buy it from Lonestar for the warehouse, you must buy in layers of 204 units