Special Orders: Advanced Maintenance

Modified on Fri, 29 Mar at 2:20 PM

Viewing Special Orders in Customers Tab

To manage open Special Orders for your entire chain, go to the Customers tab and click Customer Special Orders. This will allow you to reorder items from different vendors, call customers and cancel orders, or change items.

When the window first opens, only special orders that need attention will appear. Reasons why an order may need attention:

Vendor Order has expired or hasn’t been received within 10 days of being sent/activated.
Vendor Order hasn’t been sent for 7 days.

At the top of the window you can select a date range for viewing completed special orders.

If you want to view all open special orders, not just the ones needing attention, click the All Open Special Orders button at the top of the window.

Color Codes

Red - Item has a Stop Sell Date in the past
Green - Item has future Start Sell Date
Blue - Entry is the one currently highlighted.

The top portion of the screen lists special orders with the following information:

Date	When the order was placed
UPC	UPC number of the item ordered
Attn	Order needs attention. Shows as **
Customer	Name of the customer
Desc	Description of the item ordered
Store	Store at which the order was placed
Vendor	Vendor (distributor) from whom the item has been/is to be ordered
Arrival date	When the item arrived at the store
Used	A zero (0) denotes that the item is new; a 1 (one) denotes that the item is used

The bottom portion of the screen gives information about the specific order. Here are the available fields and their corresponding meanings.

Special Order Date	When the order was placed
Arrival Date	When the item was received by the store
Contacted Date	Date when the customer was contacted (if manually set)
Completion Date	When the order was completed (fulfilled or cancelled)
Item Code	Unique code given to every item by FieldStack
Store	At which store the order was placed
Item Condition	Either new (0) or used (1)
Description Box	Description of item including its price
Customer Code	Customer’s Frequent Buyer’s Card account number
Customer Name	Customer’s name
Customer E-mail	Customer's email address (if given)
Customer Phone	Customer's phone number
Details	Which employee placed the order and any additional information
Snooze	Hides a listing from view until a date chosen
Vendor	From whom an item has been ordered
Order Date	When the item was ordered from the vendor
Kill Date	Date by which the order will cancel (if it hasn’t arrived)
Purchase Order	Order number associated with the entire order placed with a vendor
Date Received	When the shipment with the item was received

In the bottom-left corner of the window is a vendor drop-down menu where you can view which vendors have the item in stock if inventory feeds are acquired from the vendors.
The primary vendor of the item will appear above the 0------------ line as well as any other vendors who have the item in stock.
If another store has the item in stock, there will be a Store Transfer option.

Filtering Search Results

Clicking on any of the headings will sort the entries in either ascending or descending order according to that category. You may also choose to selectively view only certain types of orders, such as those in a single store, which may be done by clicking on the funnel in the Store heading and choosing the store number.

It could also be useful to group orders by date. You can also group orders by dragging headers into the black space above it. Have several sub-groupings by dragging multiple headings up.

Acting on Special Orders

Reorder an item

To reorder a special order to a different vendor, change the Vendor dropdown in the lower left and click Order. The special order will go onto an unactivated purchase order for that vendor.

Change an item

IF an item was ordered that is discontinued and has an alternate SKU, or the customer has been spoken to and accepted an alternate, you can change the item itself and reorder it.

1. From the office item list find the alternate item that you will order.

2. Right-click and Copy the Item Code

3. Paste the new Item Code into the item code field in the special order info bottom panel.
4. Click Save. This will alter the item in the item list.

5. After updating the item, it will need to be ordered using the Order feature in the lower left. The original item, if still on an open PO, can be zeroed out if needed.

Change item condition

If you sell new and pre-owned items and need to change an item from new to pre-owned or vice versa you can do so within the special order info panel.

1. Toggle New/Used as needed.

2. Click Save.

3. If the item was changed from Used to New, it will need to be ordered from a vendor using the Order feature in the lower left.

4. If the item was changed from New to Used, you may order a used copy form another location if possible.

Note: The Condition column in the top portion of the screen will not change until the special order list is closed and reopened.

Change price promised

You can change the price the customer will pay when the item arrives.

1. Alter or enter a new Price Promised.

2. Click Save.

Cancel an Order

If an item will not arrive and the customer has been contacted, you can Complete the order.

1. Enter a Completion Date (today or in the past).

2. Click Save.

Customer contact

If a customer has been contacted you can add a Contacted Date.

1. Enter a Contacted Date.

2. Used the Details comment box to add a note such as "Left message - JS" or "Not available. Emailed."

2. Click Save.

Snooze

If the special order comes up with ** in the ATTN column and you would like to wait a specific number of days before seeing it in the list again (maybe you are waiting for a vendor or store response to an inquiry), you can Snooze the order. This will simply hide it in the initial ** list.

1. Enter a Snooze date

2. Click Save

In-Store Maintenance

A report called Special Order Clean Out exists on the Retail tab of FieldStack.

Store employees can access this to help clean out Holds and Special orders that have not been picked up.

Simply change the number of days to disregard (you may not want to put a Special order back on the sales floor that just arrived yesterday) and click Run Printable Report.

In the example below, using 16 Days Back as the threshold, only items that arrived or were held 16 days ago will show in the report. Store staff can print this and pull items from the shelf to keep the Special Order/Hold area current.