| Vendor Management
Adding Vendors:
Click "View / Manage Vendors" from the home page of your
admin area.
Each of your vendors should be listed in this "Vendors" table,
which provides the complete details of the vendors, including all
the necessary information to generate Purchase Orders when needed.
So just click the "ADD" tab at the top of this page to
begin adding your vendors. Most of the information you'll be asked
to fill out in this table is information which is going to be displayed
on the PO's that you generate.
One important setting is the "Vendor_PO_Template" should be set to
"po.asp". You may create custom templates for each vendor, but by
default this one will work.
Setting up Vendor Rules:
The "Vendor Rules" table is what ties your products to
various vendor. It is flexible enough to even support multiple vendors
supplying a single product.
At the bottom of the EDIT product screen you'll see a section titled "Vendor
Rules". This needs to be filled in to specify which vendor(s)
are associated with this product.
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(a) In the "VendorID" field type the VendorID for the vendor.
(b) In the "VendorPartNo" field type the Part Number of this product as required by your Vendor. Often this is the same as your "ProductCode".
(c) In the "MinQty" field type in 1, and leave the "MaxQty" field blank.
(d) In the "Price" field type in the price you pay your vendor for this product.
(e) Hit the "Save Changes" button right below these fields.
NOTE: You may setup multiple Vendor Rules based on Quantity using the "MinQty" and "MaxQty" fields. For example you may pay $50.00 for something is you buy just one, but if you buy 5-10 you get them for $45.00 each, and 10 or more you get them for $40.00 each. Furthermore, you may have multiple vendors that can supply this product, and you may be able to get it cheaper from one vendor if you buy 1, but you might get it cheaper for another vendor if you buy 5 or more. |
Purchase Orders
Generating POs :
Purchase Orders can be generated in the following ways:
1) Through Automatic Drop-Shipping (as described below).
2) Through the "Low Inventory" tab at the top of the "View All Products" page.
3) Manually creating POs from the "View All Purchase Orders" page and then clicking
the "ADD" tab.
How to use the "Low Inventory" and "Queued for PO" tabs:
To use these tabs, go to the "View All Products" page, and you'll see these tabs
on the top-right of this screen. The purpose of these tabs is for your purchasing
department to be able to quickly order inventory for products that are running
low on stock. The following fields of the Products table must be filled in:
(a) StockLowQtyAlarm - If the StockStatus of this product goes
below this "StockLowQtyAlarm" number, this product will show up on
the "Low Inventory" tab.
(b) StockReOrderQty - This number specifies how many (quantity)
you'd like to order of this product each time it runs low.
So if the above fields are filled in, along with the "Vendor Rules" as
always, this product will show up on the "Low Inventory" tab when it's
running low on stock. From the "Low Inventory" tab you'll want to
show the "AddToPO_Now" field.
If you check this box, the product will be moved to the "Queued for PO" tab.
Once the product is moved to the "Queued for PO" tab you'll be able to cross-reference
more data including the vendors and costs for each product, and you'll be able
to adjust which vendors you'd like to use this time, or just leave everything
according to the Vendor Rules, which will choose the cheapest vendor for the
Quantity you're ordering. If you'd like to choose a different vendor to order
from this time, what you'll want to do is click to edit the product, then scroll
down to the "Vendor Rules" section of the edit product page, and fill in the
"Deactive Until" field of the VendorRules record that you do not want to use
this time. The "Deactivate Until" field holds a date value, such as "10/22/04".
When you're ready to build / send the purchase orders,
just click the "Generate All Purchase Orders" button on this page.
Sending POs:
When sending purchase orders, you have the following options for
sending the purchase order to the vendor:
| SendVia |
Description |
| e-mail |
E-mails the PO to the specified vendor's e-mail address. |
| fax |
Faxes the PO to the specified vendor's fax number.
NOTE: You must signup for an account with ClickFaxPro to use this feature.
This will allow us to send the PO e-mail to the ClickFaxPro system, which
will instantly send the PO to the vendor's fax machine. The e-mail address
that you register with ClickFaxPro must be your "Config_EmailAddress_Billing" (Billing
E-mail Address). Click the following link to signup for an account: http://www.clickfaxpro.com |
| none |
Allows you to print the PO so that you may send it manually. |
Receiving POs:
Once you get the inventory from your vendor, you'll want to receive the PO by
clicking on the "Inventory: Shipping & Receiving" link from the home page of
your admin area and follow these steps:
1) From the first dropdown menu choose "PO#", and in the field next to it type
in the PO number such as "1089" and then click the "Prepare" button.
2) Now you should see all of the items listed that were ordered through this
PO. As you count the tangible inventory to verify that you received the complete
quantity of everything that you orderred, you'll want to fill in the "Quantiy
Received" boxes on this page, and then hit the "Save Changes" button.
3) Since 90% of the time your vendor's never tell you the actual shipping cost
until this point, now is the time you can input the "Shipping Cost" in the field
right above the "Distribute" button in the lower right corner of this screen.
For example if you enter "$59.91" for the shipping cost and press the
"Distribute" button, what happens is it will distribute that $59.91 evenly throughout
the items on the order based on the weight of each product. After clicking this
"Distribute" button you can then easily adjust any items shipping cost as you
see fit. The reason for this distribution of shipping charges per item is to
help you run more accurate Cost / Profit reports to get the TRUE cost of your
goods. For example you might be paying $5.00 for an item and selling it for $12.00
and assuming you're profiting $7.00 per sale, however the item might be costing
you $10.00 after shipping it to your warehouse because of its size & weight,
therefore with this data you can now find out the true Cost / Profit on your
inventory.
Customizing POs
Purchase Orders templates can be customized for each vendor:
1) Go to "View / Manage Vendors" from the home page of your admin
area.
2) Click the "VendorID" of the individual vendor you wish to customize.
3) You'll see a field called "Vendor_PO_Template" which by default is set to
"po.asp". This is a file located in the following directory of your website "/wwwroot/admin/emails/po.asp".
You can edit this file by logging in via FTP, or you can use the LiveEdit feature
by simply clicking the pencil icon on this page. This pencil icon will let you
edit the existing "po.asp" template, however in order to create NEW templates
you'll have to do that via FTP. So basically you'll need to do the following
to create a NEW template:
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(a) Login via FTP, and navigate to the following directory: "/wwwroot/admin/emails/"
(b) Duplicate the "po.asp" file. You can
call the duplicated file anything, such as "VendorABC.asp".
(c) Now open up this new file "VendorABC.asp"
and edit it anyway you'd like. It's mostly HTML along with
some variables that are in the form of "$(variable)". |
Automatic Drop-Shipping
How to setup a product for automatic drop-shipping:
1) Go to "View All Products" then click to edit one
of your existing products.
2) You must fill in the "Vendor Rules" for each
of your products as specified above.
3) Next verify that the following fields of this product
are set as follows:
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(a) The "Stock Status" field must be set to
0. As this product is orderred, the stock status will go to "-1",
"-2", etc. which is fine.
(b) The "AutoDropShip" checkbox must
be checked. |
In this Drop-Shipping scenario, POs are sent as soon as payment is
received for the order. In most scenarios you'll want to only "authorize"
payment first, which sends the PO, and then when your vendor says "ok,
it's shipped", then you can "capture" the payment. If you "authorize
+ capture" at the same time, that's fine too. POs are sent automatically
only the first time payment is authorized / captured and POs will never
be sent twice.
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