EZorder manager is designed for simplicity and ease of use. The overall business process is divided into four basic steps or phases of processing. Currently, these steps are sequential but we are considering making the order of the steps be defined for each company.
The four steps are
Many functions and procedures are defined by User Preferences or Company Preferences. See the section on Setup and Configuration for detailed information for tailoring the system to meet your company's needs.
Each of these steps is described below. For information about details of each step, see the XXOperationsXX section asscoiated with the actions you want to take.
Orders are retrieved into the EZorder manager system in one of three ways:
On the Orders screen, click the New Order button. You will be taken to the New Order screen. If you have processed orders through the system already, this screen should be very familiar to you. It is the Order Detail screen but does not have any order information other than a new orderID. The new orderID was created by finding your most recent orderID and prepending an 'm' in front of it (for manual). If you regularly enter new orders manually, each new order will be incremented by 1. I.e. m1234 will become m11234, m21234, m31234, etc.
You can lookup up customers who have ordered from you before and fill in the address information from what they previously used. You may enter new items in the order by entering a valid Prodcut Code. If you don't know the Product Code, you may look it up by clicking the 'binocular' icon next to the Product Code entry area. To delete an item erroneously entered, you simply click the 'delete' icon (a graphic of an X).
You may save the order and return to it at anytime. It is best to complete the order far enough to allow the Verify step to complete successfuly.
To Import an order (or batch of orders) you must have a Map established for the supplier of the order information. Import data formats currently supported are Comma Separated Value (CSV) files, eXtended Markup Language (XML) files. You are not allowed to create your own Import maps. However, we are happy to create the maps for you to enable your order Imports.
Real-time Links are enabled for several store or cart providers. Once enabled, new orders will be imported when entered by your customers. New orders are indicated by a dialog box at the top of the Orders page.
Please contact the Support Team to setup a Real-time Link.
When a new order is received, it is shown on the Orders screen with an order status of Received. Click the orderID link (1st colum) to be taken to the orderDetail page.
Once on the orderDetail page, you can change, add or remove information from the order. You can press the Verify button to verify common mistakes or inconsistencies in an order. Verification results come in three forms. These results are:
Depending on the specfic navigation User Preferences you have set, the order may be saved, automatically queued or you may move to the next order in the Received state. Please see the section on Operations for information about setting up User Preferences.
Assuming that you are using the EZom default behavior, the order will change to the Verified state upon successful verification. You may now save the order and (assuming the Save As Queued checkbox is checked) the order will be placed into the orderQueue as individual items to be processed. Remember than an order is comprised of items and fees. Fees are never queued for processing and an order can contain multiple items.
The Order Queue is the heart of the order processing system. The Order Queue should be thought of as the place where valid orders are managed. Generally, the Order Queue allows you to manage your orders in batches. For example, you may review and verify a group of Received orders at the beginning of your day. Then, you can move those orders through their various states as a group, or batch.
The Order Queue manages Order Items rather than whole Orders. This allows you the flexibility of varying the processing of individual items within an order based on the Item Status versus the Order Status. For instance, you might have an order that consists of three different items. Two of these may be In Stock and ready to ship to your customer, while the third might be Back Ordered. You might choose to ship the two In Stock items and send an email to your customer advising them that the third item is Back Ordered and will ship shortly.
The Order Queue also allows you to print documents associated with some or all of the Order Items within an order. I.e. you can print a packing slip that shows all the items from an order or only those items that will actually be shipped.
The Order Queue is the only place in the system where orders are acted upon. See the detailed description of Operations for a discussion about Order Management.
There are several Order Documents that can be printed on an order by order or an order item basis. Which documents you choose to print are determined by the checkboxes at the bottom or the Order Queue page. Documents can be printed for Inventory Items (those items you hold in inventory and ship from your business location) or for Export Items (those items who are shipped by a drop-ship supplier). Currently available documents are:
Documents can be printed at anytime an order is in the Order Queue. It should be noted that the printed documents are sensitive to the Order and Order Item status. For instance, Payment information will be different depending on whether the order is Ready To Ship, Process Payment or Complete state on the Invoice. Additionally, a User Preference exists to allow documents to be automatically printed when an order is queued. See the Operations Section for details about User Preferences.
Shipping is current addressed in one of two manners:
Under Manual Shipping, the system assumes that the shipping process is managed outside of itself. For instance you may utilize a shipping provider not currently supported by the system. Or, you might ship certain items within an order via one shipping agent and others by another. When the Process checkbox is selected for an item that is Ready To Ship and the Process Items button is clicked, the individual item statuses are updated along with the order status (contingent upon all items within the order being at the same minimum state). If no Reference Number has been provided, you will be prompted to enter it or ignore it (assuming the company allows ignoring of Reference Numbers. Quantities sold in the myInv (your inventory) are updated and the order is moved to the Process Payment state.
Under Batch Shipping, all orders in the Ready To Ship state are sent to the batch shipping interface. Currently the only batch shipping interface is UPS WorldShip. Other batch shipping interfaces will be provided as time allows. Orders are handled as a full group of items when batch shipping. I.e., the interace assumes that you will be processing all items associated with an order through the same batch shipper. If not, you can manually adjust each item to reflect the difference.
Depending on the communcation capabilities of the batch ship provider, you may go through an import/export process to send and retrieve order and shipping reference number information. For UPS WorldShip you will need to download the list of orders to process to UPS WorldShip, process those orders within UPS WorldShip, then retrieve (upload) the shipping reference numbers back to the EZ Order Manager system so the orders can be updated with accurate informaiton.
Shipping labels, pickup scheduling, etc. are all assumed to be handled by the shipping agent software.
Payment Processing is handled in one of two ways:
- Manual Processing
- Real-time update from your Payment Provider
Under Manual Processing, the system assumes that Payment Processing is handled outside the system. When the Process checkbox is selected for an item that is Process Payment and the Process button is clicked, you will be prompted to enter the payement information associated with each order. Partial payments are supported if allowed by your company and imbalance adjustments are enabled as well. The system will default to the total price of an order and today's date/time for ease of entry.
For Real-time updates, information is received from your Payment Provider and the system will automatically update the payment information based on what was received from your Payment Provider. In this case, there is nothing for you to do unless there is an imbalance. When an imbalance occurs, you will be taken to the same screen for Manual Processing above to resolve the imbalance.
TBD
Order Completion is the final state of an order. It is envisioned that End-Of-Day processing will act on orders in this state in a company specific manner. For example, this may be the point where information is sent to your accounting system, a series of custom reports is generated, summary information is archived, or other Finalization processes are acomplished.
At present time, no action occurs in this step. Once an order in the Order Complete state is Processed, it is removed from the Order Queue amd are no longer visible on the Orders page (unless the Order Status selector is selected for Complete).
Orders can be cancelled from the OrderDetail screen. Cancelled orders are not removed from the system but are no longer shown in the Orders page (unless the Order Status selector is selected for Cancelled).