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Regardless of how an order gets into the system (manual entry, import, real-time integration), once there, the order flow reamins pretty much the same. Orders have the following main states or status as they move through the system. These are:
There are a variety of intermediate states as well to handle things like back-order, partial-fill, partial-pay, etc. But for discussion purposes, the above are sufficient.
All orders that are not Complete or Cancelled show on the Orders page. Orders can be sorted in a variety of ways to meet your needs. To view an order's detail information, simply click on the orderID link and you will be taken to the Detail page. From the Detail page, you can send the customer an email from a template you have defined, Verify the order for correctness, adjust addresses, shipping methods, etc. to meet your needs. From the Detail page you will Queue the order for further processing. The Order Queue should be thought of as the centralized point where orders are acted upon. For those familiar with manufacturing or production environments, it is similar to the Work In Process area of a manufacturing facility. Once Queued, the order can be shipped, paid, sent to accounting and the associated activities that surround each (printing documents, etc.).
Order Steps occur in the order of the states listed above. I.e. Received followed by Verified, etc. Once an order is Queued, it is ready for shipment. Depending on your company's configuration, you might utilize a shipper such as UPS WorldShip. If so, a button will exist to allow you to Batch Process all orders that are in a shippable state. If you do not use a shipper currently integrated with the system, you will be prompted to enter the shipDate (pre filled with today's date) and a tracking number for each item. If your company is so configured, you may have the option to "Ignore Reference Numbers". When using a known shipper, the reference numbers and ship dates are filled in automatically for you. Once an order has Shipped, the next step is Payment Processing. If you utilize a known payment provider, this step may not be necessary since payment updates come directly from your payment provider (Google Checkout, PayPal, etc.). However, you can manually process payments for the orders as well. Similar to the interface for obtaining shipping reference numbers, payment dates/amounts are also prompted for.
During Payment Processing, you can make automatic adjustments to the order for any imbalances that exist (debit or credit). However, adjustments can only be made to one item within the order. If payments come from a payment provider, no imbalance support is provided. The Order Status will be marked as Paid and the imbalance will remain.
Depending on your company configuration, an order may automatically move to the Complete state following payment. Otherwise, the order is available for export to your accounting software.
Order Status can be adjusted from the Order Detail page at any time. However it is strongly advised to Remove the item from the queue before changing the Order Status. Order Status can only be taken backward, not forward. I.e. you can move an order from Shipped to Queued, but you cannot move and order from Queued to Shipped. Additionally, your company might be configured to not allow modification of an order after it reaches a certain state. By default, Completed orders cannot be modified, however you can also tell the system not to allow editing after Ship or Paid as well. The choice is yours.
The following Company Preferences are available through the Company Administration interface from the Admin Tools tab. Default values are shown in bold font and other values are in plain text. The description of Company Preferences are:
Name: addUnknownItems
Page: ALL
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Automatically add Unknown product codes to inventory. A link will appear on the Orders and Order Queue page to allow you to add the item to inventory. The UPC (Universal Product Code) and description are pre-filled from the order.
Name: expandMessages
Page: ALL
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Show messages in expanded form. Rather than showing a bar that must be clicked to view the messages, messages are automatically expanded at the time they are generated. Helpful for new users who want to learn what the system is doing for them.
Name: minInStock
Page: ALL
Values: 1 item, other positive (or zero) numeric values.
Description:
Minimum quantity of inventory to be considered In Stock. If set to zero, all items will be considered to be In Stock. This is valuable to those users who do not want to take advantage of EZom's inventory features. It is recommended that you leave this to the system default of 1.
Name: orderAllowUpdates
Page: ALL (not currently implemented)
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Intended to allow your inventory to reflect your drop-ship supplier's inventory. I.e. when your supplier has 23 items with the same UPC, your inventory would reflect the same. This is a placeholder for a possible future enhancement.
Name: orderPaidOnReceipt
Page: ALL
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
If there is no Cart Provider defined for your company, this will tell the real-time order import process to automatically mark ordres as Paid and use the Order Amount as the Payment Amount and the Order Date as the Payment Date. Normally, this will not be used since most companies utilize a Cart or Payment Provider. In those cases, the Provider can be configured for this behavior.
Name: printBackOrderMessage
Page: ALL
Values: (Backordered, will ship shortly.) or other text
Description:
Print on documents for Backordered items. When an item is backordered, this text will automatically print after the Item Description. It helps your customers know that they will receive the item separately from the rest of the shipment. Utilized on Packing Slips, Invoices and Sales Receipts.
Name: editAfterClose
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Allow changes affter an order is Complete (closed). To protect order information, an order cannot be edited after it has reached the Complete state. Changing this preference to 1 (yes) will allow Completed orders to be edited.
Name: editAfterPay
Page: orderDetail
Values: 1 = yes, 0 = no
Description:
Allow changes affter an order is Paid. Changing this setting to 1 (yes) will protect order information after it has reached the Paid state. Changing this preference to 0 (no) will prevent Paid orders from being edited. Note: this only prevents editing by users. Changes to the order as a result of system processing will continue to behave as expected. The restriction applies to all users regardless of their security status.
Name: editAfterShip
Page: orderDetail
Values: 1 = yes, 0 = no
Description:
Allow changes affter an order is Shipped. Changing this setting to 1 (yes) will protect order information after it has reached the Shipped state. Changing this preference to 0 (no) will prevent Shipped orders from being edited. Note: this only prevents editing by users. Changes to the order as a result of system processing will continue to behave as expected. The restriction applies to all users regardless of their security status.
Name: verifyFailAVS
Page: orderDetail
Values: NNN,YNN, blank, or other text
Description:
Fail verification of order if one of the comma separated values match the AVS Code of a risk assessment. Specifies which (if any) AVS codes that will cause the verification process to fail. Note: different Cart/Payment providers utilize different systems for evaluating risk and the resulting codes that are returned. Simply enter the list of codes you want failure to occur on (or blank for none).
Name: skipViewedStatus
Page: orderDetail
Values: 1 = yes, 0 = no
Description:
Do not set order status to Viewed from Received. Original behavior of the product changed an order's status to Viewed after it was opened in the orderDetail screen. This caused confusion for some users since the order is no longer seen as New. Setting this preference to zero (no) will restore the prior behavior and new orders will have their status changed to Viewed after viewing. This is helpful for those companies that wish to truly know the difference between a new order that has not been looked at and those which have been reviewed.
Name: verifyPOBoxes
Page: orderDetail
Values: 1 = yes, 0 = no
Description:
Verify PO Box in Shipping Address fields. If set (non zero), the verification process will attempt to identify a PO Box in the ShipTo address field. If found, the verification process will issue a warning only. If not set (0), then PO Box detection will not be attempted.
Name: verifyRequireAssignment
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Require an order to be assigned to be verified. If your company uses the order assignement features of the product and you wish to have this enforced, setting this preference to 1 (yes) will cause the verification process to fail if an order is not assigned.
Name: verifyShippingInfo
Page: orderDetail
Values: 1 = yes, 0 = no
Description:
Verify Shipping Info. Most companies ship products to their customers. However, many sell services which are not shipped. This preference controls whether Ship To information is verified or not. Changing it to 0 (no) will prevent the verification process for evaluating shipping information.
Name: ignoreReferenceNumbers
Page: orderQueue
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Ignore shipping reference numbers. This preference is no longer being used. It may be reimplemented in the getShipReference page to determine whether a company wants to allow its users to be able to ignore reference numbers. However, it is not being used at this time.
Name: removeOnComplete
Page: orderQueue
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Remove an item from the Queue when the next status would be Complete. This preference is intended to skip the final step of processing an order which is ready to be Completed. Setting this preference to 1 (yes) will cause the item to be removed from the Queue when it reaches the Complete state. Otherwise if set to 0 (no) the order will have to be Processed to remove it from the queue. Many companies prefer to have the Order Queue reflect all the day's activities and then utilize an end-of-day process to move the completed orders out of the queue.
Name: payPalPaymentOnly
Page: payPalIPN
Values: 1 = yes, 0 = no
Description:
Only update payment info, not other order data. The PayPal IPN (instant payment notification) process sends both payment and other order info. This preference restircts the IPN process to updating payment info only. It is intended to be used when order information is created separately from the PayPal IPN process. I.e. order info is sent directly from a Cart and then payment information is sent from PayPal. This preference is not currently implemented and if/when it is, the default value will probably be changed to 0 (no).
Shipping providers also have a unique set of Company Preferences. These are set during the configuration of the shipper for your company. These preferences are displayed on the shipGenBatch page and are used to send default values to the shipper. The current preferences are:
Name: hideMsgs
Page: shipGenBatch
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Specifies whether to show the verbose form of information related to upload/download of data to the shipping provider. If set (non-zero), this preference will tell the system not to dispaly the general step information. This option can be selected via a checkbox at the top of the screen.
Name: pkgHeight
Page: shipGenBatch
Values: 9 = 9 inches
Description:
Tells the shipper what the default package height is. Can be set to any positive value and may have decimal notation (I.e. 7.5).
Name: pkgLength
Page: shipGenBatch
Values: 12 = 12 inches
Description:
Tells the shipper what the default package length is. Can be set to any positive value and may have decimal notation (I.e. 7.5).
Name: pkgWidth
Page: shipGenBatch
Values: 12 = 12 inches
Description:
Tells the shipper what the default package width is. Can be set to any positive value and may have decimal notation (I.e. 7.5).
Name: pkgWeight
Page: shipGenBatch
Values: 4 = 4 pounds
Description:
Tells the shipper what the default package weight is. Can be set to any positive value and may have decimal notation (I.e. 7.5).
User preferences control the navigation and visual presentation of the system. There are many User Preferences associated with each screen in the system. They will not all be described here. Generally, if a control (drop down selector, input box, etc.) has an asterisk (*) next to it's name, then that control's value can be saved as a User Preference. It is important to note that most User Preferences affect the control's value at the start of a session only (I.e. the first time a page is accessed after logging into the system). Following that initial setting, changes to a User Preference control will be saved for the life of your login session. For example, if you have a User Preference for the Order Status selector on the Orders page set to "Order Date", then when you initially open this page for the first time, the selector will be set to "Order Date". If you subsequently change it to "Order ID", then go to another page on the system, when you return to the Orders page, the selector will be set to "Order ID". It is assumed that most users want to retain the context in which they were working. So when they return to a page, the context is generally what they were previously doing.
If the Save Preferences link exists in the upper-right of the page, then all controls with an asterisk (*) will have their values saved as a User Preference.
A special set of User Preferences is displayed on the Order Detail page and the Order Queue page. These preferences control the navigation and printing preferences and are described as follows:
Name: autoNext
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Automatically move to the next order in the same status after a Save of the order. This preference enables a user to navigate through all the orders in the same state. When orders in the state of the original order viewed is exhausted, the user is taken back to the Orders page.
Name: autoPrintOnQueued
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Automatically print documents when an order is Queued. The documents to print are defined by the User Preferences which are set on the Order Queue page. The default documents are Packing Slip and Sales Receipt for items in inventory; and Sales Receipt for items associated with a drop-ship supplier.
Name: autoQueue
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Automatically select the "Queue On Save" checkbox when an order can be queued. The real-time value of the checkbox will override this preference. Like most User Preferences, the value of the checkbox is maintained as the last value set.
Name: nextAfterSave
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Not currently implemented. This is equivalent to the autoNext preference.
Name: nextAfterSave
Page: orderDetail
Values: 0 = no, 1 = yes
Description:
Automatically perform order verification when an order is Saved. When set to non-zero, a separate verification step is not necessary. This affects orders in all states.
The Order Queue page has printing preferences as a separate section at the bottom of the page. Select the items you wish to print when the "Print Documents" button is pressed and Save the values you want preserved.