Open Tickets - Advice Notes (UK)

Open Tickets and Advice Notes (UK) give your inventory team a way to collect ordered materials for staging ahead of a customer's pick up or for a scheduled delivery.

Open Tickets - Advice Notes are transactions that immediately affect on-hand quantities while at the same time allow adjustments before final processing as a sale (invoicing). This transaction is ideal for use either as a yard ticket or for deliveries.  Open tickets can be used for cash-only customers as well as charge. Invoicing is different for cash-only tickets, however. (See Invoicing Cash Only Tickets)

Here's an example: a customer speaks with a sales person and orders a list of goods that they will pick up. The sales person creates a "ticket" for the items. When the delivery vehicle arrives, the yard staff make substitutions or changes as necessary to the "ticket" to match the materials that were actually loaded. The ticket can be invoiced at that time or later on.

Invoicing can be done individually or all at the same time (by using the Point of Sale > Utilities > Invoice Tickets utility).

As is true with sales or order activities, this transaction begins with account (and sometimes job) selection. Next, a ticket number is generated or entered that is used for identifying the ticket in the future. If the sales person added a note to the transaction, the word True displays in the + column at the end of the row. You can see the notes associated with this item entry by selecting Folders (F4) and selecting the Entry tab.

For information regarding folders in the Point of Sale areas, click here.

Selecting an Account

In the Point of Sale Name list, you can either enter the Sort Name (from the Account Maintenance form) or the account ID. Most Point of Sale transactions involve selecting an account and job (when applicable) first. For Sales, you can scan or enter the items into the data grid first, but for other transaction types (Orders, Quotes, Tickets, etc.), you must choose an initial account first. If you know the customer participating in the transaction, there is usually no need to choose an alternate menu, just type either the sort name or the account number/ID.

When a customer has their own account, we recommend that you enter their name in the Name list. You can change it to a different account, if needed, before processing.

There are some additional search options you can use, based on other information you know at the time of your search. You can review these option here

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When the enhanced look up feature is enabled, you have more selection options, but the account's Sort Name field entry is still the primary match field. The application only shows you account number matches if no sort name matches are found. If matches for both the sort name and account number exist, only the entries with the name display.

Using the Enhanced Account Look Up Feature for Account Searches

When enabled, the Enhanced Look Up feature searches using the account number, sort name, address (line 1), and company name automatically. For each row, the cell matching the look up text contains a gray background color. Even when more than one column for the same row (account) has a match, the application only highlights the column with the first look up match. Typically, the more text you enter, the shorter and more useful the list of matching results will be. With enhanced look up, there is a maximum number of matches (up to 70). There is no <<More>> option, which means that if more than 70 matches exist, you may have to either enter additional text to narrow the search or enter new search information instead.
Note: You cannot use the % character as a wild card when using the Enhanced Look Up feature.

The Enhanced Look Up feature can be enabled by Support upon request. The team sets up parameters and uses a Support Utility to populate tables with the data you have already entered into the application. If you decide you do not want to use this feature after it is enabled, Support needs to reset these tables and the application returns tothe original methods for search. You can request to re-enable this feature in the future if you choose. Key look up data is removed when account or items are modified if you disable the enhanced look-up feature.

After you select an account from the list, the account type displays beside the list. There are three types of accounts:

  • A Cash account is a customer-specific account that does not allow receivables charges, unless the account has a credit balance.

  • A Charge account is also a customer-specific account that allow receivables charges to accumulate.

  • A System account is a general-use account that is not customer-specific. A System account does not have a credit limit or allow charges.
    All companies must have a system account named CASH. Except in the case of Tickets* (Advice Notes) and Charge Returns, the default account, "CASH," is the default when no specific account is indicated.

    To select the System account, press TAB . In addition, this type of account requires the entry of a delivery name when used with non-sale type transactions (orders, quotes, etc.). more...

Selecting a Job

Accounts may be linked to one or more jobs; every account has at least one job, known as the master job (0). You can add additional jobs to any account to track account activity separately from the account. You are only prompted to select a job if the account has multiple jobs (more than the required job "zero"); otherwise, all activity is assumed to be for the master job. In Point of Sale, disabled and closed jobs are not included in selection list. You may be able to add new jobs during the transaction processing (on the Delivery tab of the Process (F12) form).*

Job_Selection

*Your security settings may prevent you from adding jobs during processing.

Reviewing the Ticket Totals

To the right of the Name list, is a Totals panel, which shows the ticket's current subtotal, sales tax, and total. When you make pricing or quantity changes to the items in the data grid, these values update.

If you have specific user permissions, you can use the Menu Marker to the right of the box to switch to a different transaction type (Sale, Order, or Quote) or display the current GM% (gross margin percentage) for the entire transaction. This is described in detail below.

If you are in Canada, you can double-click the tax amount entry in the Totals box to display the split provincial (PST) and GST taxes as dollar amounts.

For Canadian provinces with both PST and GST taxes, both locations (and rates) display to the left of the Totals panel. HST (Harmonized Sales Tax) locations (used for the Maritime provinces) combine the GST and any local amounts together into one tax rate, so no split is provided in those cases.

Main Menu > Point of Sale > Sales - Canadian Totals

Tax Details (Canada)

Changing the Transaction Type

You can convert a transaction from one type to another and retain much of the information from the original. When you switch to a new transaction type, the items (and item comments), pricing, account-job selections, PO#, and delivery information move to the new transaction. The application does not maintain other information unless it is permanently associated with the account or job. This includes a number of fields located on the Process form such as Print and Transmit options, Adjustments, and any manually entered information (such as a tax exempt ID or purchase agent).
Note: Making a transaction type change requires specific user permissions that may not be available to all sales personnel. Check your security settings if these menu options are blocked from your view.

To "switch" the current transaction to a new transaction type, click the Menu Marker to the right of the Totals box to display the context menu and select the new transaction type from the list.

Changing_Transactions

Restrictions and Special Cases that can Prevent this Switch

There are a few restrictions that can prevent you from changing transactions. You cannot change a transaction that includes a rental item. If you enable and apply promotion pricing, to a transaction, the promotion pricing is removed when you make the switch and when you invoice an order or quote, these converted promotions are disabled).

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Ticket Number

Like Quotes and Orders, Tickets are assigned an ID number. The same format is used for Tickets as with other types of documents. Just as with any document type, open tickets can be assigned to one of three numeric ranges. You cannot choose a Ticket number manually, unlike orders and a few other document types.

Contracts for Installed Sales

If the selected account (and job) has an installed sale contract associated with it, a Contract list appears on the form. If you are not creating a ticket that is to be associated with a contract, you can skip this field. Otherwise, choose the Installed Sale contract from the Contract list. Only the orders associated with the selected contract will be available for Ticketing (F5).

Invoicing Cash Only Tickets

You can invoice cash only tickets from the Open Ticket Entry form using a process that is a bit different than for charge customers.

To invoice a cash-only account's ticket, you must reselect the ticket and choose the Invoice Ticket (F8) function. This will convert the transaction to a sale and add the items in the Open Ticket data grid to the Sale Entry form.

When you process the Sale transaction, the ticket will be converted into an invoice; otherwise, the ticket remains open for further updates. The "Invoice Ticket" function is only provided on modification of an existing ticket, not on initial entry. To invoice on initial entry, use the "switch to" feature to change the transaction to a "sale."

Grid & Item Entry

As with other Point of Sale forms the data grid is used for item entry. You can add items manually or by scanning them any time after you have completed the account/job selection and you have added the ticket number.

Primary entry fields include all columns except Description, Extended Amount, and additional information.

ClosedFor more information about item entry and selection, click here.

One of the most important features of a retail software solution is Item Entry. When the item is physically present, scanning the item's barcode is the easiest and fastest way to enter it into the application. If you don't have a scanner or the item has no barcode, you can always enter a full or partial item number if it's available. When entering text that partially matches existing item codes, the application displays a list of items that match. Items in selection lists are color coded to help distinguish between item numbers and alternate SKUs (in purple). On-hand quantities in a selection list are also color coded when an item has a negative on-hand (red).

There are cases when you may not be working with any physical item, such as when you are building an order or quote, so scanning or manual item entry isn't always a realistic option. For these situations, you can enter the information you want to search for and right-click the Item list icon to display a list of search options.

Multi-Line Item Selection Tricks

If you want to add more than one item in the list to the data grid, you can hold down the CTRL (Control) or SHIFT key and click the items you want to add as follows:

  • Use the CTRL key to select random rows in the list (you can click any number of rows and locations) and

  • Use the SHIFT key to select a range of row entries above or below your first selection.

After you select the items you want, press the Enter key. Then, use the Next (F1) key to add the items you selected to the data grid one-at-a-time.
Selected items are not automatically copied into a grid. This feature works this way because not all selections made using these keys end up in a data grid.

Selecting Items using Group Section

Selecting Items using a Keyword

Selecting Items using a Barcode

Selecting the Item using the Description

Selecting Items using a Vendor SKU

Selecting Items using the Primary Vendor

Selecting the Item using the Product ID

You can use the Product ID as a classification tool to either create custom product IDs (groups) for your related items or, if you are a Do it Best® member, you can use them to mirror the Do it Best product departments, categories, sub-categories, and product groups. You can use a combination of both custom and Do it Best product IDs; however, only one ID may be assigned per product. The same product ID may be associated with as many items as you like.

Selecting the Item using the Manufacturer SKU

When you search for a particular item and you know the item’s manufacturer's SKU, you can use that SKU to find the item. We call this enhanced search. The enhanced search feature must be set up before you use this feature. We have added the Manufacturer’s SKU to the default enhanced search options as well.

To search by the Manufacturer SKU, enter the SKU in the Item field, select the down arrow beside the item field, and choose the Manufacturer SKU option. The application displays the list of items that match the SKU you entered.

Selecting the Item using Inventory Look up

Inventory Lookup : Group-Section

Inventory Lookup : Department - Class - Fineline

Selecting Items using the Image List Selection

Selecting Items using SO Lookup

Selecting Items using Lost Sales

Can't Find the Items I am Looking For, Any Other Ideas?

There are two additional search features you can use to find items quickly in Point of Sale or Inventory. Both of these features must be enabled by Implementation or Support team members. These features are discussed below.

Using the Enhanced Item Look Up Feature

When Enhanced Item look up is enabled, item selection automatically involves the following fields: item number, description, and keyword(s). The column cells matching the look up text are indicated by a gray background color. With Enhanced Item look up enabled, there is no "more" option provided and the maximum number of matches shown is 70. This means that if more than 70 matches exist, not all will be shown, and you may have to either enter additional text to narrow the selection or use other (alternate) selection options instead. Item number matches are given a preference over description and keyword matches (since alternate methods do exist for selection by description and keyword if necessary); however, the listing is finally re-ordered by Item SKU so the item matches may not necessarily appear first.

Exact matches on an item SKU do not provide a selection list.

Selection with no entry in the text area as well as selection involving the alternate menu do not use the enhanced look up feature. In these cases, item selection does provide the "more" option, and works as expected.

Typically, the more text entered, the shorter the listing of matching results will be.

Selection_Item_Enhanced

The Enhanced Item Look Up feature requires setup by ECI Support personnel. Support enables a parameter and populates a special look up table using a support utility. This is only done upon request. After the Enhanced Look Up feature is enabled, ALL users and ALL locations can use it for item searches in all data grids that include items.

You can disable this feature at any time by contacting Support. If for some reason, an "enhanced" search is disabled, the tables will need to be repopulated again if it is re-enabled in the future.

Wild card searches (using the % character) are not supported when using the Enhanced Look Up features.

We have updated the ecommerce API to support the transmission of three additional fields of information: • Discount Date This specifies the last date that the discount applies. (This allows the API to compare the discount date to the date the payment is being made to ensure the discount can be applied.) • Discount Amount The calculated amount of the discount. (This provides the amount of the discount, which the API can subtract from the ROA payment balance.) • Outstanding Amount Discount The original amount that can be discounted, minus the discount amount, and minus the customer’s account payment, minus any additional discounts not included above. Additional details are available in the API Guide.

Using the Enhanced Item Description Look Up Feature

When you are looking for an inventory item and cannot remember the exact name or Item ID, you can use a tool for searching the item descriptions to find the right materials quickly. The Enhanced Item Description Search features to give you those tools. Traditionally, you were restricted to searching for 32 characters when you used a Description search, we have expanded this to 300 characters, when needed. Additionally, we have added additional description search tools, such as using quotes (“Drill Bit”) and using wild cards (Drill B*) to help search for items using their extended item description. The search results show the closest matches at the top and any additional results that match the criteria below.

You can use this feature wherever there is an Item list (Point of Sale, Inquiry, Item Maintenance, etc.)and is restricted to ECI Hosted customers only. Adding this feature requires a lot of additional database overhead, which we can manage better in our hosted environment. To enable this feature, reach out to the Implementation or Support teams; as it is disabled by default. Once enabled, there are no special permissions required to use this feature; it is accessible to all users.

See the Enhanced Item Description topic for more information.

Unit of Measure Changes

Quantities and pricing reflect the unit of measure displayed. Changing the unit of measure (U/M) to a measure with some other value (other than 1:1) can optionally modify the related quantity or price. If the "convert" box is checked clip0189, the existing quantity or price will be converted to a value equal to the current value (displayed in the drop down). The "convert" option will not change existing extended amounts. If the "convert" option is not checked, the existing quantity or price will not change, and will be used to re-calculate extended amounts.

 

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Pricing Changes

There are a number of ways to affect pricing. Users can modify the price by typing another in, select a reprice option (F6), type a discount, or select an alternate price from the input drop-down. Typed keyboard shortcuts are also available. For example, type L2 in the unit price field to use the level 2 price, or D20 to do a 20% discount.

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Discounts

The "Disc" column is used for line item discounts. These discounts will only affect pricing on "discountable" items. Use the Inventory and Codes tabs in the folders (F4) to view the current item's discount status. Pricing for "net" items will not change when a discount is entered; however, reprice functions (F6) don't consider an items discount status.

Exception Codes or "X" Column

The "X" or exception column displays pricing exceptions when encountered. There are six (6) exception codes used: L, M, N, P, X, and Z. A maximum of two (2) codes may be displayed for any item. When more than two (2) exceptions occur, the letter "X" appears in the exceptions column. Please see the following table for an explanation of these codes:

Code

Description

L

Line Discount

Users may be allowed to discount specific items by typing a discount percentage in the discount column of the data grid. When this has been done, the discount percentage is shown and the exception code "L" is set. Net items also use the discount column and will display an "N" in place of any discount (net items don't allow line discounts).

M

Margin Out of Limits

 

Every item may optionally be assigned an expected % (margin) and minimum % (margin). These are located on the Branch (Alt-B) and Pricing (Alt-P) tabs in the Item Maintenance (database) form. When an item's margin falls below the minimum %, it is flagged as a "Margin Out of Limits."
 

N

Negative Margin

 

An item has a negative margin when its cost is higher than its selling price. This can happen for a number of reasons. One example is if the item's price is lowered too much by a discount or repriced too low. Receiving errors can cause an item's cost to be inflated.
 

P

Price Change

This exception is set as a result of the sales clerk's (user's) actions. If a price is either modified manually or by using one of the Reprice (F6) functions, this flag will be set. This allows company or store management to review manual pricing changes.
 

X

More than Two (2) Exceptions Encountered.

 

The column has room to display up to two (2) exception codes. In cases where three (3) or more codes apply, an "X" is displayed. To find the exact exceptions, either run the Exceptions report or view the document and choose Format and File Copy from the alternate menu.
 

Z

Zero Cost

 

Certain items can have a zero cost for legitimate reasons in some cases (this is common with non-stocked items and some special use items); however, most other items should be associated with a cost. Comment type items would not normally have a cost, so they are excluded from exception flagging.
 

Exceptions are reported in the grid immediately, so Point of Sale users should be trained to notice exceptions and to notify the appropriate party or make changes in the transaction to prevent the exception (if unexpected). In addition, company or store management should make a practice of reviewing exceptions to catch issues with pricing and costs on inventory. The Exceptions Report can be useful for reviewing transactions for possible issues that need to be addressed.