19. Daily Usage - Managing Orders

19.1 The Order List

The order list is on the left side of the main screen when you open your store. Should this list not be there, you can open it by choosing the icon to the left of the filing cabinet in the top-left corner of the window. Once on the order list, the first column is going to show the allocation status of the order. The next column will show whether it is an order or a quote. It will also include the order/quote number, and below that, approximately how long ago it was recorded. To the right of that will be the name of the customer who placed the order. Finally, there is a column for notes that were recorded on the order. Above the order list is a filter bar that will allow you to choose to show all orders and quotes, orders and quotes created within the last day, last week or last month. Directly above that is a search tool. This will allow you to search by anything entered on an order or quote. Some common searches include serial numbers from products, customer zip codes and even contents of notes on the transactions. When you begin typing in the search tool, your results will be displayed immediately in the order list. Simply click on the transaction from that list and review the transaction, print a copy of the transaction or make necessary changes.

19.2 Orders, Quotes, and Sales

Checkout offers you the option of creating a new Order, Quote, or Sale. If you are looking for the quickest way to create an Invoice and accept payment, you should select Sale. Creating an Order or Quote offers you the ability to Leave (save), and open them later to create an Invoice.

19.2.1 Creating a New Sale

To create a new Sale, click on the New Sale button on your toolbar. By default, when a new sale is created, there is no customer assigned, making it an anonymous sale. To optionally add a customer, click on the Customers tab on the right side of the screen. When your customer list appears, select a customer for the sale by dragging them to the left side of the window onto the sale.

Once that is done, you can begin to add products to the sale. This can be done in one of three ways. First is to double-click on the product in the products list. The second option would be to drag the product onto the sale. The third and final option would be to scan barcodes from a product using an optional USB barcode scanner.

Now that you have selected a customer and added products to the sale, you can edit the quantity of the products on the sale by clicking on the number in the second column of the order screen. By default, this number will always be 1. If you add a duplicate product to a sale, this quantity will be incremented by 1. If you would like the duplicate to appear as a separate line item on the sale, hold down the control key, on your keyboard, while adding it. You can also manually change the quantity. When you click on it, this will highlight the number and allow you to change the quantity.

When you add a product to a sale, take note of the colored icon to the left of the line item. If the icon is green, this means that you have enough stock on-hand to allocate all necessary pieces of the product listed on the line. If the icon is amber in color, this means that you only have enough stock to partially allocate the necessary pieces of the product. And finally, if the icon is red, it means that you do not have any available stock of the product listed on that line.

If the option has been enabled to allow you to edit a price (or you are logged in as a Manager), you can do so by clicking on the price on the order and keying over the existing entry. You can even disable the tax calculation by unchecking the tax box below the subtotal.

If a product was mistakenly placed on an order and needs to be removed, it can be deleted by selecting the product on the order and pressing the delete key on your keyboard or by changing the quantity ordered to be zero.

If the wrong customer was selected, they can be deleted by hovering over their name on the order and clicking on the “X” button. You can then select the proper customer and drag them to the order.

When all entries have been made and are correct, you can select Checkout. The payment window will appear and you can accept payment. If you select Cancel on the Pay window, you can continue to edit the sale.

If you would like to apply a discount per product, or leave the unavailable products on an order (after the invoice has been created), select Convert to Order. Sales can not be saved unless they are converted to be an order.

19.2.2 Creating a New Order

To create a new order, click on the New Order button on your toolbar. Orders have the same capabilities as sales plus the options described below.

You have the option to apply a discount by clicking in the column with the % header and entering the percentage of the discount you wish to apply per product. When all entries have been made and are correct, you can save the order by clicking on the Leave button at the bottom-left corner of the screen, by creating a new order/quote/sale or by going to the order or invoice lists. If you are ready to invoice the order, select Invoice. Remember that you can only Leave an order if there is a customer on the order. If no customer is selected and you attempt to leave the order, you will be prompted to select a customer before you are able to continue.

19.3 Adding a Deposit

A deposit can be added to an Order that has a customer assigned to it. To add the Deposit, click on the Deposit icon, select the payment method and then modify the payment amount and select Pay. If you need to return a deposit, once again select Deposit, select the payment method, enter a negative amount and select Pay.

19.4 Adding Shipping

Shipping can be added to an Order that has a customer assigned to it. To add shipping, first place a check mark in Shipping. You will then see the ability to select a Shipping Method and optionally select one of the customer's Bill to Addresses. The price of the shipping method will default, but you can edit it.

19.5 Order States

When looking at the order list, the state of the order can be determined by looking in the far-left column. If there is a green check-mark in that column to the left of the order, it indicates that the order has been fully allocated. If the order has been partially allocated, a pie chart denoting the approximate percentage that has been allocated will be in that column to the left of the order. If there is a yellow triangle in that column to the left of the order, that indicates that the order has a customer selected, but there are no items on the order.

Orders can have different states. When an order is a quote, it is only an offer to a client. You cannot allocate or invoice quotes until they are converted back to an order again. You can directly create a quote by selecting New Quote on your toolbar. Business orders can be used to differentiate business customers from regular customers and show margins when you edit them to be able to precisely determine discounts.

19.6 Simultaneously Editing Orders Over a Network

Checkout 4 offers you the ability to see what other users are doing in real-time. Only one employee may be editing an order at any one time. If multiple users attempt to access an order, the system creates a queue. For example, if Bob is in an order, and Sally attempts to access that order, they will get a message that the order is locked. If Stan then also attempts to access that order, they will receive the same message. The system will then queue the users. The first person in, will be the first person to access. So when Bob is done with the order, Sally will have access. Once Sally completes her changes, Stan will have access to the order. At any time, if the order is locked, a user can override that lock by going to the Action menu and choosing the Override Lock option. This will make the order available for that user, and the user who was in the order previously will now receive a message that the order is locked. If the Override Lock option hangs or causes the program to stop responding, simply Force Quit the program and login again. While viewing a locked order, you'll be able to watch changes being made to the order in real time.

19.7 Allocating Orders

When allocating products to an order, it is essentially reserving on-hand stock for that order so that it may not be allocated to another order. If you have 20 pieces of a product in stock and you create an order for 20 pieces, to prevent someone else from using them for another order, you need to allocate those 20 pieces to your order. You can only allocate what you have on-hand, however. If you have 15 pieces in stock and you create that same order for 20 pieces, when you allocate stock to the order, only 15 will be reserved, because that is all that you have in stock at the moment. A backorder will be created for the remaining 5 pieces until they are in stock and you can allocate the remaining amount. If you are short of some products on an order, there are 3 ways you can gain available stock on those items. First, you can go to other orders and take away allocated amounts of that item. To do so, you would change the allocated number of that item to a lower amount on a specific order. Second, you could go to the Manager Window and choose the Products option and correct the stock count, if it is incorrect, on that specific product. The final, and probably best option would be to purchase more of this product from a supplier and add the stock to your on-hand total via the Stock Room. Since non-stock products do not have inventory, these products are immediately allocated by the system. If you invoice a partially allocated order, the invoice will be created only for the allocated portion. Anything on the order that has not yet been allocated will remain on the order and anything that has been invoiced will be removed from the order. You will notice at the bottom of the order that there are 2 prices. The price on the left side is the full price of the order, the price on the right side is the price of the allocated portion of the order. This can help you to decide whether to invoice the order or wait for more stock to arrive before invoicing and could also serve as a way to inform the customer of what they would owe if you were to invoice right away as well.

19.8 Other Order Features

While orders are easy to create, there are other features which can help to make your store a more in depth tool. At the bottom of the order screen is the option to enter a note. To do so, click the bar at the bottom that says “Click to add a note…” You will see a blinking cursor there, and you can begin keying your note. When you are done, press the return key on your keyboard or click on the icon to the right of your note. To add more notes, click the plus (+) button to the right or open the history screen by clicking on the History button in your bottom toolbar. While in the history button, you can add more notes or view all of the events that have taken place during the life of the order. This screen will show the date and time that each action occurred, what the action was and which employee performed the action. To close the history window, click the bar at the bottom or click on the History button once more. Another nice feature is the ability to assign and use serial numbers when selling products. When you setup a product, there is an option to require a serial number. If this option is checked, when you attempt to invoice these products, you will be required to enter a serial number. This can be done by keying the serial number in or by using a barcode scanner to scan these serial numbers in. If the serial number is required to sell a product, the system will not allow you to invoice without entering the serial number first and will prompt you to enter it before you are able to continue.

19.9 Using a Barcode Scanner

Using a barcode scanner can make the day-to-day operations of your business run much smoother if you run a retail location. To do so, first, be sure that your scanner is connected.You will see a barcode icon appear in the upper right corner of the Order (if it appears in a search box, select the Order with your mouse). If a matching barcode was found in your store with only one matching result, the product will be added to the order. If a matching barcode was not found, the system will convert the scanned barcode into a regular search and results will appear in the products list to the right. If you product appears there, enter it on the order by double-clicking on it or dragging it into the order screen.

19.10 Deleting an Order

If you ever need to delete an order, simply click on the Delete button on the bottom toolbar. The system will prompt you to be sure you intend to delete this order. Either cancel the action or confirm it by clicking the Delete option again. The order will be deleted and you will be brought back to your orders list.

If the Order that you are deleting has a Deposit on it, you must first refund the deposit. To do this, select Deposit and when the payment sheet appears, select Return Deposits. You can then select the method in which you are refunding the deposit and then proceed with deleting the Order.

19.11 Creating an Invoice

When you are ready to invoice the customer for the order, click the Invoice button on the bottom toolbar. Remember that only allocated products will be invoiced. If all products on the order were allocated and invoiced, the order will be deleted from the system. If there were products on the order that were not fully allocated and therefore could not be invoiced, only the products that were allocated will be invoiced and the order will be updated to reflect that, leaving only the remaining unallocated products on the order.