Order Management
An advanced purchasing and sales system that works for you, providing the right balance between proper control and keeping bureaucracy to a minimum.
Access gives you all the practical, time-saving tools you need to buy more effectively and track the performance of your suppliers. All your major procurement processes are covered, including proper authorisation of supplier invoices and budgetary control for your individual employees and departments.
Purchase Requests
Many of your staff may be unfamiliar with key aspects of the procurement process (such as product codes and minimum order quantities) - but you can still provide them with an efficient, computerised purchasing system. The purchase requests module is designed to allow staff with no direct purchasing authority to initiate the process, by raising purchase requests.
A simple on-screen form is used to detail the required items, quantity and preferred delivery date. You can then roll these forms together, pending review by your Purchasing Manager. You can approve or reject requests before they are consolidated and converted into purchase orders. This eliminates the need for paper-based administration and improves traceability, while giving your Purchasing Manager the kind of control he/she needs in order to efficiently monitor purchase orders.
Purchase Order Processing
Establishing a clear commitment with your suppliers and monitoring their performance will enable you to build a strong and flexible supply chain. You can see at a glance quantities ordered and delivered, check that purchase invoices are correctly priced and print goods received notes. The system will calculate re-order quantities for you, taking into account minimum and maximum stock levels and existing sales and purchase orders.
Reports show the value of goods received but not invoiced (and vice versa) so that you can accrue for your commitments. This enables more accurate management information to be produced; showing in detail committed and incurred costs.
You can allocate your purchase orders to specific projects and the committed costs for each project will be updated automatically, within the costing module. In this way, your project managers can see all purchase costs for each of their projects.
Purchase Control
You can have complete budgetary control over the entire procurement process. The system will automatically compare individual purchase orders to pre-set spending limits and, where the purchase orders fail to meet your criteria, the system will instigate on-screen warnings or force an alternative workflow process. Purchase orders processed in this way can only be approved by staff to whom you have allocated the appropriate level of authority.
By introducing this extra layer of security, you can help to eliminate 'rogue purchasing'. You can monitor spending on an order by order and line by line basis. Three methods of control are available:
- You can set individual budgets for each member of staff
- You can allocate an overall budget to each nominal code
- You can force a full approval process on all purchase orders raised
Sales Order Processing
Dimensions provides a fast and easy system for sales order processing. You can store up to 10 standard prices for each stock record, and allocate a price band, discount structure and unique payment terms to each customer. Estimates, quotations and Pro Forma invoices can be converted into live orders instantly, using a single command. And all sales orders can be subjected to a full authorisation routine, including credit card validation.
Historical sales orders may be duplicated whole or in part and scheduled to repeat at weekly or monthly intervals. The system shows physical and free stock quantities at a glance, and automates the handling of superseded, alternative and bundled items. Profit and margin are revealed line by line as sales orders are entered. Profit and sales order history are available by product and customer, using powerful drill-down and reporting options.
Consolidated Sales Orders
You can enter and deliver any number of sales orders, and then combine them into a single invoice without reducing the depth of your own analysis. This is the ideal way to simplify invoicing for customers that place numerous sales orders over a short period of time. It can also be used in conjunction with the 'Trading Groups' facility, to handle the delivery and invoicing needs of complex organisations.
Trading Groups are built by linking subordinate customer records to a single 'Head Office' record. (Branch offices, distribution depots and haulage contractors can all be set up as subordinates.) You can then enter and deliver individual sales orders for each sub-office, before combining them into a single Head Office invoice. Deliveries can be made to any member of the group and profitability can be analysed by individual subordinates, by Head Office or by the group as a whole.
