General POP Facilities

Discount procedures

You can record discounts at several levels:

Line-by-line discounts. You can take a value from the supplier account to override or use, or enter it at order entry time for the order as a whole. It applies to each order line, although you may change it for specific lines.

Overall discounts. You may take a further discount on the value of the order as a whole, after taking account of any previous discounts offered on each line.If you are taking advantage of the "additional charge” feature, you can decide whether or not the overall discount is to apply to this too (you wouldn’t if it were the straight postage or courier charge).

Settlement discount. An additional discount, based on your making payment within a specified time period, can be calculated automatically. This value and time period is carried through to the purchase ledger, where it is used to help you make the correct payment within the correct period.

Free Format Text Details

A special option allows you to define a set of fields in the order processing files in which you can enter pure text information. You can have one set in the order header, and another set in each order detail line.

You can even exclude the printing of any detail information at all. This feature is useful particularly in service businesses where a free-form verbal description of the service required may be all that is needed, one or more detail lines holding the values for the purposes of calculation and your analysis.

Stock Considerations

The interaction of your order processing system with stock needs careful thought. You must consider aspects such as:

Do you record stock on order at order entry, or just increase stock when received?

Should you increase stock when you receive goods, or only when you receive your supplier’s invoice?

Clear thinking at the set-up stage can pay dividends in reliable stock figures in use.

Note that you can enter order detail lines without a stock code (free format) to cover service items.You can also define a stock code as a "non-stock” item, which you can use for service lines. The advantages of the latter alternative are that the analysis details can be defined within the stock record, but no attempt is made to update stock quantities for non-stock items.

Multi-Location Stock

The multi-location stock procedures are defined within the stock system. If you have opted for multi-location stock, then order details are requested by stock location too. You need to examine how orders are handled for each location through your system.