The single biggest reason driving small business owners into
expensive mid-market accounting/ERP systems is perhaps the absence of
extended price management features within their existing systems. Such a move can increase business-system costs by a factor of 10x. Not having these capabilities becomes a major
impediment to serving customers when the business grows and pricing
experience is concentrated with only 1 or 2 persons within the
organization.
AltOrder closes this gap in the business process; allowing you to
stay in your Sage 50 Accounting and save $1,000's.
AltOrder is offered with a
FREE 30 DAY TRIAL as well as a
30 DAY MONEY BACK GUARANTEE.
PRICE CONFIGURATIONAltOrder provides maximum flexibility in the creation and management of
pricing rules for your business. This includes powerful search and
filtering capabilities, mass updates to pricing, and tiered price-rule
creation that is applied on the order based upon the level of
specificity.
‘Regular’ pricing method – Pricing can be tiered by ‘Customer
Group’ or ‘Product Group’, or very specific down to individual
customer/item. If multiple rules are in-play, the rule with the most
detail wins. For instance, ‘Customer A’ may be part of a ‘Product Group’
of ‘GENERAL’ which would normally assign a price of $10 for ‘WIDGET’.
However, if AltOrder found a more detailed rule for ‘Customer
A’/'Widget’ at $8.50, this would be picked up for the order line. The
‘Margin %’ field represents a calculated value for the ‘Regular’ method
of pricing.
‘Cost-Plus’ pricing method – The user can build the price dynamically
at the time of order entry using the last cost from purchasing as the
basis. He/she could then apply optional overhead rates based upon
specific items or a higher-level product classification. Next step is to
apply a freight percentage. The last factor is to apply a required
margin for the item. The tiered pricing aspect described in ‘Regular’
pricing applies to this method as well. The ‘Margin %’ field represents a
manually entered (or desired) profitability for the ‘Cost-Plus’ method
of pricing.
Volume Discount Schedule – Represents and optional level of
discounting based upon user-defined volume breakpoints. Discounts are
represented as percentages for each level and AltOrder will present an
expected margin at each level. AltOrder supports an unlimited number of
breakpoints for volume discounts.
Item tiered-pricing by order total quantity – Merchants
offering total quantity discounts for mix and match items can apply
item-level tiered pricing. For instance, A customer purchasing 5000
T-Shirts, represented by 5 different Item IDs, can have different tiered
pricing for each triggered at 5000 overall units. (Similar to Sage 100 ERP)
Pricing by ShipTo – Sprecial pricing by Customer/Item/ShipTo location.
Rule Comments – Comments associated with the individual rules will be
readily available to the individual taking customer orders.
Unit of Measure – All pricing is applied in terms of the ‘stocking units’ of the items in accounting.
Audit Trial of Price Changes – Any price changes made within the
order/invoicing screens are annotated on the pricing master record. This
includes the original price, new price, user id, and date of the
update. This reference is made in the comments section and is easily
viewed during future orders for the item.
ORDER ENTRY/INVOICINGAltOrder’s Order-Entry user interface (U/I) has been described as being
more efficient than Sage 50’s own. This due largely to the support for
special pricing by customer/item (no delays in looking up external
price references) and the ‘Customer Items’ fast entry format based on a
customer’s past order history. For wizards of the keyboard, use of
the mouse for navigation and selection is kept to an absolute minimum.
Easily toggle between Ordering/Invoicing – The drop-down option list
allows user to easily toggle between Invoicing or Order Entry modes of
operation. Access to either mode is controlled by a separate user
configuration screen.
Item Selection – Item selection in the Item ID column is constrained
to active items only; thus eliminating any confusion with items that are
flagged as inactive in Sage 50. The ‘Inactive Items’ tab provides a
clean segregated view of inactive items that can be used to quickly add
desired items to the order.
Filter orders/items by customer – If the mode is Invoicing, the
‘Customer ID’ and ‘Material ID’ fields can be used to further constrain
the open orders by these variables.
Multiple invoices against single order – The Invoicing mode recognizes the balance of item quantities to be billed.
No order required to invoice – Users can direct invoice without having to associate an order. This is called ‘Adhoc’ mode.
Fuzzy Search Items – While on the order-line, the user may press the
F5 key to lauch ‘fuzzy search’ capability for items. Any fractional
representation in the ‘Search text’ field, shown in the example, will
display any related options available. The example shown displays all
item with the text ‘10’ in either the Item ID or the sales description.
Fuzzy Search Customers – Similar to the item search, is also
available for looking up customers. This search is applied to any
component of the billing contact information.
Proper Tax Calculation – Invoicing properly calculates tax based upon the sub-authorities that can be configured in Sage 50.
No multi-user Order Number conflicts – Next order/invoice number
conflicts between multiple customer service representatives entering
orders at the same time are avoided. AltOrder has business logic that
will assign an appropriate next order number for orders placed within
milliseconds of each other.
Sort by Item ID – Option to sort all line-items prior to saving the
invoice into Sage 50. This supports business processes where the order
of warehouse picking/packing is driven by the Item ID.
Memorized special instructions – Special instructions associated with
the customer are updated on-the-fly from within the Order Entry screen.
When present, they are denoted by the highly visible yellow tab in the
order header information.
Tier-based Rule Application – Pricing for the selected items reflect
the application of the most applicable rule. In the example shown, the
user may right-click within the order line space and select to see the
detail of the rule applied. Any comments associated with the configured
rule displayed within the pop-up window seen.
Audit trail of price changes – Notice in comments section the pop-up
detailing the price rule that any changes are date/time stamped by user.
Apply alternate price-level on-the-fly – In addition to establishing a
‘special’ price for a customer/item combination, the CSR may also
create a customer/item/price-level rule that is different from the
customers default price-level in Sage 50. These 10 standard price-levels
appear in the ‘Price per Unit’ drop down for each line-item.
Color coding of special prices – AltOrder clearly indicates those
items on the order that have associated ‘special’ prices by highlighting
the ‘Price per Unit’ cell green. Line items where the ‘Price per Unit’
is an assigned price level other than the customers default price level
get a highlight of light blue. This allows the CSR to easily identify
all values that fall outside of default pricing.
Inventory availability flagging – The color coded ‘Quantity’ field
will indicate red if there is insufficient stock for fulfilling the
desired order quantity of the item.
Validation of price changes – At the time of creation, AltOrder
evaluates the pricing of each line item has requires the user to verify
the update to the existing rule or to indicate that pricing is for
one-time only.
Fast Entry Format – Fast visibility to the customers past ordered
items. The default historical window is 2 months but can be changed
easily via the date picker shown. Items are returned in a a list
alphabetized by Item ID.
Fast Navigation/Entry – Use the Up/Down arrows an the numeric keypad
to quickly indicate quantities desired items. Tabbing with the left hand
automatically moves you to the next entry field.
Indication of Included items – When finished, click the ‘Add Selected
Items to Order’ button. Items that are subsequently highlighted to
indicate that they have already been added to the order.
Quantity Recommendations – If your customer is not exactly sure how
much of an item to order, clicking the ‘Sel’ checkbox for the item will
result in AltOrder retrieving the most common order quantity for the
item in the recent historical window. In statistical terms, this is
referred to as a ‘modal’ quantity.