Sales - overview
By using the Inventory workspace, your company can easily configure and adjust sales order processing to fit your sales workflows. Visma Net provides typical predefined order types, and you can additionally create custom types of orders with specific processing.
The Inventory workspace provides instant access to accurate inventory allocation information, as well as flexible pricing and discounting policies. With Visma Net, your company can fulfill orders accurately, consistently, and efficiently.
The primary functionalities of the Inventory workspace are described briefly below and extensively in other topics in this section.
Configurable order types
Visma Net includes a set of predefined order types for common distribution operations; you can also define custom order types to meet specific order processing requirements. For each order type, you can specify inventory allocation rules, workflow scenario, and the type of document to be generated in the Customer ledger and Inventory workspaces. For more information, see the following topics:
- About predefined types of sales orders
- About custom order types
- About sales order processing options
- About invoices in the sales workspace
Credit limit verification
Before releasing a sales order, the system performs a credit check for the customer. Orders placed on credit hold can be released from credit hold if customer payments were entered or order amounts were appropriately decreased. Authorised users can override the credit hold status and force order fulfillment.
Approval of sales orders
You can set up parallel or multi stage approval of sales orders of the SO and IN types.
Consolidated and partial shipments
You can specify a different delivery date for each line item on a sales order. By using the warehouse availability information and cost data, the system can split a sales order into multiple shipments from different warehouses. Also, the system tracks the remaining balances of orders and manages back orders. For more details, see: About shipment processing options.
Automatic packaging and freight calculation
With Visma Net you can make processing of shipments more effective by configuring automatic packaging suggestions. With the Automatic packaging functionality configured, the system automatically selects the minimal set of packaging boxes for each sales order.
Also, you can configure freight calculation. For details, see the following topics:
Integrated workflow
Visma Net provides an integrated workflow so you can automate order processing and eliminate unnecessary steps. You can add tasks and activities for employees handling the orders, and set up notifications to be automatically triggered during order processing.
Integration with the Inventory workspace
Due to seamless integration with the Inventory workspace, the Inventory workspace provides real-time data about inventory levels of items on the sales order, including information about how each item is allocated. During the entry of a sales order, the system will notify the user if the quantity is not available or allocated through multiple warehouse locations or warehouses. You can configure the inventory allocation rules for each step of the sales process for custom order types.
Stock reservation
Visma Net allows you to perform stock reservations when you enter sales orders so that the items promised to a customer cannot be shipped to another customer. In case when items are stocked at multiple warehouses, this helps avoid overstocks and stock outs because the system gives you the ability to reserve items at any warehouse and automates transfers. For more information, see: Sales orders with allocations.
Integration with the Purchases workspace
The Inventory and Purchases workspaces are tightly integrated. With Visma Net, you can link sales orders with purchase orders, so that goods received from suppliers will be used for specific sales orders. The Inventory workspace supports Back order and Drop shipment functionalities. For more information, see: About links between sales orders and purchase orders.
Customer return support
Visma Net provides the flexibility to manage various types of customer returns and ensure complete traceability of these operations. Your company can set up its own return policies by using specific predefined order types and by creating custom order types for authorised and unauthorised returns. For more information, see: Process returns.
Other functionalities and options
The Inventory workspace lets you do the following:
- On order and invoice documents, view the total weight, volume, and units
- Easily attach scanned images or electronic versions of sales orders to facilitate tracking and processing of the orders
- Add notes with shipping and handling instructions to sales orders or specific lines of sales orders
- Combine multiple orders onto one invoice
- Combine items from multiple orders into one shipment
- Access item availability information during order entry
- Create a new item while entering an order
- Check inventory to automatically create a back order for out-of-stock items on shipment creation
- Disallow invoices to credit-hold customers
- Assign to each order the appropriate salespersons and calculate their commission
- Assign the appropriate price for each item using price conversion for the base unit to the sales units
- Take advantage of integrated back order processing
- Use alternate item IDs for stock items
- Track lot or serial numbers for valuable items on orders
- More easily track returns and replacements using reason codes assigned to credit memos
- Print carrier labels for RMA orders