PARUS Ordering
and Delivery Management Systems
Features list:
ORDER ENTRY
Speed
Keyboard driven (maintaining mouse functionality)
Select Customer from a converging list as the name is typed in
Fast catalogue search based on a word or part of word
Auto complete line with default values
Full Customer and Article details only one key stroke away
Programmable function keys for common product messages
Revise in Storeroom sequence to match packing notes
Order clipboard for order manipulation
Accuracy
Select the delivery date from a list of possible delivery dates specific
to the customer including bank holiday reschedules
Customer on screen “Post-it” note shows any customer issues
to be resolved.
Automatic selection of pricelist according to customer group.
Alert reports on unavailability and zero pricing
Customer
Convenience
Order vegetables by weight or number (5 tomatoes or 500g)
Order meat by number AND weight (2 * 250g Steaks)
Order by pack
Multiple orders per customer can be held at one time
Customer standing orders
View and copy from old orders
COMMUNICATION
Customer message per item and per order
Packhouse response per item and per order
Standing and Special Delivery instructions
Message to all customers on rounds
Message to all customers
Outstanding debt included on invoice (optional)
Periodic Statements (optional)
Telephone Dialler (if modem available)
Credit Notes
ROUNDS
Unlimited number
Identified by name
Can be delivered on one or more days of the week
Temporarily reschedule or cancel during bank holidays
Customer schedule number fixes position on round
An important selection criteria for most reports
BOX
SCHEMES
Boxes are expanded in reports so that their contents are included in reports
such as the fulfilment list.
Vat apportioned when contents have mixed vat liabilities.
PACKING
AND DELIVERY
Packing lists are printed in storeroom order to avoid retracing steps
Delivery/Control Lists for listing boy details and loading the van in
reverse delivery order
Payment Control
Single or accumulated debt cleared with a single mouse click
Under and over payments handled by carrying over debt/credit
Payment types cash, credit card, cheque and bad debt
Payment lists for banking and reconciliation
Export details to Sage or other PC packages
Supplier purchasing
Order using internal/suppliers codes
Automatically generated from the fulfilments list
Reports
Customer activity statement
Fulfilment list
Cross reference of products to customers
Product Sales per product over a selectable time period
Sales totals value and volume
Credits Control list credits
Phone list for regular customers
Phone list for lapsed customers
DESCRIPTION
Sales order processing
The order taking/revising begins by entering the customer’s name.
A list with all customers that match what has been typed appears. The
list contains address and round details and so you can home in on the
customer after a few keystrokes. After selecting a customer, a list of
undelivered orders (if applicable) plus a "New" option appears.
Select either an existing order to revise or "New" to start
a new order. If “New” is selected a list of delivery possibilities
for the next 6 weeks appears. Select one.
This system was developed to deliver a large range of fresh produce and
other food items to customers on a regular basis. However the features
that give the software its accuracy and efficiency are not dependent on
the type of goods being sold and is suitable for other types of goods.
Before computers, this process was carried out by the creation of lists
- which is a natural way of working to most people. Wherever possible,
we show the lists because they are more natural to understand and work
with.
Using this software, significant time savings are made and efficiencies
improved with accurate lists, minimising entry and packing operator errors.Orders
An order is a combination of customer details and article details and
so the system must maintain a list of both. An order can be taken or edited
at any time up until it actually leaves the premises. After that it is
“cleared” which means the value of the order is converted
to a customers debt and the order itself is transferred to the archive
where it can be viewed but not altered.
There is no limit to the number of orders that a customer can have open
at any one time. It is quite common for a customer to have orders for
several deliveries in advance especially at Christmas when some things
have to be ordered well in advance.
Some article details depend on the type of customer i.e. retail prices
and wholesale price lists.
Customer
Customers may be of different types (e.g. retailers, wholesalers, home
delivery) and can therefore have different price lists. Each customer
must only be assigned to one type. There is no limit to the number of
customer types that can be created.
Delivery Rounds
Normally orders are dealt with by delivery round and so every customer
belongs to at least one round. To make it easy to remember, rounds can
be given a name such as “London Tuesday”. The name and delivery
date of the round make a unique identifier which is used, for example
when summarising the requirements to fulfil a particular round or rounds.
Every round has at least one delivery day of the week. The rounds can
be organised in one of two ways or a mixture of both. A wholesale customer
for example could have deliveries every day. For this type of customer,
rounds may be organised as either 5 separate rounds with a single delivery
day or one round that is delivered every day. The best organisation will
depend on how other customers in the same area are delivered to.
Rounds may be cancelled or shifted temporarily to another date during
bank holidays by simply ticking or filling in a rescheduled date on a
list of rounds with their normal delivery dates.
To handle unusual situations like a special emergency delivery, individual
orders can be easily swapped to another round so that all the delivery
paperwork is in order. Prices.
Customers belong to a customer type for pricing and each type has its
own prices set by the following method.
Each item has two prices. It must have a price for a single item and optionally
a pack price. Most retailers give a discount for anybody buying a complete
pack and so anything can be ordered simply "by the pack”. These
prices are simply typed in.
As an alternative, there is a mechanism for setting prices automatically
based on either the recommended retail price or the production cost. Just
enter the price, indicate what sort of price it is and the item price
will be calculated using a factor which you choose depending on the customer
type.
Either method can be used for each item and so your prices can be set
to suit.
This price selection ensures that the invoice price will be accurate without
the sales operator having to make any sort of intervention. There is however
still the opportunity of giving an additional percentage discount per
item on the sales order.
Codes
Every article has a unique code which enables the computer to find it’s
details when taking orders and preparing reports. Many common codes are
quickly learnt but the system has a quick way of looking them up whenever
required and always prints or displays the full product name with the
code to avoid mistakes.
The code is also used to group products together when for example looking
at sales records. The code is allocated by the user and so can be chosen
to have a meaning to the individual business. The code can be six characters
long and be any capital letters or number. It is advisable to split products
into groups with an abbreviation i.e. "BF" for baby foods and
a number to make it unique i.e. “BF12”
(Many items have bar codes which are and do the same job. (Barcodes are
all just long numbers) Box schemes
Many businesses sell boxes made up of individual items which represent
good value i.e. vegetable boxes, hampers etc. The system can create box
lists for and the sales and requirement reports contain both the boxes
and their contents. i.e. 10 boxes which contain 1.5 kg of carrots would
have 15kg of carrots added to the individually ordered carrot quantities.
VAT
This system was written for food retail and so, at moment VAT is included
in the price. It is however calculated at every stage and the VAT component
of every invoice is stored. We shall shortly be producing a non food retail
version where VAT is applied to prices.
Invoices
Each Invoice has an area for a standing delivery instruction, which is
always printed, and space for a special instruction for this delivery
only. An example of a standing delivery instruction would be "Leave
in box behind the garage" and a special instruction would be "Leave
with neighbour this week"
Each item line shows the quantity ordered, the quantity delivered, the
price and also an individual comment which can contain both a customer
request e.g. "No substitutes" and a message about the item from
the packhouse e.g. "Sorry unavailable".
Depending on the customer, the invoice can show the outstanding debt from
previously unpaid orders and any credit notes that may apply. This is
normal for home delivery. Customers not having the debt displayed can
have a statement issued whenever necessary.
Each invoice can carry 3 messages:
1) the individual customer message e.g. “Your special order has
arrived”
2) the round message that everybody on the round gets e.g. “Your
normal delivery will be delivered on Wednesday 23 December”
3) the all customer message e.g. "We will be closed between 24th
Dec and Jan 6"
Packing lists
Each packing list has an area for both standing and special packers instructions,
i.e. "No plastic packaging please!".
The packing list is printed in the same order as the items are stored
so the packer does not have to retrace his/her steps. It also has space
for an extra description for each article to help the packer. e.g. "Pink
package"
There are marked areas for the packer to write in actual despatched quantities,
packers comments and their initials for quality control.
Order entry/edit
An order is normally processed at least twice. The first time is when
the order is initially taken from the customer and the second when the
packing list returns from the pack house with the despatched quantities
and comments. (For example, 1kg of carrots ordered by the customer may,
once weighed, be 1.1kg) The order can be revised as often as required.
The order can be edited in either “normal” order (which is
the order in which it was first taken) or store order to match the order
on the packing list.
The order entry screen is optimised for keyboard input but most functions
have a choice of keystroke, mouse, toolbar or menu.
A customer is selected by a "shrinking list" of customer names,
addresses, and round details, which displays all customers whose names
match the letters typed in. After a few keystrokes the particular customer
can be selected by the cursor keys.
Any number of orders for future delivery for a single customer can be
held. Any such orders are listed with an option for a new order. Just
select an existing order to edit or “New” to open a new order.
If a new order is created, the delivery date must be chosen from a list
of delivery dates dependent on the delivery day(s) of the round(s) that
a customer is on and any re-scheduling that may have been set.
Entering/editing order items is as simple as writing a list on a notepad.
Just put the cursor at the bottom of the list and start typing. When a
line is completed a new is created below. If something needs changing
either use the cursor keys to move there or click on it with the mouse.
Lines can be deleted or inserted anywhere in the order.
An item is added by first entering its code which fills in the most of
the line with the description, and price (for the customers group). If
code is unknown, type in a word plus enter. A list of all items containing
that word will appear and the right article can be selected.
Then enter the quantity and, optionally, a discount, a comment and/or
price override.
Auto complete the line with a default value of 1 (default quantity) or
1k (default weight 1kg) by pressing the space bar
Order quantities are flexible. Many vegetables are ordered by weight or
number e.g. 5kg of tomatoes or 5 individual tomatoes. The system will
allow either but will only allow a weight to be despatched. Similarly,
it would not allow 5kg of tinned tomatoes to be ordered.
A pack quantity is indicated by an “x” and the pack price
is then inserted into the price field.
Keyboard keys, F2 - F10, insert a pre-programmed comment into the line
such as "Sorry not Available" and, optionally carry out a function
such as "substitute," which inserts an empty line in the order
ready for the substituted item. Other functions are "unavailable"
and "partial" which (invisibly) mark the data so that unavailability
reports can be provided later.
Every customer can have a standing order. Any order can be saved as the
standing order, which can later be copied into the current order. Similarly
the customer’s previous orders be viewed and if required, copied
to the current order with price adjustment. An order can also be saved
to the “order clipboard" which enables the order content to
be copied to other orders or other customers.
All of the current customer details and all of the article details can
be accessed via a single keystroke. In addition there is a customer “Post
It” note, which is a prominent area where ongoing information about
a customer is held. If a customer, for example, received damaged goods,
and telephones to complain, details are entered in the “Post It”
note. The next time the customer orders - the information is displayed
prominently on the screen, allowing the order processing staff to respond
appropriately. Once the problem is solved the message can be cleared and
the “Post It” disappears.
If modem is connected the computer can be used to dial the customer’s
telephone number. This is a useful method of contacting a customer if
there is a query about the order.
The current invoice and packing list can be printed or previewed at any
time.
Sometimes, in special circumstances, it is necessary to transfer an order
to another round but without changing the customers normal delivery details.
An order can be transferred to another round so that the paperwork is
consistent.
Delivery management
Round delivery order
Every customer has a pre-assigned schedule number that indicates his or
her position on a round. The round route or area is defined to suite the
delivery logistics. This schedule number is used when preparing any lists
that are to do with delivery. A round’s invoices, for example, are
printed in round order so that the driver would find them in delivery
order.
Round Reports
The contents of most reports are selected by round. If bread for example,
is ordered every night for the next days delivery, you would only need
a purchase requirement list for the rounds that are delivered the next
day.
Control (Despatch) list
The control list is used for packing the van in reverse delivery order
and contains a summary of the number and type of boxes for each customer
so that they can be checked on loading.
Temporary re-scheduling of Rounds.
Delivery dates that occur on bank holidays can be easily altered or cancelled.
This ensures that the operator can inform the customer of the revised
date and that an order is not taken accidentally for the wrong date.
Commission Rounds
Rounds can be designated “commission rounds” where a third
party can organise the delivery/ordering and be responsible for payment
in return for a commission based on the value of orders on the round.
Orders are handled as normal but the debt is assigned to the “owner“
of the round who receives a summary and a special invoice.
Non Delivery Rounds
A round can be can be designated as order only which is a convenience
for use with a shop. Customer's orders can be taken and packed but the
order is checked out through the shop till.
Payment management
Outstanding debt from previous deliveries can be printed on the bottom
of invoices to give a grand total.
Debt management
Each delivery generates a debt record that exists until cleared when payment
is received. Single debts or accumulated debt from several invoices can
be cleared with a single entry if the payment amount is correct. If the
payment amount is incorrect, credit or partial debt can be carried forward.
The payment type (credit card, cash, cheque and BACS)is also recorded
which enables lists to be created for paying in and cross checking. This
information is also available to external accounting programmes such as
SAGE.
The total debt list can also be printed.
Credit notes
Many customers can simply be credited on their next order by entering
a item code and a negative quantity and price and a few words of explanation.
For other customers this may be unacceptable and others that do not order
very often require separate credit notes. Credit notes are generated in
a similar way to orders.
Periodic Debt Statements
Some customers prefer to pay on receipt of periodic statements that the
system also provides. These customers do not have outstanding debts printed
on the bottom of the invoices.
Customer activity statements
All customers invoices and payments can be listed together for any period
to review a customers activity.
Debt Control
Customers with large outstanding debt can be prevented from ordering further
by setting their status as bad debtor.
Purchasing from Suppliers
A Purchase order for a supplier can be prepared as easily as a customer
order using your own codes or the supplier’s. A list of all products
stocked by the supplier including their codes is checked so that items
not stocked by the suppler can be accidentally ordered.
Automatically Generated Suppliers Orders
In the situation that a suppliers order only has to meet the demand from
customers orders, it is possible to automatically create an order from
the requirements list. For example a bread order for the next days deliveries
Reports
Requirements list.
The requirements list is a summary of all items ordered by customers,
which have not yet been delivered. The details can be selected by article
codes, supplier and round(s). Box items are optionally expanded so their
contents are included as separate items.
Cross Reference list
The cross reference list is a list linking every item to a customer. The
details are selected by article codes, supplier and round(s). This is
used to add late arriving items to orders which have already been packed.
Loading control
list
The loading control list is a list of customers in delivery order with
the number of boxes, frozen, cool etc. for their delivery. It is used
for loading the van and checking when delivering.
Delivery list
The delivery list is a list of customers addresses in delivery order with
payment details for cash/cheque customers. It is used by the driver for
payment taking.
Unavailability list
The unavailability list is a list of items marked Unavailable in the orders.
It relies on the unavailability function being set for a dedicated text
key substitution in the order processing function.
Article sales
Article sales is the number of sales, total value of sales and average
sales price selected by article, dates, period (day, week, month) and
customer type.
Credit Control.
Credit Control is a list of all credits that have been given in the selected
period. Credits are normally the result of mistakes and so it enables
performance to be monitored and weaknesses highlighted.
Zero Cost Check
The zero cost check lists all items that have zero costs but a non zero
quantity. This checks that all weights have been entered from packing
lists before the invoices are printed.
Customer Management
Customer Phone List
The customer phone list is a list of customers and telephone numbers who
prefer to be called. The list also shows the way that they have ordered
in the last 6 weeks.
E&OE. This site is under active development - information subject to change.