Money Moseley's Reqested Enhancements

[Columbia Awards]

1) Print customer phone number and fax number on the customer's Accounts Receivable statement.

2) Create a report to list Customers who have outstanding credits. I feel that they should be listed on Accounts Receivable Trial Balances.

3) All us to print a monthly report of ALL sales BY ***ociate.

4) Allow us to enter Invoice Number when posting Invoice payments to determine which customer is making payments. We have clients such as school boards who pay invoices for many schools.

[Kami]

I agree with #4. Batching is time consuming when you have to track down the account.

[awardsguy]

I'd still love to be able to take payments from Customers when they're standing at the counter in front of me just like I can take payments for orders. The "Batch" process does not work well if you're only taking a single payment at a time...especially if your customer is waiting for the process to get finished so they can leave.

I guess it does work well if you have multiple payments at a time (like after a trip to the mailbox).

[M. David Matney]

I'd still love to be able to take payments from Customers when they're standing at the counter in front of me just like I can take payments for orders. The "Batch" process does not work well if you're only taking a single payment at a time...especially if your customer is waiting for the process to get finished so they can leave.

I guess it does work well if you have multiple payments at a time (like after a trip to the mailbox).

Why would you be taking payments at the counter for invoices? If the customer is paying when they pick it up, they should be a counter sale, not a direct bill. In which case, the payment is applied while the customer is standing there and it is applied to the order.

Direct billing is only for when you need to send the accounting department at a company, school, university, etc, an invoice because someone else in the organization is paying vs. the person picking up the order.

[awardsguy]

Many, many times we have "customers" that at times want terms and sometimes pay when they come in. Sometimes it depends if they have the company card on them. Sometimes they send other people in to pick the order up and since I know that they're good for the money, I give them the product knowing that the check will be in the mail the next week.

With "counter sales", I can't close the orders and not that the items were already picked up until there is payment. There are also "orders" from companies that have 8 different people who order (and pay when they pick stuff up), so I want to be able to keep all the customer contact information in one place rather than have it spread out over 14 different orders AND there may be some orders that I'll give terms on due to size or timing whereas most of the time they pay when they pick up.

Trust me (do a survey), this would make life much easier for all of your customers that aren't just internet based.

[M. David Matney]

Many, many times we have "customers" that at times want terms and sometimes pay when they come in. Sometimes it depends if they have the company card on them. Sometimes they send other people in to pick the order up and since I know that they're good for the money, I give them the product knowing that the check will be in the mail the next week.

With "counter sales", I can't close the orders and not that the items were already picked up until there is payment. There are also "orders" from companies that have 8 different people who order (and pay when they pick stuff up), so I want to be able to keep all the customer contact information in one place rather than have it spread out over 14 different orders AND there may be some orders that I'll give terms on due to size or timing whereas most of the time they pay when they pick up.

Trust me (do a survey), this would make life much easier for all of your customers that aren't just internet based.

The way BizWizard is designed is to handle the following types of orders:
Internet/Phone Sales
In Showroom Counter Sales
In Showroom Direct Bill Sales

No order should ever leave the building until its paid for. Whether payment method is Cash, Check, Credit Card or Direct Bill. BizWizard is designed to ALERT you if you let an order go without payment. This is a built-in safeguard to ensure a valid payment has been received.

Valid Payments include:

• Collection of payment via Cash handed to you at the showroom sales counter
• Collection of payment via credit card handed to you at the showroom counter or even prepaid in the case of internet sales or phone sales
• Collection of payment via direct bill.

Lets discuss the last since this seems to be the issue. If a customer is setup with terms but also pays when the pick up the order, simply leave them as a counter sale. If they walk into the store and they didn't bring the company credit card, then you can easily convert it to direct bill. when you do that, you are crediting the order, and debiting an invoice.

Lets take for example a Department Store. the Department store has cash registers. Most Department Stores also offer terms via a department store credit card. There is no way a department store is going to let anyone out of the store without paying for the product. One of the options of payment is to use your department store credit card.

A Department store credit card does nothing more than credit the cash register balance and debit a credit card statement.

In the case of an awards store, its not very feasible to offer Awards Store Credit Cards. So we implemented the same process via Direct bill. In essence, ABC Awards Company has two aspects to their business:

1. We sell trophies, awards, plaques, etc (retail operation)
2. We operate a department store credit card company (accounts receivable)

In all cases, the product should never leave the store WITHOUT collecting payment. Payment can be in the form of cash, check, credit card OR DIRECT BILL (i.e. the put the order balance on their account with you, which credits the order and debits an invoice)

So in essence, if you know for a fact the customer is going to direct bill it. Setup the direct bill at order entry time. If you are unsure cause sometimes they pay when the pick it up, and sometimes they direct bill it cause they forgot the company credit card, then leave them as Counter Sale and when they pick it up, you either direct bill it or collect payment in the form of cash, check or credit card at the time of pickup.

With all this said, we are going to give the ability to post a one time payment to an invoice without going through batches. However, even with the new enhancement, you should consider the standard business process flow of collecting payments as indicated above as it will make your life very simple from an accounting standpoint.

Keep in mind, BizWizard was originally written to handle a store, not internet sales. The Internet Sales Features were secondarily added. The process defined above is based upon no internet sales and has been the process premise under which BizWizard was designed since 1999. We chose to use standard business processes as you will find in any retail operation and designed BizWizard around those processes.

[awardsguy]

Thanks for inserting the "one time payment", that will help quite a bit. Just out of curiosity though, if you kept the order as a "counter sale", then would it be tracked in the customer file under "sales history, invoices" or any of the other areas that one may want to go to next time?

[M. David Matney]

Thanks for inserting the "one time payment", that will help quite a bit. Just out of curiosity though, if you kept the order as a "counter sale", then would it be tracked in the customer file under "sales history, invoices" or any of the other areas that one may want to go to next time?

No, it would not be if it is kept as a counter order. If your reason for direct billing all orders is to keep it attached to a customer, then I can see your dilemma. How about this as an option. Post a payment to an order that is in closed status just like you would an order that is in open status. BizWizard will automatically detect if the payment it posted to a closed order, then it will post it to the invoice instead of the order.

By going this route, your staff will not have to learn a new feature. they simply do what they do today, and BizWizard handles the AI to figure out what to do with the payment.

[awardsguy]

Actually, just entering payment the same way that we do for counter sales will solve all the problems (at least on our end) since my folks can do that anyway. If it becomes more complicated than that (I don't know why it should...but for techincal reasons it may have to be different), then there would be a learning curve.

[awardsguy]

I just saw how the new function works on the latest update. Thanks for making our life easier!