THE ESSENTIALS

Before digging into managing Orders, let's look closely at some key terms.

Queues, Stages & States

As mentioned above, an Order goes through an end-to-end process from the moment it's placed by a contact till its completion. This cycle is managed through Order Queues, Queue Stages and Order States.

Order Queues

An order queue defines a set of queue stages that Orders must progress through during their life cycle. Upon creation, an order is assigned to a queue, which henceforth dictates the queue stages through which the Order will progress until its completion or cancellation. Multiple order queues can be defined and configured by a system user.

Queue Stages

A queue stage is a stop-off point in the order queue during the progression of an order, where typically, action needs to be taken. All queue stages are mapped to an ordered state of New, In Progress, Completed, Cancelled and may or may not be associated with Invoice Milestones.

Open

Order State

The stage reflects the current state of the Order in the queue that it has reached so far.

Open

Order state

A queue can have as many stages as required to manage an order's fulfilment flow. However, each queue stage added can only be mapped to the In Progress state; the other states are fixed. However, for the sake of completeness, here's a list of all order states:

• Pending - An order has been placed by a Contact, but it's not yet ready to begin processing (typically pending payment); this state can appear for an Order only if an Invoice Milestone exists for the first stage of the Order Queue

• New - Order has been placed by the Contact and waiting to be processed

• In Progress - Order processing has started (multiple stages can be mapped to this state)

• Completed - The Order has been successfully completed, and the requested items have been delivered to the Contact.

• Cancelled - The Order was cancelled at some point during its life cycle

Supply Method

The Supply Method indicates how the ordered items will actually be supplied to the Contact once ordered.

• Delivery - The Order will be delivered at a location (delivery address) specified by the Contact when placing the Order

• Pick-up - The Contact will collect the ordered items from one of the Business's locations (or from a Merchant or a Venue)

• Direct Sale - Applicable for digital services only, so no delivery address or pick-up location is required

The supply method is important since it could affect pricing, applicable taxes, and promotions.

Point of no Return

The Point of no Return (if configured) identifies the specific queue stage whereby restrictions apply if an order is cancelled after that point in time.

If an order is cancelled prior to reaching the Point of no Return, all items (including any already delivered) can be returned to the Business, and the Contact will not be invoiced for them. Alternatively, if the Order is cancelled after reaching the Point of no Return, any items already delivered to the Contact will be invoiced, while items whose delivery is still pending will be cancelled, therefore, won't be delivered or invoiced.

Prior to reaching the Point of no Return

• An Order can be amended

• Cancelling the whole Order is permitted, but only if

  • All issued invoices have been manually credited to the Contact

  • All dispatched items are returned back to the warehouse

Upon reaching the Point of no Return

• An Order can be amended with additional items. However, items already dispatched cannot be modified.

• Cancelling the Order is permitted only if all dispatched items have been invoiced. The ordered quantity per item will be reduced to the quantity that has already been dispatched (e.g. three alarms have been ordered, but two have been dispatched, the ordered quantity can be changed to 2 if none have been dispatched, then the item can be removed)

Invoice Milestones

Invoice Milestones can be optionally configured and associated with order queue stages, thus denoting the point in time when the Contact will be partially or fully invoiced for their Order. Once the Order reaches the stage, a milestone invoice is automatically issued, having an amount equal to the milestone’s settings. Alternatively, back-end users can manually issue ad-hoc milestone invoices, whenever required, by specifying an amount of money.

Milestone-based vs Progress-based Orders

An Order can be milestone-based or progress-based, depending on the Order's progression regarding when a Contact will be invoiced.

• An order is milestone-based when Invoice Milestones are set up for one or more queue stages. Therefore, invoices are automatically logged once the Order reaches the Milestone, i.e. when it reaches a particular queue stage.

• A progress-based order does not adhere to an Invoice Milestone plan, but instead, progress invoices are logged manually by the user responsible for progressing the Order. In each progress invoice, the Contacts are invoiced for the items already dispatched to their location.

Quotation

A Quotation is an estimate of the cost of an Order; in other words, the Quotation is a preliminary form of the Order's invoice. The Quotation is automatically generated during the ordering process (on the right-hand side of the screen) so that Contacts can be informed of how much their Order costs when a payment is due and how much they will have to pay at the time of ordering. During the process of placing an Order, the quoted amount is automatically adjusted according to the selected items and quantities for ordering.

Contacts can receive their Order Quotation via Automation when placing a new Order or when an Order is amended.

Orders Summary Screens

Navigate to Commerce > Orders to view and manage your Orders.

You can use two different views to search and manage your Orders; the Kanban view and List view. To navigate between views, click on the respective button in the top right-hand corner.

When in Kanban view, you must select the queue for which to view Orders; orders are displayed per stage.

In List view, however, you can view and search Orders across all queues and stages.

You can click on an Order from either view to view additional information, such as the items ordered.

The possible Order actions (…) from the Order card are:

• Edit - Takes you to the Order detail screen to manage the Order

• Cancel - Available only for incomplete Orders; use this action to easily cancel an order without having to navigate to the details screen

• Delete - Delete the Order, available only for Orders in Pending or New states

• Clone - Cloning an order allows a system user to place a new order based on an existing one for the same or a different contact. During the ordering flow, changes can be made to the ordered items and quantities, and the order total is re-calculated to reflect the contact and order options

Creating an Order

New Orders can be placed:

• By a Contact using a front-end device such as a consumer app or portal

• By a system user via the back-end system, by navigating to Commerce > Orders > Create Order either from the Kanban or List view screens

• By an integrator

When placing an Order via the back-end system, the user follows the Order flow from screen to screen whilst progressing through the various steps required to complete the Order.

Contact Details

• Start by selecting the Contact and the Account to be charged for the ordered items.

• Complete the Fulfilment Information section on the screen, which is required for the system to know how the Contact will receive the items. The delivery address or the pick-up point is specified accordingly, whereas, for the Direct Sale supply method, no further input is required.

• Before proceeding to the next step, an Order Queue must also be selected to denote the required Order's progressing flow.

Items

The next step is to select the items for ordering. Contacts can select as many items as required from the Product Catalogue. Notice that the Quotation on the right is updated with every action taken, reflecting the newly estimated Order cost.

Physical goods and services in CRM.COM have various compositions; flat, fixed bundle, flexible bundle, and composite products. During the ordering flow, users/Contacts must specify what they actually want to purchase.

Flat and Fixed bundles: A user/Contact simply selects the product to order

Flexible bundles: It’s required to set up the actual product to order i.e. user/Contact should select the bundle’s components

Composites: User/Contact selects which variant product to order as well as its modifiers

Additionally when ordering termed services, more than one price might be available. For example, there might be a monthly and a quarterly price so it's up to the user/Contact to select a price. It is important to note that selecting a price also denotes the service’s price and billing terms.

Finally, the user/Contact selects whether they want to purchase or rent a traceable physical good (if applicable), by selecting either the sale or rental price.

Refer to the Product catalogue for more information on product configurations.

Payment Details

At this stage in the flow, the payment information must be specified. Contacts can also use their wallet funds to pay (fully/partially) for an Order, thus reducing the final amount of money that will be paid using the selected payment method, e.g. If wallet funds are used, this could result in less or no money being taken from a Contact's card or other selected payment method.

The Order's Invoice Milestone plan (if configured) can also be updated as part of its Payment Information.

Adjusting Invoice Milestones

Suppose the queue assigned to the Order has at least one Invoice Milestone. In that case, the Milestone Invoice Plan will be displayed based on the Order queue configuration, allowing the user to make any necessary adjustments prior to placing the Order. Existing Milestones can be removed entirely, or additional Milestones can be added. Any changes in Milestone configurations during ordering are applicable only for the specific Order and do not affect the actual Order queue configuration.

• Stage - The queue stage which the Invoice Milestone is set for. When this stage is reached, an invoice will be logged and charged to the Contact's account based on the % or amount set in Milestone Settings.

• Milestone settings - The user-specified (adjusted) percentage or amount of the Order total; this value takes precedence over the invoice milestone percentage amount set in the order queue configuration. Note that setting a milestone-specific amount is unavailable in the order queues configuration.

• Invoice amount based on Quotation - The actual invoice amount that will be charged to the Contact when the stage is reached

Checkout

The last step of the flow is the Checkout step. This is where the users reviews and confirm the Order with the Contact before placing it.

• Totals - A detailed view of the Order financials, i.e. how the Contact will be invoiced and how/when a payment is due

• Ad hoc Discount - System users can optionally give an extra ad hoc discount to Contacts, thus reducing the Order amount due

• Amount Due - The final amount that the Contact will have to pay if the Order is placed

Finally, complete the ordering process by placing the Order. An order number will be displayed if the order placement is successful.

Ordering Termed Services

Let's look at the Order estimated cost when Contacts order termed services. In such cases, the termed service cost is not included in the order cost; this is because, at this point in time, the Contact is simply subscribing to the service. Any charges will be included in the Contact's upcoming bill.

Therefore, billing information is provided on ordering that includes:

• The amount of the upcoming bill for the newly purchased service

• The billing period

• When the bill is expected to be paid, based on the Contact's credit terms and the services billing type (i.e. if it's pre-bill or post-bill)

Initial State

On placing an Order, the Order will assume a state of New if no Invoice Milestone exists for the first stage of the Order queue. However, if an Invoice Milestone exists for the first stage, then an invoice is created upon submitting the Order, but if the Contact has a zero credit limit, then the Order is set to a Pending state (The Order must be invoiced and paid for to assume a state of New). This state is visible on both the Order Kanban board and the Order Summary screen.

Subscription Services

If an Order includes a subscription service, the subscription will be automatically created upon placing the Order, and the Order will assume a state of Completed.

Refer to the Subscriptions manual for further information on handling Subscriptions via the Contact screen.

Managing an Order

Editing an Order

To edit an order from the Kanban or List view, click the options button (ellipses …) related to the Order and choose Edit.

All the Order detail information is available at a glance. At the top of the screen, you can see the Order Queue's sequence of stages (e.g. New, Started, Delivery, Completed in the example below), and the current state is clearly shown (New in the example below).

Several options are available from the Order screen via the options button (…); these vary according to the current Order stage, whether the Point of no Return has been reached, the type of items ordered etc.

Create Activity

Create and schedule an Activity related to the Order from the order screen. Activities can be minor tasks which need to be scheduled as part of the order fulfilment process.

Events History

View a log of actions taken against the Order from the moment of creation.

Adding Ad Hoc Milestone Payments

A back-end system user can manually add a milestone payment made by the Contact on an ad hoc basis (whenever a contact wishes to partially pay part of the Order amount). Ad hoc milestones are independent of the milestone invoices, which are defined by the Order queue and are issued when the Order reaches another stage. These milestone payments can be created at any point in time, and the amount paid should be less than the cost of the Order (in general, the total sum of all milestones - either on reaching a stage or on an ad hoc basis, are always less than or equal to the total cost of the Order).

When creating an Ad hoc milestone payment, all that is needed is the payment amount.

An Invoice will be issued that includes the accounting product for this payment. Upon completing the Order, all milestone payments (either ad hoc or those generated due to order progression) are deducted from the final invoice amount.

Edit

Update the Order. The user will be taken through a flow similar to the new order flow, progressing through the necessary steps where new items can be added, existing ones can be removed or ordered quantities can be changed, etc.

Dispatch Items

This option is only available for Orders containing stockable physical goods. Selecting this option allows a system user to dispatch physical goods from the Business's warehouse to deliver them to the Contact and fulfil the Order. Multiple dispatches can be performed during an Order's life cycle, and all ordered items must be dispatched to be able to complete the Order.

Return Dispatched Items

The option is available only if stockable physical goods have already been dispatched to the Contact. Items can be returned to the Business and its warehouse, but only as long as the point of no return is not reached.

Print

Print preview the Order and print it if necessary. This requires that a communication template for Orders has been configured. Refer to the Communications manual for further information.

Send Email

Email the Order to the Contact; this requires configuring a communication template for Orders. Refer to the Communications manual for further information.

View Financials

View the financial transactions related to the Order, such as invoices and credit notes. Invoices can be easily credited through the Issue a Credit Note option when returning delivered items back to the Organization.

If any items have been dispatched but not invoiced yet, then you'll see a Create Order Invoice option on this screen. You can use this option to create an invoice for such items.

Progress Invoices

CRM.COM allows a system user to manually invoice physical goods that have been dispatched for an order as it progresses. If no invoice milestones exist, then invoices can be manually issued for services and expenses included in the Order.

To issue an invoice:

1. If one wishes to invoice for physical goods, then ensure that the items have been dispatched first

2. Edit the Order> Navigate to View Financials

3. Click on the Create Order Invoice button

4. All stocked-out items (not yet invoiced) will be presented in the invoice

5. If no milestones are associated with the particular Order, then the user will also be able to invoice for any of the services or expenses included in the Order too.

Cancel

Cancelling an Order indicates that the Contact no longer requires the ordered items and has requested that the Order be terminated before completion.

Clone

Any Order (in any stage or state) can be cloned. Cloning an Order enables users to easily create a new Order having the same Queue, Supply method and ordered items but for a different Contact. In other words, the initial Order is used as a template for creating new Orders. Cloning an Order is available only through the summary screen.

Progressing an Order

Progress an Order in Kanban view by dragging and dropping the Order to the next stage using the hamburger icon.

Alternatively, edit the Order and click on the next stage in the queue from the Order screen.

When progressing an Order, the user can optionally provide a comment for the progression.

Completing an Order

An order is completed when it reaches the last stage in the order queue. Once an order has been completed, limited actions can be taken against the Order.

Completing an order without any ordered items

In cases where you need to complete an Order without any ordered items (i.e. all items have been deleted from an Order), you must first create and complete an Activity for the Order; then, the Order can be completed successfully.

Such a case could be that the Contact doesn't want to proceed with the Order any more, but the Business still wants to track the progress of tasks performed for the Order and then complete it instead of cancelling it. To be able to complete the Order, though, at least one Activity must be logged. Generally, an Order can be completed when the items have been delivered or at least one Activity has been completed.

Order Settings

Navigate to Settings > Commerce > Orders to set up the following order-related system settings.

Categories

Define categories and sub-categories to be manually assigned to Orders when in edit mode.

Cancellation Reasons

Define the reasons for cancelling an Order; one of these can be selected when an Order is being cancelled.

Numbering Schemes

Order numbers are automatically generated by the system whenever an Order is created. However, you can define the format of the Order numbers using this setting. If not specified, the default configuration is used.

Financial Rules

Financial Rules for Orders can be used to define the type of invoice and credit note to be issued when these are created through an automatic process against Orders. If none are specified, then the default types apply. Transaction types for Financial Rules can be defined via Settings > Financials > Generic > Financial Transaction Types.

Fulfilment Policy

Set up a Fulfilment Policy to define your business rules for managing Orders, such as how and when orders should be fulfilled, the minimum order amount, acceptable payment methods etc.

A Fulfilment Policy is set up for an organisation. It is, by default, inherited by all of that organisation's subsidiaries in the business network (Merchants, Venues etc.) unless a separate policy is set up for a specific Merchant/Venue. Multiple Fulfilment Policies can be set up for delivery, pick-up and direct sale supply methods.

• Applicable for - Define whether the Fulfilment Policy is applicable across all organisations or specific organisations

• Orders can be submitted if their total estimated cost is more than - Orders will only be accepted above the stated order cost, i.e. minimum order cost.

• Automatically set order life cycle state to completed after - Used in cases where the key users responsible for progressing Orders will not be required to mark them as Completed manually. The Order will automatically be updated to the Completed state after the stated period of time.

• Average order completion time is - Set the average time required to complete an order; this is used to calculate the estimated order completion time when an order is placed and displayed on the UI

• Payment methods - Restrict the allowed methods of payment by selecting those acceptable by the organisation when placing an order

• Expenses - Use Expenses to define additional costs for orders, e.g. a delivery charge. Optionally, set up a minimum order cost for which the expense applies, e.g. charge a delivery fee of €1.50 for orders less than €5.00. Only Products of classification type Expenses Service can be specified as expense products on the fulfilment policy.

Completion Rules

Setup completion rules (can be Venue specific) to calculate the estimated time for an Order to be completed. The completion rules estimated time (if defined) are in addition to the Fulfilment Policy's estimated time.

Queues

Setup Order queues to group Orders with similar characteristics together and to define how they will progress through the different stages from start to finish.

Invoice Milestones

To create Invoice Milestones - edit the Order queue, locate the queue stage where the Milestone will be added, and click on the downward arrow to expand the relevant section. Set the percentage amount of the Order which will be invoiced upon reaching that Queue stage. Multiple invoice milestones can be added to a queue.

Invoice Contact Upon Creation of an Order

If the Business wishes to invoice a Contact the moment an Order is placed, then select the respective checkbox option on the New stage of the Order queue. Once an Order queue has been saved, it's impossible to change this setting at a later stage.

Point of No Return

The Point of no Return is the defined moment before which any dispatched or undelivered goods can be returned through credit notes. Once this point is reached, any items delivered to the contact will be invoiced. It can be linked to a specific queue stage and can only be added after the queue has been created.

Reference Material

You may also find it helpful to refer to the following manuals for further reading about Orders.

Contacts

Contacts

Accounts

Financials

Activities

Activities

Automation

Configure order delivery coverage areas by creating an order automation.

Automations

Integrations

Integrations

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