Entry

Entering a new Customer Order into the system is very likely the most complicated part. Consider:

The “Customer” (or in some cases a “Person”) must be identified, whose order this will be. What if they’re a new Customer/Person, not yet in the system? Can they be added directly to Rattail and other systems will be updated accordingly? Or must they be first added to the other system and then imported back to Rattail? (For sake of the order, can a “Pending Customer” record be created and then sort the rest out later?)

One or more “Products” will be added to the Order. Can they order any (e.g. unit) amount or is there a “cases only” policy etc.? Perhaps also some other restrictions based on Department, e.g. no more than X cases of frozen product due to space limitations.

Where does all that Customer and Product data come from anyway? Is it accurate enough to be used for creating “reliable” Order data? Is the Customer to be charged according to whatever price is calculated in the Order, or are they charged “whatever the POS rings up” etc.? Are discounts ever quoted in the order, vs. handled only by POS?

Speaking of payments, does the customer need to pay up-front when first placing the order? Or do they pay later when they pick it up?

Wait, what if they want to order a Product which is not yet in the system? Is this allowed, and if so what are the policies surrounding that?

So, the Rattail feature tries to accommodate all of the above regardless of how you answer.

First of all the Customer/Person and Product data should already be imported to Rattail from your POS or other system(s), before tackling Customer Orders. This feature assumes the underlying data is already squared away and accurate (within reason).

Second, it’s worth noting that the New Customer Order tool is implemented as a batch (see also Customer Order Batch). This is important because it makes it possible to use the New Customer Order tool as the entry workflow for a Customer Order even if you do not track those primarily in Rattail. In other words when the batch is executed, it can “push” the Order data to whatever system is needed.

But of course the Rattail DB has its own schema for tracking these Customer Orders, so the default “new batch” execution will create the Order directly in Rattail.