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Quantum VS Help: File Maintenance |
Route Round Maintenance is designed for merchants who receive regular Standing Orders, as well as one-off Sales Orders, from customers and therefore need to deliver goods to those customers on a regular basis. This involves the following tasks and features in Quantum VS:
You will need to configure Quantum VS to suit the type of delivery cycle you will operate, if you intend to operate a delivery round which differs from week to week. This done via the Route Week Cycle and Current Route Week fields in the Selling tab of the Price Book General control record. In order to process Standing Orders you will need to set up menu values for the Standing Order Schedule header field in the SOSH (Standing Order Schedule Code) Table File using Table File Maintenance. In addition, you may set up Roles/User Permissions to enable or disable a User's ability to perform certain functions in Route Round Maintenance. See Configuring Quantum VS For Route Round Maintenance.
You will need to create Route Round records corresponding to each delivery route you wish to operate on a given day (and potentially week). See Creating Route Round Records.
The Route Round records you create may be viewed in and opened from the Route Rounds Finder - see Finding Route Round Records. Use the Route Rounds Finder to open existing Route Round records for editing - see Editing Route Round Records.
Note that a:
Route = a geographical area.
Round = a specific delivery on a particular day/week.
Route Round = a record created to be able to allocate a customer - and any linked Standing Orders, Sales Orders and other sales documents - to a specific delivery on a particular day/week within an area.
You will then need to use Customer Route Round Drop Sequence Maintenance to subscribe your Standing Order delivery Customers/Customer Sites - to the Route Round 'delivery routes' you have created, setting up a 'drop sequence'. You may subscribe a Customer/Customer Site to more than one Route Round 'delivery route' if required. See Customer Route Round Drop Sequence Maintenance.
The Customer Route Round Drops Finder lists customers which have been added to a Route Round 'delivery route', showing their position in the 'drop sequence' and other Route Round details - see Finding Customer Route Round Drops. You may use the Finder hyperlinks to open Customer Route Round Drop Sequence Maintenance and:
add/subscribe customers to a Route Round 'delivery route' and place them within a 'drop sequence';
When you have set up Route Rounds and subscribed your Customers/Customer Sites to them, Route Rounds may be allocated within your sales documents as follows.
Standing Orders:
If the Customer/Customer wants to place a regular repeating order for certain goods you will create a Standing Order. Standing Orders are based on Sales Contracts, but with a few key differences. When a Standing Order is created, you may use the Route/Round field in the header to select one of the available Route Rounds the Customer/Customer Site is subscribed to. Alternatively you may leave the field blank, so that when a Sales Order is generated for the Standing Order the next available Route Round will be used. See Working With Standing Orders.
Sales Orders (and other sales documents):
The Route/Round field is also available in the header section of Sales Orders and other sales documents. The system selects the Route Round automatically if the Customer/Customer Site is already subscribed to one or more Route Rounds. However, you may manually select a specific Route Round if necessary. Since your Sales Order Customer/Customer Sites are not required to be subscribed to Route Rounds, an additional option (not available for Standing Orders/Sales Contracts) enables you to select a Route Round delivery on a 'one-off' basis - this is useful when dealing with a 'new' customer which has not already been subscribed to a Route Round delivery. See Selecting A Route Round.
Before you make your deliveries you will need to run the Create Standing Order Sales Orders Process to generate Sales Orders based on existing Standing Orders set up for your customers. You may limit this by Branch, Standing Order Schedule, date and/or Route Round delivery as required.
Once Sales Orders have been generated they are processed as per your Sales Order Processing settings as defined in your User record. The Route Round delivery - and also the Drop Sequence position of the Customer/Customer Site - may be amended at the Sales Order, Picking Note or Delivery Assembly stage, via the Route/Round and Drop Sequence fields in the document header (as described above). The selected Route Round delivery is also displayed in the Despatch Note and Sales Invoice header, but may not be amended.
With the above records in place you will be able to run the Route Listing report to generate 'Driver Lists' showing the 'Customer Route Round Drop Sequence' for all relevant Route Round deliveries for a given day or week. This lists all Customers/Customer Sites and their addresses the driver is required to deliver to on that specific Route Round delivery for that day, based on existing orders. As the driver makes their deliveries, the list can be used as a record of completed deliveries and any further useful notes.
Imagine you are a merchant selling food products, based in the city of Sheffield. You provide an optional delivery service for your customers.
You want the ability, when a customer places an order via a Standing Order or one-off Sales Order, to allocate delivery via one of your regular delivery services. Allocation of an order to a delivery can be handled automatically by the system, but there is the option for a user to select or amend this manually.
To set this up in Quantum VS you will need to:
configure Quantum VS to suit the type of delivery cycle you will operate (typically a weekly cycle) and also configure some other settings, as described in Configuring Quantum VS For Route Round Maintenance; and then
create Route Round records corresponding to each delivery route you wish to operate on a given day of the week; and then
subscribe customers to an appropriate Route Round delivery, setting up a customer 'drop sequence'.
Say you have four delivery vehicles: one covering Sheffield North, one covering Sheffield South, one covering Sheffield East and covering for Sheffield West. These are out delivering to customers Monday to Friday. Therefore you will use Route Round Maintenance to create your Route Round records: Sheffield North Monday, Sheffield North Tuesday, Sheffield North Wednesday, Sheffield North Thursday, Sheffield North Friday; and the same for Sheffield South, East and West, making 20 Route Round records in all.
You will then use Customer Route Round Drop Sequence Maintenance to subscribe your Customers/Customer Sites to the most suitable Route Round delivery. (If necessary you may subscribe a Customer/Customer Site to more than one.) For example, your existing customer - Cliff's Corner Shop - is in Ecclesfield, which is in northern Sheffield. Therefore you might subscribe them to the 'Sheffield North Monday' Route Round.
On Wednesday afternoon someone from Cliff's Corner Shop rings you up to place an order for a weekly delivery of certain food items. Therefore you create a Standing Order, and then enter each Product line and quantity required - see Working With Standing Orders. You have the option of using the Route/Round field in the Standing Order header to select a specific Route Round delivery. You might do this if the customer wanted the order delivering on a particular day, for example. However, assume Cliff's Corner Shop does not specify when they want the order delivering. Therefore you leave the Route/Round field blank; when a Sales Order is generated for this Standing Order the system will automatically assign the next available Route Round delivery. Since Cliff's Corner Shop is subscribed to the 'Sheffield North Monday' Route Round, you can inform them that their goods will be delivered on the following Monday - and each Monday thereafter.
The Route/Round field is also available in Sales Orders and other sales documents. Say that on Wednesday you also receive a 'one-off' order from Syd's Supermarket. When you create a Sales Order for a customer already subscribed to a Route Round, you may use the Route/Round field to either select a specific Route Round, or leave it blank so that the system allocates it automatically, as described above. However, imagine that Syd's Supermarket is a new customer which is not yet subscribed to a Route Round delivery. In this case you may use the menu to select a 'one-off' Route Round on which the order will be delivered. (This 'one-off' option is not available for Standing Orders; you will probably wish to subscribe your 'standing order' customers to a Route Round delivery.) For this example, assume we select the 'Sheffield North Monday' Route Round.
When a Route/Round is selected on an order, the Drop Sequence field shows the default 'drop' position of this Customer/Customer Site in the selected Route Round, as defined in Customer Route Round Drop Sequence Maintenance. For example, a Drop Sequence value of 2 means the Customer/Customer Site is the second drop in the selected Route Round delivery. You may enter an alternative Drop Sequence value if necessary. When Sales Orders are subsequently generated from this Standing Order and the Route Listing is generated, the Customer/Customer Site will appear at the selected position in the Drop Sequence.
You will then run the Create Standing Order Sales Orders process to generate Sales Orders for your existing Standing Orders, including this week's delivery for Cliff's Corner Shop. Therefore for this week you have orders for Cliff's Corner Shop and Syd's Supermarket requiring delivery. On Sales Order Completion the goods are picked and packed, ready for delivery, in accordance with your standard Sales Order Processing settings as defined in your User record (Quantum User Fields tab). Note that you may amend the Route Round on the Picking Note if required.
On a daily or weekly basis you will also run the Route Listing report to generate 'Driver Lists' showing the customer drops required for all Route Round deliveries going out on that day/week. So the Route Listing for this week's 'Sheffield North Monday' Route Round will show that a delivery is due to be made to Cliff's Corner Shop, based on its allotted position in the 'drop sequence' for that Route Round. The delivery for Syd's Supermarket appears at the top of the list (since a 'one-off' Route/Round was selected when the order was raised), leaving the driver to choose where to place them in the 'drop sequence'. As your Route Round deliveries go out, goods are delivered as per the defined 'drop sequence' for each Route Round delivery. If it is a cash order, the driver may be required to take payment from customers when they deliver the goods.