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Quantum VS Help: Sales Desk |
Sales Orders have Required Date and Target Date fields (if enabled) in the Sales Order header and on individual lines. See Sales Order Date Fields And Delivery Performance for definitions.
The Required Date and Target Date fields can be updated as an order progresses - as described in Amending Sales Order Date Fields - and subsequently compared using an application such as Quantum VS myViewpoint to assess how well you met your fulfilment/delivery targets.
The following examples show common scenarios of when, how and why the Required Date and/or Target Date might be updated as the order progresses.
The Required Date and Target Date can be used to compare and update order delivery dates with those which were originally agreed with the customer. This example shows how dates can be amended when you cannot meet your original delivery target.
1. On January 1 a Sales Order is raised for the customer 'Abbey Forest Products', who is ordering 3 Products: Product X, Product Y and Product Z. Sales Order dates default as follows:
The Order Date is 01/01/20XX.
The Required Date in the Sales Order header defaults to the 'Required Days' value (in the Selling tab of the Price Book General control record) - 3 days in our example. The Required Date is therefore 04/01/20XX.
The Target Date in the Sales Order header defaults to the Required Date - 04/01/20XX.
All date fields for the Sales Order lines default to those in the Sales Order header.
2. At this stage the system has assumed you can meet your default delivery time of 3 days after placing the order. However, imagine that 2 days later you realise you cannot meet this, perhaps because of delays in obtaining stock, or because of problems with your delivery lorries.
Therefore, on January 3 you ring the customer to explain that the earliest you can deliver is on January 8 - 4 days later than expected. In theory the customer might wish to cancel at this point, but imagine they accept the new 'expected' delivery date.
Therefore you retrieve the Sales Order and:
enter a new Required Date of 08/01/20XX to show the actual date on which you now expect to deliver the goods; and
leave the Target Date as 04/01/20XX to show that you will miss the mutually agreed target delivery date.
In this scenario, assuming you subsequently made the delivery on January 8, analysis would show that you missed the agreed target delivery date by 4 days.
This is a variation on Example 1 showing how the Required Date and Target Date can be amended when the customer delays the order.
1. The Sales Order is raised on January 1 as in Example 1, whereby you initially expect delivery to be on Jan 4.
2. On January 3 the customer rings and asks you to delay delivery until January 12. Therefore you retrieve the Sales Order and:
enter a new Required Date of 12/01/20XX to show the actual date on which you now expect to deliver the goods; and
amend the Target Date to 12/01/20XX to show that you have not missed the mutually agreed target date, as you have effectively agreed a new Target Date.
In this scenario, assuming you subsequently made the delivery on January 12, analysis would show that you met the agreed target delivery date.
This is a variation on Example 1 in which order lines are assigned different Required and Target dates.
1. The Sales Order is raised on January 1 as in Example 1, whereby you initially expect delivery to be on Jan 4.
2. At this stage the system has assumed you can meet your default delivery time of 3 days after placing the order. However, imagine that 2 days later you realise that although you can meet this for Products X and Y, you cannot deliver Product Z until 2 weeks later because of delays in obtaining stock.
Therefore, on January 3 you ring the customer to explain that you can deliver Products X and Y on January 4 as expected. However, the earliest you can deliver Product Z is on January 18 - 2 weeks later than expected.
In theory the customer might wish to cancel at this point, but imagine they accept the new 'expected' delivery date for Product Z. Therefore you retrieve the Sales Order and:
leave the Required Date and Target Date in the header as Jan 4, so that the Required Date and Target Date for all order lines default to Jan 4; and
on the Product Z line only, you amend the Required Date to 18/01/20XX to show the actual date on which you now expect to deliver Product Z, but leave the line's Target Date as 04/01/20XX to show that you will miss the mutually agreed target delivery date for Product Z.
In this scenario, assuming you subsequently made the delivery on January 4 for Product X and Y and January 18 for Product Z, analysis would show that you met the agreed target delivery date for Products X and Y but missed the agreed target delivery date for Product Z by 14 days.
NEXT: Forward Orders