Working with Clothing

This article is a high level run through of the clothing capabilities of the system

Table of contents

Clothing companies have a number of special order types

Seasonal (Indent) orders - selling Articles that are planned for next season, are not yet in stock, and not all of them will be purchased (depending on customer interest)
1. Customers will often place multiple indent orders (Across multiple months) and will be incentivised by a discount to provide firm orders.
Refill Orders - Orders to refill regular stock or seasonal stock if the season is going better than planned
Back Orders - if some stock is not available and unable to ship when an order of available stock ships. Backorders are created manually from any order that short shipped.
Drop Ship Orders - some websites will ask you to reserve stock for them as they try to sell it - and ask you to send the products direct to their consumers - but bill the company for the stock.

Selling Clothing - Sales Reps

Sales Reps normally walk into a store and take orders.

A really nice way to take the order is using the Order Wizard - designed for the sales reps to easily take orders.

Refill Order - I want more of what I have recently ordered
1. Select Refill Order
2. Then review the resulting list of items
3. Drill into a group and select the actual items you want to order
4. Once having chosen all the items to order you can then enter the quantities that you want to order
5. Then check order details
6. And finish the checkout process
Seasonal Order - I want to purchase for next season - stock that is not yet available - simply choose seasonal order
1. The rules change - no longer checks for stock for example
2. Filters articles to only those for the season chosen
3. Order cannot be Authorised until season is confirmed (from draft status) - Can move to "Awaiting confirmation"

Selling Clothing - Telesales

Telesales forms are formatted for high volume order entry
Quickly find what this customer normally orders.

Promotional pricing can apply automatically or alert the user.

Promotion definition is very strong

As is the pricing capability
Once you have added all the lines to the order - you can quickly review and adjust qty for each size on the review grid

Then update the freight (note if you have used the link to Temando the system will get a list of freight quotes for you.

Later on the back of the sales order - all changes are tracked as well as links to the journals involved
Picking items in the warehouse - any order that has been authorised and is due in the next week is immediately ready to pick. Select and either pick with a barcode scanner, use touch screen or paper.
The system provides a view of where you are going and what is left to go - organised by area in the warehouse so you can plan all the picking in order of location.
This is the picklist printout - grouped by product category and sizes for those that prefer to work from paper marking things off as they go.
2. Print out the shipping documents
3. Packing list
4. Invoice
5. Then wait for the courier who will pick up lots of orders. Mark each order taken with the con-note number easily.

Purchasing Clothing

A purchase order with sizes is similar to a sales order with sizes. Seasonal orders are for products that are not yet released and are purchased in advance of the season. It is common that many of the items that are proposed for a season do not get enough sales to be justified.
While entering the purchase order you can review sales orders that have items supplied by this supplier.

Seasons - managing stock and orders

Seasons are maintained on the Supplier. Each supplier may have different indent discounts and cut-off dates.
1. Season in Plan Status: A season in plan does not allow any of the Sales Orders to be Authorised.
  1. A purchase order will exist with many items being considered for the season - that are in "Proposed" status - ie will not be confirmed until sales prove they are going to be popular enough.
  2. Sales orders can be created for any item on the proposed purchase order - but the sales orders cannot go beyond "To be confirmed" status.
    1. Note that often customers create a number of indent orders for each month of the season as speculative orders
    2. The Indent discount is used to encourage customers to place firm orders before the season starts and the stock is purchased.
    3. It also enforces that the sales order cannot be changed without losing the discount.
  3. The Purchase order is adjusted and items that did not generate enough interest status becomes "Archive" status.
  4. The Purchase order is then sent to the supplier to be confirmed that they can manufacture the items and moves to "Supplier to Confirm" status.
  5. The Purchase order is then confirmed and the season becomes Active.
Once a season becomes active
1. All Sales Orders for the season that will get 100% of their stock - move to "Confirmed" status and and email is sent to the customer
2. All sales orders for the season that will not get 100% stock (some Articles have been dropped from the season" will be in a list for the reps to contact the customers to be adjusted
As the season rolls on
1. Your customers will ask for more stock - often in advance of it being available and sometimes on speculation it will be made available.
2. Some of the indent orders placed will be varied if stock is not selling.
3. The end result is that you will be left with a combination of:
  1. Sales orders you cannot 100% fulfil - so you will need to short ship.
    1. If you ship an order that fulfils less than 100% then the order will show number shipped for that order line to be zero. You can create a back order easily if the customer requests it for items that did not ship. Backorders are not created Automatically to ensure a person checks the stock can be fulfilled and the customer still wants it.
  2. Stock that nobody has ordered (leftover stock). This stock loses value the longer it is kept and needs to be moved ASAP.
4. This Dashboard looks at all the orders in the system
  1. ranking them by the most $ value that can be send to a customer from remaining stock, consuming stock by each order
  2. listing the stock that will be left over after fulfilling all the current orders. This is the stock you need to move before it becomes heavily discounted
Finally you have the fire sale of stock that did not sell in the season
1. This is either sold in bulk to a organisation that specialises in end of seasons stock.
  1. You can define a list of these organisations to avoid sales to them affecting your sales reports as stock is really excess in this situation.
2. Or it is sold via discount websites that offer stock on a short term at extreme discount.
  1. These companies will ask for stock to be put aside for them (the stock they plan to advertise) and only to be shipped the stock they sell. This is managed through an order type called "Drop Ship". An order is place in the system for the stock they want to reserve. Then orders that are shipped (often directly to the end customer) add a shipped quantity to the drop ship order so at the end of the selling process the Drop Ship order has a record of all stock sent to customers linked to it - and an appropriate invoice is sent to the website company.