• Phone+1 678.359.4184
  • Address126 A Singley Rd. Jackson GA 30233
  • Open HoursSupport : Mon – Fri: 9 AM – 6 PM EST / Sat: 9 AM – 1 PM EST
  • Phone+1 678.359.4184
  • Address126 A Singley Rd. Jackson GA 30233
  • Open HoursSupport : Mon – Fri: 9 AM – 6 PM EST / Sat: 9 AM – 1 PM EST

Special Orders and how they behave in Lizzy

What is a special order? A special order is an item a customer wants that you do not have in stock.

A customer arrives at your store and asks for a part.  Lizzy identifies that you do not currently have the item in stock and she tags it on the invoice (in yellow) to let you know.  She does not order the part however, unless you’re on a service ticket.  Other invoice types require you to cash out the invoice before the part is physically placed on a purchase order.  NOTE:  The first invoice you create to order the part is not a real invoice in the sense that it does not record a sale.  It only records that you took money for the item and that you have a liability to that customer until you physically deliver the part to them. 

At some point during the day/week, you will go to Accounting -> Payables and Locate all of your “Unordered” purchase orders and order each one.  Lizzy has already tagged each part that is for special order to the customer that is waiting on it so there really is nothing which needs to be done there.  She can also electronically send the orders to the suppliers for those that support it, so make sure you ask about this feature if you’re not sure.

At some point, the part will arrive (hopefully) from the supplier you ordered it from, which brings us to the next step with Lizzy.  Lizzy can do a lot of things for you but you do have to communicate with her.  So, before you do anything with any parts that have arrived from the supplier, you need to tell Lizzy which ones have arrived. When receiving parts you really don’t need to write names or worry with what was for customers, service or stock.  Lizzy will print you a receiving report that will tell you exactly where to put each part.  Pay special attention to the bin numbers it tells you to place them in because it will later give you that same bin number to deliver the parts to the customer when they show up.

Screen Shot 2013-01-02 at 11.18.10 AM

If you tell her to in Settings -> Contacts -> Form Emails, Lizzy will also send an email to the special order customers to let them know the parts have arrived.

So, we did the original invoice, we collected the money from the customer and we have a record on file of how much they paid.  But what if they didn’t pay anything at all or what if it was sent to AR instead of being paid?  Well, in the first case, nothing was recorded on the books and the order was still placed and tracked.  In the latter case, Lizzy is assuming you’re working with a company and will create a credit AR entry to hold until the parts are picked up as well as the final AR that will be used to make sure they do eventually pay.  This credit can then be used against the final invoice that we’ll generate shortly so that anyone that comes in from the company to pickup the parts doesn’t need to pay anything.  The credit is used and the final AR is still sitting there to make sure they pay later.

The parts are in, the customer has been emailed and we now want to make sure they get a call as well.  To do this, go to Invoicing, Special Order list and click the “All”  and “Recieved Items” options at the top.  You can even select to only call the customers you took the orders from with the additional selection at the top.  In any case, you will be presented with a list of customers that are waiting on items.  Click the phone icon as you call each one and record what you discussed and who you spoke with. If you get an answering machine and leave a message or got no answer at all, click the buttons on the screen to record those facts as well.

Lizzy will keep track of each call made as well as color coding your SO list to help keep track of the ones you still need to call.

The last thing left is what to do when the customer arrives to pickup their parts.  You can’t just give them to the customer to leave, even if they had paid earlier.  The reason is Lizzy has a credit on file for them, the parts allocated and your books showing you have inventory.  She also never recorded the actual sale of any of the items, only the fact that the customer ordered them.  So we need to deliver the parts to the customer and let Lizzy create that final (REAL) invoice to record things properly and to remove the inventory and credits from your books.  To do this, go  to Invoicing -> Locate Contact, then click the Customer Pickups menu.

Fill in the quantities you have and note the special order bin Lizzy is telling you to go retrieve the parts from.  Once you’re done, click the deliver button and Lizzy will create a final invoice with all of the selected parts already filled in for you.  All you need to do is click the pay button at the top of the screen to finish the transaction.

Screen Shot 2013-01-02 at 11.44.49 AM

You’ll notice that any credits that were on file for the invoice are automatically selected as payment and all you need to do is click the pay button at the bottom of the screen to finish things out.

We can not stress the importance of correctly following each step listed here.  Lizzy is one of the most powerful business management systems on the market, but you have to communicate with her if she’s to do her job.

 

Leave a Reply