Most orders should flow through to fulfilment, shipping and invoicing without any trouble, either via manual processes or automation. Efficiency is lost very quickly when you have to deal with the exceptions; the 'troublesome' orders.
Brightpearl helps with this in a number of ways. Here are some recommended best practices.
Orders on hold
- Create a single order status for "on hold" (don't create statuses for each type of hold).
- Create a sales custom field for "reason for hold" so that everyone can see why an order has been placed on hold. This is best as a select list of common reasons such as:
- Fraud check
- Items out of stock
- Customization required
- Extra payment required
Using the custom field in an order, with an 'on hold' status:
Using the custom field as a filter on the sales list:
Using the order status, custom field, and a combination of allocation/fulfil/payment status filters, you can tackle your exceptional orders in a structured fashion.
Let's have a look at an example. On a daily basis, you could check for orders where:
- Status = On hold
- Reason for hold = Items out of stock
Select all orders, and choose to batch allocate inventory in case new inventory has arrived and has not been automatically allocated to sales orders.
Next, filter again but show
- Status = On hold
- Reason for hold = Items out of stock
- Allocation status = Fully allocated
This would normally be an empty list, but if any of your sales have now been allocated OK, you can progress them through fulfilment.
Regular tasks
For tasks like the above, where you are filtering lists and performing actions, we recommend you use preset filters to make the job quicker. Alternatively, you could filter a page and add it to Favorites. Either way, make sure you don't use a fixed date range in your filter as the results will soon become inaccurate.
Using automation
The Automation app can be set up to park orders onto any selected status, and to populate any custom fields on the order. You can also use automation to populate custom fields with dynamic data from the order using widgets in a similar way to populating an order template.