Creating Orders from the FF&E Worksheet

The system screens in the Design-Purchasing version are essentially the same as that in the Design version, except for:

The addition of the Orders (with an "s"), Expediting, Check Requests and Invoices buttons in the "Views" section to access and work with orders.
The Order... button (singular) on the FF&E Worksheet's "Commands" button set.

The latter is the key to converting your room FF&E to numbered purchase orders.

To repeat: the Order... button is used to create orders from the FF&E Worksheet, while the Orders view button opens the Order List screen so you can view the orders you have created.

All of the instructions below assume you are starting on the FF&E Worksheet screen of an opened project. If you want to create an order manually, see "Creating Orders Manually" instead. Please note that it is unusual to create orders manually.

Project Setup

Before creating orders, be sure that any markup percentage (billing type 1) or purchasing fee percentage (billing type 2 or 3) have been set on all specs (if applicable). If you are billing your client from FF&EZ, these percentages are transferred to the orders for use in client invoicing. This is also true for taxes you will charge your client for billing type 1 projects. See "Working with Order Markups, Taxes, Freight and Fees" for more information.

For purchasing management projects where a tax is associated with the order, you can choose to have the tax rate from the specification transferred to the order or not. If you do not, you can enter a tax quote on individual orders instead. This is controlled by an option on the Project screen (use this for the most common situation) and an override option on the FF&E Worksheet's Order... command.

Be sure to indicate if freight will be taxed on the Project screen.

Checking Data

Before ordering items on the worksheet, we highly recommend that you use the Worksheet's Setup Check command. This function creates a special query that searches for items that may have missing or unfinished information. For instance, if the quantity for an object component has not been entered, not only would that product be ordered with a quantity of zero, but its cost and price would not be in any reports you print, including quotes. Since Setup Check uses the query mechanism, you can print reports from the query just like any other query, and modify the query if desired. Potential problems are always highlighted in red on the Worksheet screen, so it's easy to move through the resulting list to fix issues (or confirm that they are not a problem). As in other situations, you can double-click an object or spec in the FF&E Summary area to edit it directly.

Prior to the step of confirming the scope of orders and creating them (next section), you have an option to print proof reports that show exactly what will be on the orders you are about to create.

Also note that the order creation process requires that a salesperson be selected on the Project List form for that project. If there is no "official" salesperson, you can create a dummy entry for a department or the whole company and use that instead.

Creating Orders

When you click on the Order... button, FF&EZ will display the "Order Conversion Setup" screen. This screen lets you select what will be ordered from the unordered FF&E in the project, using a combination of two basic scopes: an object scope and a location scope. The object scope is either the currently highlighted object, the vendor of that object or all objects. The location scope is either the current room, the current area or the entire project. The combination of these two scopes will allow you to limit what is ordered to a number of useful subsets of your data.

In addition to the basic scopes, you can also set up a query (before you click Order) to include any subset possible and then select the "All objects in the current query" scope. This scope is independent of the other options.

For example, if you need to fast-track orders for a project area named "South Wing," but have not finished determining quantities for all items, you can set up a query for "Quantity (Worksheet) is greater than 0.0" and "Area ID is equal to 'south wing'." Since previously ordered items are automatically excluded, this will produce a set of all items in the area that have a non-zero quantity. Later, when the remaining item quantities have been determined, you can simply select the standard scope of "All objects" in "the current area" to produce the remaining unordered items for that area.

For simplicity in this example, we are ordering all objects from a single primary vendor in a single room:

Once a scope is in effect, the Setup Screen will display two types of data:

The objects that have been selected, listed by location (image above) and the extended quantity (based on the quantity of each room in the project)
The specifications for those objects' product components and total quantities needed to order (below). Objects that are composed of multiple components will automatically generate the orders needed for all components.

You can switch between these displays with the buttons just above the display grid. In the example below, four orders will be created to four separate vendors—one to the seating manufacturer (Southfield) and one each to the fabric sources:

When you switch to the "Components to order" display, always verify whether the specifications shown are shipping to the project site vs. an alternate address. An alternate address will be indicated with the vendor ID associated with that address.

IMPORTANT: If you see any secondary specifications (such as fabrics) that are shipping to the project "Site," you should cancel and set the correct address for them on the spec screen before continuing. This is especially important if the same fabric is being shipped to more than one vendor, since these quantities need to be split to separate orders for shipping (this is done automatically if you specify the alternate addresses before creating the orders).

If any components have been assigned to a separate supplier, the Vendor ID will have an asterisk next to it. If you click on that row, the supplier's vendor ID will be displayed below the list.

Options

Before creating the orders, you will want to check the status of any options that affect how the orders will be created. For most people, you can accept the options as they are initially set.

Combine products from same vendor or supplier into single order.	If unchecked, multiple products create separate orders instead of separate line items (if checked, a vendor's order will still be split if the shipping address is different). Leave this checked unless you have a reason to split every order item to a separate order number. Default: selected.
Show locations or usage	Adds location or usage information to the order item descriptions. For items that are the primary components of objects, this will list the rooms in which the object is used. For secondary components, it will list the object or objects in which they are used. Default: selected.
Include room name	This is enabled if the option above is checked. It adds the longer room name to the locations list for specs that are the primary component. This is useful if your Room IDs are codes that are not "reader friendly." Default: not selected
Split different object usages of the same product into separate line items	If checked, a product being used as part of different finished objects will appear as separate line items matching the different uses. This will separate the quantities but also make it more clear when different quantities are used in different objects. These separate items will follow each other since the system creates order items in Spec ID order within the same order. Default: selected Note: this is required and automatically selected if component prices are being summed for each object (see the Project List section). Also, this does not change the automatic creation of a new order if the shipping addrss changes.
List secondary components that are ordered separately	If checked, the order item for an object's primary component will also list the secondary components with source and quantity for reference. The reference consists of the product type description, the vendor and if applicable, supplier and the quantity required per object. These are preceded by a note identifying the item(s) as being ordered separately. Default: selected. This only applies to objects with more than one component and will not include "image only" specfications since they are never ordered. It is intended to make the order for the primary component better reflect any additional materials needed.
Copy tax rate to orders	Only applies to purchasing management projects (billing types 2 or 3). This option allows you to use a tax rate on the project screen to estimate the total taxes for a project, while eliminating a fixed tax rate on the resulting orders so that you can enter a tax quote from the vendor instead. Once an order is created, you can enter the tax quote (or enter a tax rate that applies to all items). This is useful in situations where a tax will be charged on the orders, but a simple tax rate on the project is not adequate to predict final tax amounts on each order.
Order item detail	This option controls how much of the specification descripton is transferred to the order (along with required fields like model number): The full description includes all descriptive fields including the "Add'l description" field "Medium" description includes the short description ("Product/Type") and the basic short fields like "Color" and "Size." The short description only prints the "Product/Type" field as the description. The default setting for this option can be permanently set using the Setup option on the main screen, under the "Program Options" tab.
Stack fields	If you select this option, the "medium" description fields will be stacked vertically instead of being printed as a single paragraph. This has no affect on the "Add'l description" field, which will be printed as you entered it.

Proof Reports

At the bottom of the Order Conversion Setup window is a button that can be used to print the "Ordering Worksheet" report. This is the same report available from the main FF&E Worksheet reports list (under the Print command), except that it will automatically print only the items shown in your current ordering scope. This means that the report can serve two purposes:

It can be used to "test" the orders that will be created. The Ordering Worksheet is essentially a set of purchase orders without order numbers, and shows exactly what information will appear on the new orders when they are created. So, if you want to create a check set of ordering information to be sure you have everything complete, this is an excellent tool for that (of course, you can also edit the orders and their items after they are created, but this can help keep the original project spec descriptions more in synch with the orders they produced).
The report can be used as a compact backup record of the orders that were produced. As long as you print this report just prior to actually converting the FF&E to orders, it will match the descriptive text and quantities of the orders.

Creating Orders

When you are ready to create the orders, click on the Order button at the bottom of the Order Conversion Setup screen. The system will ask you to confirm that you want to proceed, and if you do, it will create all the orders needed for the scope shown on the setup screen. At this point, you can open the Orders List form to do any fine-tuning and then issue the orders with that screen's Processing command.