Making Item Changes and Corrections
 		Previous Topic  Next Topic 

The orders that you create from FF&EZ's Design module are essentially independent of the data on the Design side of the system. That is, the information in the FF&E Worksheet is used to generate orders, but changes you make to those orders do not affect the original design data, nor do changes to the original specs automatically affect the orders.

This is in part because "automatic" changes to what are essentially legal documents can cause unexpected, or worse, unnoticed problems and in part because what happens to orders and their quantities in the process of getting finished products delivered is complicated enough without actively linking them to the original design data. However, FF&EZ does keep track of the orders that were created from FF&E Worksheet entries to provide a basic audit trail of what order they appeared on. Preserving this trail may or may not be critical to you, however there are some ways to make changes that will do a better job of keeping these informational links intact.

You can make any change or correction you want to an unissued order, as long as you understand that they will not be reflected in the original specification. You can also make changes to the original specification, then edit the order item on which it was ordered and use the Refresh command on the Item Screen, to pull a new copy of the spec's description, cost and price fields into the item. The Refresh command does not change or update quantities, since these were determined by the FF&E Worksheet scope used to create the order. Also, order quantities may have been adjusted to reflect case quantities after they were created.

However, there are more problematic corrections that may need to be made after an order is generated, and this section addresses changes involving the content of the items (descriptions, vendor, etc.). We will look at shipping and invoicing corrections in a later section, "Dealing with Shipping and Invoicing Issues."

When a change involves the replacement of one product with another, you may also want to correct the FF&E Worksheet to remove items that have been ordered and replace them with occurrences of new items. This is covered at this end of this section.

Techniques

Best Practice

The best approach to avoiding a need to correct order items is contained in two rules:

  1. Don't create an order until you are sure the supplier can 1) supply what you have specified, 2) in the quantities needed and 3) in the time frame required by the project, in order of most serious to least serious problems created.
  2. If a project is delayed for longer than expected, check all the conditions of the previous rule again.

When one or more aspects of the above rules are unexpectedly broken by the realities of manufacturing cycles, you may be faced with the need to make a major correction, like a product or vendor substitution. There are two ways this can happen: Before you issue the order (easy to fix) and after (a bit more complicated). In addition, an order for a chair may have an accompanying order to a fabric manufacturer and the order to the fabric manufacturer may include multiple fabric items (or a fabric that is used in more than just the particular chair that has been discontinued). Simply changing the chair is often not enough.

Before an Order Has Been Issued

To correct an an entire unissued order in FF&EZ, you can simply void it with the Void command. Note however, that the FF&E Worksheet entry will still point to the order's items. So, you actually have several options with an unissued order:

  1. For a single-item order, you can create a new order manually to replace the original. If so, then we recommend entering a note in the original order's "Notes" field indicating which order replaced it.
  2. Then you can void the original order (note that a voided order may "disappear" because it is also marked as "closed" and the Order List screen normally hides closed orders).
  3. For a multiple item order, voiding the whole order may not be possible. In that case, you have two options: 1) Delete the affected items from the order and create a single new order to a different vendor/supplier or 2) if the substitution is for another product from the same vendor, you can simply re-write the order item. Again, add an entry to the order's "Notes" field to note the substitution from the original in the FF&E Worksheet (and remember, we are talking about unissued orders at this point).
  4. In all cases, if a supporting product like a fabric was ordered on a different purchase order, you may need to adjust the quantities on that order to reflect the requirements of the substituted product. The shipping address for the related order may also need to be changed (and if it is the only item on that order that needs to be shipped to a different address, you will need to delete that item and create a new order for it, also! But the method for doing the latter is quite similar to how you might handle the original substitution, using the tools described next.

FF&EZ offers several tools to aid in reconfiguring orders to meet unexpected changes:

  • The Edit Item command can be used to modify an existing item. Note that if you want to keep the project spec and the order item in "synch," you can modify the specification first, then edit the order item and use the Refresh command on the item editing screen to copy the new spec contents into that item (do not do this if the vendor changed; you need a new order).
  • The Replace and Delete commands next to the Items list on the Order List screen can be used to automatically clear out an existing item so that you can enter new information (useful when substituting an item from the same vendor). The Delete command does what it sounds like it does, but with an unissued order, it will also automatically re-number the remaining items to prevent confusion. It behaves differently for an issued order (see next section).
  • You can clone an order and delete all the items not needed on the new order. This would make sense when only a few items were on the original and one of them needs to be shipped to a different address. Be sure to delete the original item on the original order and reprint it as "revised" if needed.
  • You can create a new order and add the desired item to it using the Import command on the Item Form. Since you can import an item from the project (or any project) or from another purchase order, you have a lot of flexibility in avoiding any need to retype an item's description. Note that if the new order is to a different supplier, you will need to override the system's warnings about this (importing an order item assumes it is coming from the same vendor).
  • The Void command on the Ordering screen will void and close an order, removing it from most reports. Note that using this command will not affect any related orders that were created from multi-component objects. These must be edited or voided separately.

After an Order Has Been Issued

The challenges and techniques in this situation are basically like those with an unissued order (above), except that you also need to properly document the change so that a revised order can be printed and sent to the appropriate participants in the process. In addition to the techniques mentioned above, FF&EZ aids this process with these functions:

  • The automatic revision tracking system will create a time-stamped note (also user-stamped in multi-user systems) describing any changes to vendor-related data, including when an item is replaced or deleted.
  • The Replace command clears and edits an item as before, but records basic information about the original item in the revision notes. This produces a revision note that is a little simpler and cleaner than if you simply used the Revise Item command to replace the original contents of an item.
  • The Delete command clears out the original item, leaving a "deleted" note in both the "Product Type" and the revision notes field, but it does not hide or renumber the item, so that there is no confusion about what happened to the original item. Since FF&EZ's order items are numbered to aid in communications, changing the item number sequence on an issued order is not allowed.
  • The Void command on the Ordering screen will void and close an order, removing it from most reports. However, if an order has been issued, it may have some information related to the required deposit that needs to be dealt with first, especially if a deposit has been paid. See the section "100% Credits" on the "Vendor Credits" page.

Correcting or Re-ordering FF&E Worksheet Entries

If you have converted an FF&E Worksheet item to an order prematurely or if an item has been replaced by a different product, you have three options:

  1. You have the option of leaving the Worksheet entry unchanged. Once issued, the order will include revision notes indicating that a line item was changed. You can add additional notes on the order if needed or if it has not been issued. You can also add a note on the Specification screen's "Status" area for the associated spec to note the substitution. This option makes sense if there is no need to preserve the final contents of the project (or sales order) in the design project.
  2. You can delete the Worksheet entry and add a new entry to replace it, which will be "unordered." This makes sense if you need or want to generate new orders to replace orders that you voided or in which you simply deleted the incorrect items. It can be used when you are replacing the original object with a different one (recommended) or if you have edited the original object and specs to change their definition (only do this if you are changing and re-ordering every usage of that object in the project!)

Don't forget: If you remove a Worksheet item for an object with multiple components, the resulting orders will include all those components. If some components were already on an existing order, be careful that you do not duplicate the orders for those components. Either remove the supporting components from the original order or void the "extra" orders for the components.

  1. Only for special circumstances: After correcting the order, you can reduce the quantity in the FF&E worksheet to zero and add a new entry for a different object in the worksheet to replace it. This could probably cause confusion for other users, so it's only recommended if you need to preserve all the entries, even for orders that have been voided.

If you need to correct multiple Worksheet instances of an ordered object, here are the steps that are most efficient:

  1. Make all corrections to the orders first, to ensure that any revision notes have already been entered.

Important: If the original object had more than one component, be sure to correct all orders that were generated from it, not just the one for the primary spec. The worksheet summary area shows the order and item number for each component.

  1. Open the FF&E Worksheet and click on the "Object" column header to sort by Tag.
  2. Use Ctrl-F to activate the Find tool beneath the Worksheet list, then enter the tag you are looking for. Steps 2 and 3 will position the list so that all of the target occurrences are grouped.

    Alternate: You can use the Search in tool to locate the PO #. The Find all option will create a quick query that will show only the matching objects. This is useful if you only want to affect items from a single order.
  3. If you want to document the original occurrences and quantities, print an "Object Location List" report, using the "Current object" as the quick filter on the Print setup form (not needed if you used the Find all tool above).
  4. Delete each entry as needed. FF&EZ will warn you that the occurrence has been ordered and you will confirm each. Be sure that these entries were on the same order The same item could have been ordered at separate times, so take this into account to be sure you remove only the correct entries.
  5. If using a query: When finished, use the "Show all" option at the top right corner of the screen to deactivate the query.
  6. Now add a new entry to replace what was deleted (and see step 8). These may be for a replacement object (different Tag) with a different product component, or it may be just a new occurrence of the same object Tag after its details have been edited on the object and/or specification screens to represent a new, unordered product selection.
  7. Once you add the first occurrence, you can use the Worksheet's Clone command to quickly clone that occurrence into other rooms.
  8. When finished, you can use the Order command to create new orders as needed. Use the "This object ... anywhere in the project" scope to order all the new occurrences of the object.