General Consultant Discussion

I have a client that more and more of their business is from a manufacturer's rep agreement and they are trying to maintain the orders in Sage 100 for historical and tracking purposes. What have most people found is the best way to handle in Sage 100? Does anyone kow if there is an enhancement that helps track this?

Is your focus on access, order processing, commission and compensation management, or something other? How you set things up is usually driven by the terms of the agreement, the nature of the rep, and the processes you intend to support. If you are working with an independent rep with few or no systems of their, we typically set them up in Sage as a user and as a sales person in SO. If they are a larger organization and have their own systems, we set up VI jobs and import sales order for the rep's system. That or set up EDI for order processing if it is a really large organization. If automating the interface, It is often important to synchronize part numbers or set up vendor item number aliases in item maintenance to help with the translation. How specific are you looking to get?

@ShawnSlavin - In this case the client is not the manufacturer, but the rep. They receive the order from the end user and log into the mfg's system and place the order. The mfg bills the client and when the mfg is paid they send a commission check to the client. They are trying to track current orders for reconciliation purposes (reconcile the commission amounts with the orders they placed, etc.) and also desire to keep a history of the orders that the end users placed.

@JohnLeonard one option would be to process sales orders through 100 and send them to the mfg via EDI. That would avoid double entry and allow you to track the orders sent. If EDI is not available, you could create a custom export file via VI, Crystal, Access, ... if the mfg has the ability to import orders rather than enter by hand. The arrangement leads to all kinds of questions like: How you are using 100 today for these types of orders? Do you have the manufactures item catalog in 100 already? Do you track delivery to the customer? Are you taking orders from the customer is the manufacturer taking the orders directly from the end customer? If so, how do you know what orders where placed? Do you participate in the collections process? How many manufactures does your customer rep? I would be happy to dig with you in San Diego at MOTM 2014 over drinks.

@ShawnSlavin Thanks Shawn. These are actually the issues I have been discussing with the client. I was really just wondering what other people were doing in similar situations, but I guess every situation is different. The client is taking the order from the client but the mfg bills the client so, I'm trying to figure out the best (most efficient) way to enter the order in Sage 100 for historical purposes even though we do not ever turn the order into an invoice? I'm thinking that maybe we create some sort of UDF and flag the order as a Mfg rep order and then filter those out from the other lookups.