A lot of my customers are asking to track their orders. We can send them a tracking # once we ship the order.
But if it takes us a number of days to prepare the order, how can we send this info to our customer?
What are people using (if anything at all) to inform their customers that the order is in production, it is being picked, it is being shipped in the afternoon, etc?
Lester Frischman
Pittsburgh, PA

Hi Lester,

There are "created" and "last modified" date and time fields on each order. Perhaps you could use GridView to create a list of all the orders created and changed each day and mail merge the list of these orders to your clients.

Hi Lester,

I've always been a bit surprised that Order Status is not an OE field. Proper sales order tracking with auto-triggered email notifications sounds like an interesting and worthy feature for the future.

I believe that there are situations where the notifications would be useful both internally (staff) and externally (customers). However, I would imagine this to be a reasonable to significant amount of development (design/programming) and therefore the future could be quite a ways down the road.

... so please update us on how you make out in the meantime - here's my 2 cents for a possible workaround:

1. Create an OE Optional field "Order Status"
2. Create an OE optional field Validation Table ("finder" type) with your pre-defined Statuses (blank, In Production, Picking, Shipped, etc.)
3. Users update Order Status as and when appropriate
4. GV prepares a mail merge list of status updates daily (Last Updated Date = Today AND Order Status = ???). It will most likely be wise to develop some statuses that do NOT trigger an entry on the list.

BTW - as not everyone has GV - you may be able to acomplish step 4. with the OE Filters and Excel Direct features as well but depending on the size of the dataset, performance might be an issue.

Regards, Pete

PS: Be warned that I've never actually done any of the above but I'm a big dreamer Good luck

Hi Lester,

You could use JobTracker to enter the order and track the user defined status through acceptance to delivery. A tracking number is generated as soon as the order is received and confirmation can be sent to the customer via email. When complete, the work order can be printed to file and imported to Order Entry for invoicing. When CounterSales is available, the work order can be invoiced directly from CounterSales.
Both products are directly integrate to Adagio Inventory, Receivables, and Ledger.
For more information visit our website: www.islandmicro.com.
To arrange a webinar demo, you and your dealer can contact me at:

250 286-0624
terry@islandmicro.com
Regards,

Terry