FreiBier - Order Workflow #

The main workflow is the way from a customer's calling via delivery up to his invoice and paying it. Here I will explain how it goes in our legacy system.

Order (Bestellung) #

The customer calls by phone (or fax) and gives his order. It is helpful that we can see which products he orders in the last months so he really orders the right product. This can be solved in a well done Freibier.OrderWindow.

Delivery Note (Lieferschein) #

On the morning the dispatcher does a FreiBier.RoutePlanning. Perhaps he goes into some of the orders and do small changes. If he is satisfied with the planning he will print out the "Lieferscheine" for one truck.

Drivers load the truck and went to the customers. Because they take back the deposit (Freibier.Pfand) this sheet of paper has to be signed from both partys. We need carbon copy paper for this so we use a dot matrix printer. (Later we may change to a mobile data entry system (FreiBier.MobileDataEntry, but this is a project of it's own).

There are two kinds of Delivery Notes. The first is only a Delivery Note (with deposit return information by hand). The other is a "Delivery Note and Invoice". It has prices and a subtotal line. The driver adds the deposit return information by hand and computes the invoice sum by hand. The first kind of customers becomes an invoice later, the second kind has to pay the delivery immediately.

Return Aquisition (Rückerfassung) #

Drivers come back home in the evening and the Delivery Notes will be taken to the office. Someone has to enter which deposited empty packages (and perhaps goods) they took back and returned.

If we want to hava a general solution it will be best to have a separate Tab for this returns. Some beveryge companys are used to refund this money later (with the next order). So you have to know which orderlines are from the originally order and which are from the return input. (I do not need this for myself at the moment, for me we can also enter it directly in the order lines.)

At this time we enter the information whether the customer paid the invoice directly.

create Invoice #

Later someone controls the document. If it's OK, he will "finish" it and create an invoice. I can print this Invoice directly or leave it and print it later. If an Invoice is printed it is not reversable any more (because it has become an tax document). In the evening I can start a batch process and print all not before printed invoices (they are sent to the customers then). If we have "Delivery Note and Invoice" and the customer paid it and the control gives that the driver computed the right sum we do not have to print an invoice for this occurence.

Accounting #

The Invoice has to create an accounting record for bookkeeping. If the customer paid this becomes an accounting record also.

We need an overview about our warehouse stock. Two interesting questions are: How much of a project I can still sell (while talking to a customer on phone)? How much of a product there has to be in the warehouse (for controlling it)? The difference between these two are Orders that are not printed as an "Delivery Note".