One of the key features that really makes 1CRM an All in One CRM system is Order Management. Most CRM systems leave this part out (there are around 625 CRM systems, and only about 15 include Order Management), and you manage orders entirely with a separate system that will not link your orders to the rest of your data. 1CRM is a believer in having all the information you need in one place!
Whenever a customer places an order with your company, certain processes happen to make sure you get paid and the items or services get to the client. 1CRM includes quotes, invoices, sales orders, product catalog, shipping data, subscription management and more!
Having order management features within your CRM enables selected employees to access data such as who your top customers are, buyer trends regarding your most popular and least popular products (also impacting which products need to be more or less in stock) sales forecast predictions and more! It really helps you have a full view of your business, and helps everyone do their jobs efficiently.
CRM with Order Management
A full order management system can involve terms and processes which might seem foreign and confusing to anyone who is new to it (and some who aren’t that new). To make things simpler, we’ve outlined a few possible order management scenarios that can apply to different types of businesses.
Invoice Workflow
This first scenario is a simple invoice workflow. It’s probably the most common scenario, and it generally applies to online or telephone orders of items or services that are ready to go out to the customer.
Sales Order Workflow
This second scenario is similar to the simple invoice workflow, but your order has items that are not available to ship right away. Maybe you have to make them, perhaps you have to order them from your supplier, or possibly they are already are on order and you are waiting to receive a shipment. So you create a Sales Order to keep track of their order and which items they are due to receive.
Quote Workflow
This last scenario applies to businesses that commonly issue customized quotes to clients before a purchase is made. Often for a service they will provide or a larger, more specialized order of goods.
While you can create custom quotes, sales orders and invoices within 1CRM, you might already be using an online eCommerce service for consumer sales such as WooCommerce. Fear not, 1CRM also integrates with WooCommerce, so that all of your consumer sales data can be synced and available alongside sales made by your sales staff within 1CRM.
Want a more detailed description of one of these processes? Here are the keywords you need to know when it comes to order management.
Quotations are typically organized into one or more groups of line items. A line item is something you propose to sell to your client – a product or service – and will have a quantity associated with it, a unit price, and an extended price (unit price x quantity). Each line item may have taxes or discounts that apply to it, or taxes and discounts may often be applied at the line item group level. Shipping costs will often be added, and then a Quotation total calculated, and taxes itemized.
When preparing a Quote it can be very handy to be able to add products from a Product Catalog, if your business uses one. Or to add standard types of services you commonly provide.
When a client accepts your Quotation, you’ll want to convert it to a Sales Order or an Invoice.
An Invoice often looks just like a Quote, but is prepared at a time when you have delivered your products or services to your client, and it’s time to let them know when payment is due. Each invoice will have payment terms defined, which will be used to calculate the due date of your invoice. Just like a Quote or a Sales Order, the Invoice consists of groups of line items, with discounts and taxes, shipping changes and totals.
A Product Catalog will include potentially everything you sell. What does it cost you, and what do you normally sell it for? Who do you purchase it from? Is there a picture of it? How many of it do we have in stock – and at which warehouses?
It’s great when making a Quotation to look up catalog items and add them one at a time, or several at a time. Organizing your catalog by types of products will make it faster to look them up.
Defining assemblies or kits can be an advantage for some businesses – where an assembly is just a grouping of simple products with its own name – making it faster to add everything in the assembly to a quote in one quick step.
Sales Orders are an intermediate stage between Quotes and Invoices. Not every business uses Sales Orders, in which case they convert Quotes directly to Invoices, bypassing the Sales Order step. But if your business often part-ships orders to clients, and often completes work for clients in stages, then you likely will want to use Sales Orders. Typically one Quote converts into one Sales Order – but one Sales Order may be used to generate multiple Invoices, as each separate portion of the Sales Order is delivered to the client. Businesses that use Sales Orders often have an Order Desk, where dedicated staff tracks all orders and makes sure they are all delivered and invoiced in a timely fashion.
Purchase Orders are a lot like a Sales Order, but sent to your suppliers not your customers. They have the now-familiar structure of line item groups, with taxes, discounts and shipping.
Once you are creating Invoices, you know that at some time in the future the chance exists that you will need to make Credit Notes. They are typically a credit for all or part of a specific Invoice you sent to a client, although sometimes they are just a generic amount credit not linked to a specific Invoice.
Once your supplier processes your Purchase Order and ships it to you, he will send you his Invoice. You enter that Invoice into your own system as a Bill, usually by converting your Purchase Order into a Bill.
Once the client has received their Invoice from you, and payment falls due, you will (hopefully) receive payment, and need to record that payment to reduce the amount the client owes you. You may want to allocate a single received payment across multiple outstanding invoices as well.
Just like you track Accounts Receivable from your clients, you track Accounts Payable to your suppliers. When a Bill to a Supplier comes due, you send off payment, and record the Payment Sent to ensure your Accounts Payable records reflect that payment.
When an order is ready to go to a customer (assuming it is a physical object, not a service, or software) you’ll want to make a Shipping record, which will pull stock from the warehouse you select, and track which shipping firm is doing the delivery for you.
Receiving is the opposite of Shipping. You record what shipments have been received, from which Suppliers, and added into stock at which warehouses.
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