adp special orders

[jdpetey]

Rex,

Let me throw everyone for a loop on this one.

At our store we don't have a bin or bins designated for special order parts. We are a GM store that bins everything by group numeric sequencing, including SOR Parts.

The need for special order parts bins, is, IN MY OPINION, an outdated concept.

We bin all are parts in their group respective bins so that they are where they would belong if they would be a stocking part. If the part doesn't move, and becomes so called forced stock, it is already in the bin that you would put it in when you removed it from the Special Order Bin. This eliminates purging the SOR bin(s). This is also effective when the computer goes down and numbers need checked.

With the ability to report all SOR's with their group respective bin locations at will, you can always determine the oldest SOR parts without having to visually bin check the SOR bins. You can easily opt to return the oldest parts, or go around to the bins and remove SOR tags from parts indicating they are available for sale.

As for parts needed to complete an entire order that were already in stock, you can set up a priority such as OH for the parts on hand, and when you roll the SOR's on to your orders, these parts, as long as you don't select this priority, won't roll on to your orders, and when you invoice them, as long as you have the desired OH,will fill automatically when you fill the invoice. You can tag these parts on their shelves to indicate that they are on hold for someone, or, you can simply choose your default stock order priority and order the part anyway, because as soon as your BRP is reached, you will end up reordering the part for STOCK anyway. If you use such a priority as OH, when the ordered parts have an OH, as well as the other parts on the request that were originally requested, when you go to fill the SOR, it will automatically fill all the lines with OH quantities meeting the requested quantities.

Hope this helps.

Chuck,

I tested the system to see if manual SOR's would roll to RO's based on CUST NO.
They would roll if the Manual SOR had the last eight digits and the CUST NO. matching.
I created a test RO with my own vehicle and entered a manual SOR for a part with an OH quantity >1 such as a PF47 and a priorty of OH so that I wouldn't have to order and receipt the part.
When I went into the open RO at first, the system didn't recognize an existing SOR. So, I went back into the manual SOR and added the last eight of my VIN, and tried to roll the SOR onto the existing SOR, and, POOF WALLAH!, it worked. I also know that the last eight is not always available, and, some CUST No.'s have multiple vehicles in the system. Not to mention the parts advisors that won't enter the last eight in manual SOR's, even if it is right in front of them.

LOL!

jdpetey



[This message has been edited by jdpetey (edited 05-05-2000).]

[This message has been edited by jdpetey (edited 05-05-2000).]

[This message has been edited by jdpetey (edited 05-06-2000).]

[Chuck Hartle]

Jdpetey,

That is wonderful! It is great to see that you have such control of your SOR and utilize it to that degree.

As far as 'rolling' manual SOR's into a repair order or counter ticket.. (By the way thanks for playing with that jdpetey). By reading his result to accomplish this you just added another step to the already laborious manual process. You will have to activate all of your "service" customers in OMN option 1 for this to work. Depending on the size of your dealership, this could be a chore. All the more, Rex, for going with the automated version.

Rex,

Now I will answer your last post about 10 parts on an order, 3 are in stock and 7 need to be ordered and the customer will only take 100% of the order. First off, this didn't happen that often, but here is something important to remember about the SOR file. This also applies for those of you who want to keep your SOR parts separate. The bin location in the SOR record is a separate bin location from your part number location.

This can be very misleading and we discovered this only by accident. When you go into the SOR record and you highlite a specific part number you will notice a bin location field that you can update. This field will sometimes 'pull' the bin location from the part number file. If you over-ride this location and put in another bin location it 'DOES NOT' update the part number location. In the SOR-LINES file there is a different bin location field.

So, in short Rex, we would pull the three parts from stock and file the ticket. This will relieve the inventory of the quantity as long as it is filed and we had a single bin location for parts pulled from stock for a SOR.

Another option you can toy with (and I did) is to override the quantity on hand and order the 3 parts. We had a priority code that we called "SP" for stocked parts and we never rolled them into an order. It was the parts advisor's responsiblity to pull the three parts from stock. Of course, this throws off your actual on-hand inventory quantity because you pulled the parts from stock while creating a 'SOR' record so you could track the entire order. Again, this added another step to the automation because you had to reverse out the SOR when the customer came to pick up the parts and 're-bill the parts from stock. This was too time consuming and the parts advisors weren't doing it properly.

Another great benefit and key for using the automation that has not been mentioned yet Rex is that with ADP's user security you can give your service advisor access to SPI on the parts side to allow them to look up all SORs without the ability to alter any of the SOR information.

I will try to keep this short but here is what we did. We gave each service advisor 4 multi-sessions on his computer. (We used PC's with telnet on the 9200 system. ) Each advisor would log-on four times.
1) One session would be for service write up
2) One session would be for appointments
3) One session would be for tech distribution
4) One session would be for SPI

This way the advisor could simply ALT TAB between screens and view these programs. We posted our SOR orders real time. By this I mean after we sent our daily orders for customers (around 3 pm) we would post referrals and backorders right off the information from the manufacturer. We then had our service advisors go in and pull their SOR's for the day in SPI. This can be accomplished by putting in the date and the service advisor number in the SPI screen. It would show right on the screen each customer that had any parts ordered and the "C" or "K" order type. If they saw a "K" they knew it wouldn't be in the next day, if it was "C" they would attempt to keep the car overnight to complete the repair the first time.

For this very important reason, it is worth the time and effort to use the automated aspect of SOR. I cannot begin to tell you how much time was saved in phone traffic between parts and the service advisor on obtaining information for customers on special order parts.

Sorry for the long winded answer but this has been a great thread with good information.

I have heard the UCS' special orders actually work off the Julian Date and Customer number and 'sweep' special orders for clean up that is easy and keeps the inventory clean. Is this true? Any UCS users out there that can verify this?

I have also heard the the EDS special order program is very simple too. Any EDS users out there that can shed any light?

Chuck Hartle'

[This message has been edited by Chuck Hartle (edited 05-06-2000).]

[jdpetey]

Chuck,

I think we got off track a little.

We do have the automated system in use already and try to use it as much as possible.

I was adressing special order requests for Service Customers that didn't have open RO's to order the parts on. Unless you open an order, you will have to make a manual SOR which you can enter the CUST NO. which will fill in most of the fields except VIN and Service advisor. If the last eight is READILY available, which is not always right at your fingertips, you can enter it at the request time and when the customer returns and an order is then opened for the same vehicle, the SOR is then able to be rolled onto the RO.

I wasn't really concerned about rolling service customer SOR's onto counter slips. That would create the need to make all of our 'service' customers 'parts' customers.
I'm sure there would be no need to do that.

One nice feature about creating SOR's through invoicing for established customers is that when the ACCT NO is used is that at the time you are ready to invoice the parts, you can go to function I and at the INV# prompt, enter the ACCT NO., and the system will search for SOR invoices for that account and bring up a sequence(s) of existing SORs. You can select the desired SOR (usually the one with an 'S' in front of the INV#), and automatically create the invoice filling all parts that have OH quantities sufficient to be filled, totalling all parts at the same time.

This works real well for a wholesale cust that we order 20-40 parts regularly.

jdpetey

[This message has been edited by jdpetey (edited 05-06-2000).]

[blang]

Does anyone know if there is a way to roll a SOR into an automated (electronic) parts PO?