Electronic Special Orders

[CTB]

OK, I openly admit it. We're still in the '80s. I have yet to make the move to electronic special orders. We're on CDK(ADP) & it's about to happen. What're the goods & bads of their system? I'm just fishing for info.
Thanks very much.

Your humble bass player.

[always-learning]

I'm a relatively young parts manager and don't like a whole lot of things that don't get handled on the computer so I'm biased.

You can add comments to the SOR that print out on the special order cards to help your receiver know which person to bring the part to and also what tech might be working on the job for a quick drop off it the car is still in the shop. I use some of the comment fields to include the spac case for quicker reference if an advisor or the service manager asks what's going on with a particular part.

You can run special order reports to see how long parts have been here, who was the person ordering it, etc.

I have my BDC staff calling customers and they have the ability to update the special order information as to when the appointment was scheduled, how they contacted the customer etc in case after 30 days I need to do some follow up. The system also automatically send them an e-mail (if they have one stored via service) as another reminder.

Cons are that if you create a manual order and don't attach the VIN, you can't roll the special order over onto the RO and you have to manually close out the SOR. My counter guys do this all the time so I have to monitor my received/insufficient stock listing to see what was already billed out or wasn't.

Prepaid special orders on Repair Orders often have to be manually adjusted in PS to make sure your inventory count is correct.

Overall though, it's a pretty easy setup and ties into the service side so the Advisors can see what parts are there for their customers (another accountability tool), Service Managers can see, Parts Consultants can see what they have ordered for a counter sale, manual ordered, etc. I often run reports and hand them out for my guys to start calling their customers to come in and get their parts or we can deliver.

[TimK]

Prepaid special orders suck if you use the function as it's intended.

When you prepay a part, it stays at "0" on hand (instead of -1).

When it is posted, the prepaid part goes back into inventory with a positive quantity.

You have to go back into the Invoice and "fill the order" to drop the quantity back to zero.

We charge out prepaid parts using S to sell and let the OH go to -1.

Print a picking ticket, use it as a special order card, and manually add it to your order.

When the part arrives and is posted, OH goes back to zero.

[Richard]

CDK drive?

I'm about to go back to cards, the system is so bad.

[tcollins]

Richard about sums it up with his emoticon. It's not a great system within drive and creates as many headaches as it solves. The reports are very limited and keeping inventory straight can be challenging.

[prtsmgr]

DMagenheimer's solution works well with WebSuite and hopefully will on Drive as well since we are about to convert.
You can find it in the ADP section of this forum

Hey Y'all!

Since you can't do a traditional Prepaid on an R.O. with out it creating issues and making things more difficult this is what I instruct.

Sell the part into a negative, then highlight the part you want to order, press "F2" and go into the detail, and put the quantity in the fill, order, sold, and back-order fields. It's a kind of back door way of doing this. What is does, is sells the part, and creates and SOR. Then when the part comes in, your NOH if filled and all you need to remember to do is close your SOR.


Your SOR will be tied to the orignal RO with customer and vehicle information, it's sold as a "prepaid" without being the traditional prepaid.