What is Promotional Ordering?

Promotional Ordering is a feature that has been added to the system for CommCare. It allows them to let their stores know what products are currently on promotion from their suppliers, and what products will be on promotion next month. The stores can then order these products from two new pages within the Orders Module:

Current Promotions: This page shows all products currently on promotion

Next Month’s Promotions: This page shows all products that are on promotion next month

Current Promotions

• The current promotions page shows all products that are currently on promotion from suppliers.

• Each product is displayed with the offer type and an image so it’s clear to see what product they are ordering and what kind of deal they are getting.

To add an item to the order

• You can either press the (+) button or enter in a quantity manually.

  • If you use the (+) button, the quantity will be increased based on the offer.
    • For example, if it’s a BUY 6 GET 1 FREE offer, then the quantity will be increased by 6 each time the (+) button is pressed.
    • In the same way, when the (-) button is pressed the quantity is reduced by this amount.

• If there is no quantity-based offer, then the (+) and (-) buttons will adjust the quantity by +1/-1.

• When you have added all the necessary quantities to the screen, the next step is to press “Add to Order” at the bottom of the screen.

• Once the items are added the “cart” is updated and you can now “checkout” and send the orders, or you can come back later to send them.

• When you press the Checkout button you are brought to the Checkout Summary page where you are shown a summary of all orders that are about to be sent.

• The Edit Cart button at the top of the screen brings you back to the main Current Promotions page where you can add more items.

• The Checkout Summary shows all orders that are about to be created grouped by supplier. In cases where a minimum order value has been set against a supplier, a warning is displayed if your order is below this threshold. You can top-up this order by pressing the “Add Item to this Order” button:

• This brings up a screen that allows you to search for ANY product so that it can be added to your order. This product does not have to be on promotion currently. A product search filter is applied by default so that only products linked to the selected supplier are shown.

SOLPADEINE is not linked to ALLEGRO so it does not show in the search results even though it is an active product on the system.

Once you add items, the Total is updated automatically and the MOV warning goes away once the threshold is met.

• To send the orders you need to press Place Order(s) at the bottom of the screen. This will send the orders directly to the suppliers based on each suppliers’ order method (email, PIMS, etc.)

Next Month’s Promotions

• The Next Month’s Promotions page is quite like the Current Promotions page except that it shows products that will be on promotion next month.

• Each product on promotion can be given a “Buy In Start Date” and “Buy In End Date” – if a product has both of these fields populated, then they appear on the Next Month’s Promotions page when the current date falls between the Buy In Start and End Date.

• To add quantities, the user follows the same process described above – adjust the quantity you wish to order and press the Add to Order button at the bottom of the screen. When the user presses the Add to Order button, the system will create a Cross Order for each supplier and add the items the user has chosen to order to the Cross Order. If a Cross Order already exists, then it will simply add the items to the existing Cross Order. The user will then be shown the following “My Orders” screen:

• At this point they can still make changes to the items and add more items if they wish. They’ll be able to make changes until the current date is greater than the “Buy In End Date”.

• The next time the “Next Month’s Promotions” page is accessed, the “My Promo Orders” button at the top of the screen will show how many promotional cross orders are outstanding for this store.

• The user can click this button to make any changes to the items already on the cross order. They can also add new items to the cross order from the Next Month’s Promotions page directly.

• At the start of the following month, Head Office will access the Cross Orders page and send each Cross Order that is waiting to be sent. The system will only create one Cross Order per supplier – each store’s items are added to the same supplier if the supplier is the same.

Adding Promotional Products

The system needs to know what products are on promotion. To do this, you can upload a file in Product Imports > Supplier Imports containing the promotional information.

When the file is uploaded the contents of the file are displayed on screen.

At the top of the screen we show a breakdown of the increases and decreases in cost price, as well as showing products that do not yet exist on the system (the NEW tile). The user can delete any items they do not wish to import by selecting them and pressing Delete.

If there are any products in the file that could not be matched, they are displayed at the bottom of the screen and have a NEW label against them.

To import the file the user can press the “Accept and Schedule Price Changes” button at the bottom of the screen:

If there are new products, the system will display these and allow the user to specify the Sales Group and Supplier for each product. The Supplier will default to the supplier specified in the file, but this can be overridden.

Once this process has been confirmed, the system do the following:

• Create any new products from the file

• Create a new Scheduled Price Change (if there are retail price changes specified in the file)

• Create records in the SupplierCostPrices table (this is the table the data gets pulled from for the Current and Next Month’s Promotions pages)