Most wholesale nurseries take order requests well before the final grading
and inventory counts are complete. Prior to that time, we have only our
forecast numbers to predict the available quantity of each size and grade
of plant. Grading is generally completed shortly before the shipping
season begins. At this time, we have only a short time to go through all
orders and make adjustments to substitute oversold plant sizes with
others that may be available. The goal here is to sell as much of our
inventory as possible while meeting the needs of our customers.
The Order Allocation feature is designed to help you review and adjust
your orders from a single screen that allows you to see all orders of all
sizes of one plant species at a time. At first glance, the form seems
complicated; but remember, it is a complicated process.
Our nurseries that are using this process have cut days and weeks off the
time required to do these seasonal order allocation adjustments.
It works like this…
Select a plant for review from the complete drop down list of your plants.
The order status of all sizes and grades of this plant show in the top part of the form.
Note that oversold items display red.
All customer orders for this product display in the bottom section of the screen. Here you can make changes to customer orders
and the computer will remember what the original request was and compare it to the adjustment on a variety of printed reports.
Normally, the grower will go through all plants before contacting customers to notify or discuss order changes. In addition to the
various printable allocation worksheets, you are offered the following as an assist in notifying customers of changes.
•
A customer change memo designed to be mailed
•
A report of allocated changes by sales staff for distribution to the sales staff
•
A batch email process for contacting customers
•
A phone list of allocation changes sorted by customer
•
As usual, if you can think of any other way that you would like to summarize or display this data, we will quickly add it.
