Work Flow / Order Processing

[harpkit]

Hi Everyone,

I'm starting a thread to get some fresh ideas about work flow and order processing. I guess I'll describe what I do and offer what I see to be some pros and cons. I'd appreciate any feedback and/or would be very interested to hear about your work flow and what you like and don't like about it.

I'm on the new Miva 9 platform, we have 1000+ products, and we process an average of 15 orders per day through our website. We create a batch and then run a report through the EZ Batch Report module. These orders then get printed and and typed into Quickbooks manually. So every transaction that comes through our Miva store has to be duplicated in our Quickbooks file. Once the order is processed through Quickbooks it is packed and shipped via ShipRush (which connects to QB) or through the FedEx ShipManager within QB. We then go back into Miva and manually enter the shipping and tracking information.

We take another 10-15 orders/day by phone. All of these orders are processed directly into QB and involve no interaction with our website.

PROS: We get the advanced database management tools and reporting features in QB. All of our customer information and order history is stored locally in our QB files.

CONS: Lots of double entry which means wasted time and more room for mistakes. Have to keep product information up to date in QB and in Miva.

I have tried both T-Hub and Miva Synchro. While both programs do many things well, they both have enough shortcomings that they don't tend to actually save us time or they create duplicate entries in QB.

One option I am considering is to process all our orders through MIVA. If I did that, I wouldn't track all of the detailed information in QB anymore. I would just input sales totals. I'm concerned about the functionality of the phone work flow and with looking up order history on Miva. On the other hand, it would be pretty great to only have one set of products to keep up-to-date. Another concern would be overloading the Miva database. Maybe this shouldn't be a concern. I don't know how robust it is but I would need to keep all order history going forward.

Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any replies.

[Brennan]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

The two areas that stick out to me where you can optimize are:

- Manually typing data into quick books
- Manually entering tracking numbers back into Miva

Your volume of online orders is low enough that it would make sense to use Miva to print shipping labels it would help quite a bit by automatically adding tracking numbers to orders and sending order shipped emails automatically.

Then use synchro to transfer data down to quickbooks so you're not manually typing that in each time.

Another option would be to use a third party shipping software that syncs tracking numbers back to Miva.

http://apps.miva.com/category/order-fulfillment.html

[harpkit]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

Thanks, Brennan.

I was thinking I would try out Shipworks. The problem I had with Synchro was that it would create a lot of duplicate entries in QB, both customers and products, if I remember correctly.

[oliverands]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

Matt,

We've been using Miva for our storefront and QuickBooks for accounting since 2008 and have created a process that works well for us.

Our business has three types of customers who purchase our products at three different price points:

1. Retail customers: pay retail price and order exclusively through our website; payment is made at time of order by credit card or PayPal
2. Wholesale customers: pay wholesale price (50% of retail) and may use our website (we use a price group to generate their pricing) or may order via phone or fax; payment is made at time of order by credit card (or PayPal if they are ordering on our website)
3. Distributor customers: pay distributor pricing (70% of wholesale) and purchase by emailed or faxed PO; never use the website and pay net 30 by check

All our retail orders are processed through Miva with the customer entering all data on our site.

All our wholesale orders are processed through Miva. If the wholesale customer orders by phone or fax instead of through our website, we log into the Miva admin, find their account, and use Shop as This Customer to place their order for them. (We could manually create their order in the Miva admin, but I find it easier to shop via the site.)

Our distributor orders are never processed through Miva. The number of these orders is small (less than one a day on average), and they are handled manually outside Miva by creating invoices directly in QuickBooks.

For accounting, we create a customer in QuickBooks for all wholesale and distributor customers. We have a general customer in QuickBooks called "Websale-Retail" and use that as the QuickBooks customer for all retail orders. In this way, we're able (for accounting purposes) to view our retail web sales as another one of our wholesale customers.

For our daily process, we use Miva's Export Orders to Batch File function to create a flat file of all unbatched orders to get just that day's orders. Then in order processing, we view orders by status and select all pending orders. We create a batch for all pending orders and then create a shipment for all pending orders. The puts all that day's orders into a batch and into an order status of processing and a shipment status of picking.

We then download the batch file we created for that day via FTP. (For some reason the version of the file that is emailed contains different line breaks and won't work for us in the following steps.) We've created an Access database that uses a set of queries to transform the data from the flat file into a QuickBooks .iif import file. We run the Miva flat file through the data transformation routine and then import the .iif file that is generated into QuickBooks. The way the data transformation has been written, wholesale customer orders go in associated with the customer that has been created for them in QuickBooks. Retail orders go in with the customers' ship to information but are assigned to the QuickBooks "Websale-Retail" customer. All transaction financials and inventory are updated in QuickBooks when the file is imported. Credit card data is not downloaded from Miva and never goes into QuickBooks, so we stay PCI compliant.

We print packing lists for orders using the batch print function in QuickBooks, and we use the Access database to print mailing labels for the batch.

Once orders are picked and packed, we import our shipment information for the batch back into Miva using a CSV file (the template with order numbers for that day's batch is run as another export from the Access database) to automatically change status on orders to shipped, put tracking numbers in Miva, and email shipment confirmation to customers.

Our process has to be run manually each day and there are several steps to it that could be automated by someone more technically proficient than me. But there's no double data entry and apart from picking and packing orders, it takes a little less than 10 minutes to run the process. That amount of time is the same whether we have 10 or 1000 orders a day since everything except moving files around is automated.

The key to the efficiency and scalability of the process is the Access database that does the data transformations from the Miva flat file. When we first started, I tried Synchro. It just didn't work for me, so I custom wrote the Access database to do the data transformation. It's served us well for many years now.

[harpkit]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

Hi Todd,

Thank you. I really appreciate your thoughtful reply. That is an interesting work flow and one I would like to investigate. I'm only marginally capable in access so that will take a little education on my part but may be worth it. I have a couple of follow up questions for you if you don't mind.

We often need to look up some customer order history. Do you ever need to do that? And if you do, do you look in Miva for that or in QB? Do you leave all of the orders and order information in Miva indefinitely or to you delete old orders regularly?

[oliverands]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

We use Miva for customer order history. All orders stay there indefinitely, and that's where we go to find details on individual transactions in response to customer queries.

The data lives in QuickBooks too, but because individual transaction data there is all under our Websale-Retail customer it's not as easily available. I look at QuickBooks as accounting and aggregate sales data. Since customers know their order details from the Miva-generated emails they receive, we go there for customer order history info instead of to QuickBooks.

But having all the data in QuickBooks allows you to do all the aggregate sales and inventory reporting that QuickBooks makes available. I rely heavily on these reports for our business analytics instead of using the much more limited reports available in Miva.

[jsisk]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

We use a completely offline solution for processing orders. Since we have been using Miva since it was just a basic shopping cart (and there is only two of us) we had to find ways to streamline our business outside of Miva. Our business consists of multiple Miva websites, Ebay, Amazon, and a Brick & Mortar retail store. Our inventory consists of over 10,000 products and the two of us process and ship 100 to 200 orders a day at Christmas plus take care of walk-in customers for which we provide free gift wrapping. (and we have never had to hire help for the busy season)

As you can imagine, productivity is a big priority for us.

Our back-end consists of Quickbooks Pro, Quickbooks POS, Stamps.com Pro, UPS Worldship, and Thunderbird for email. Our Merchant email confirmations are setup so we can cut and paste the shipping address directly into Stamps.com, which is how 95% of our packages are shipped. Stamps.com automatically downloads all Amazon and Ebay orders as well as any website orders that are paid via PayPal. We ftp product images and create a spreadsheet for new products that is imported into the sites as well as the POS system. In the POS system we have 2 customers setup for each website, Ebay and Amazon. (one for taxable sales, one for non-taxable sales)

In the morning, I log in to Amazon, Ebay, and each website to batch and print the overnight orders. (10 minutes) Website orders are immediately archived to strip out the credit card data. (archived batches are printed to PDF periodically to OCR and capture customer data for marketing purposes) We manually process all credit cards offline. (in 20 years we have processed tens of thousands of credit card orders for millions of dollars in sales and never had a single charge-back)

All orders are processed using the POS system. I process the orders, my wife packs them (she doesn't trust my packing), then I print the labels and send the customer their tracking info. (Tracking numbers for Amazon, Ebay, and PayPal orders are automatically posted back by Stamps.com) I bounce back and forth between processing orders and shipping orders to keep the flow going.

For Miva orders, the shipping address is cut and pasted from the Merchant email into Stamps.com. We do have to manually type the address for UPS, but that is only zero to four or five orders a day. When the label prints, I use a bar code scanner to put the tracking number into the shipping confirmation email we send. We use Thunderbird and have signatures/templates setup for many different notices including shipping confirmations with a place to click and scan the bar code. When a customer calls about an order, we use Thunderbird to instantly bring up all email communications which shows any adjustments, problems, and all confirmation emails. We found this to be much better than using Miva since it shows ALL communication with the customer.

Using this system the two of us can process, pack, and ship 20+ orders an hour without breaking a sweat.

A typical day during Christmas:

Part One:

Part Two:

[slabar]

Re: Work Flow / Order Processing

I have used Shipworks and T-Hub for over five years now with no duplication of orders in QB Enterprise. I use Shipworks only for shipping and T-Hub only for order importation. I currently process between 30 and 100 orders a day on all our channels and can have labels and order information imported within 45 minutes. Then it takes me 20 minutes to an hour and a half to pack orders.

Hope that helps a little.