In the last section of this chapter we covered in detail the step-by-step process to create an order in Mekashron. In this section you will learn about other screens that you can use to manage your orders and payments with Mekashron. The topics we will cover in this section are:
1 - The Main Order Screen
The main Orders screen is reached in Mekashron from the main menu by clicking on Sales -> Orders:
Figure 1.1 - Accessing the Orders screen from the Main Menu
This brings up the main Orders screen:
Figure 1.2 - The Main Orders screen in Mekashron
Here you can view all the Orders in your Mekashron system. Using the date range controls you can filter the orders by date:
Figure 1.3 - The "From" date dropdown control.
Use the From date dropdown to specify the starting date you wish to filter your orders on.
Figure 1.4 - The "To" date dropdown control.
Use the To date dropdown to specify the ending date you wish to filter your orders on.
In addition you can choose to filter the orders in your view by selecting a user with the dropdown at the top right of the orders screen this shows you the orders created by the user that you select from the list.
Figure 1.5 - The Users dropdown control.
The fields that are shown in the Orders preview screen are:
- Order ID - A unique number assigned to each order by Mekashron when it is created.
- Entity Name - The name of the entity (client) that placed this order.
- Company - The company name of the client.
- Order Date - The date on which the order was created.
- Total Order - The total value of the order.
- Total Paid - The amount that has been paid against this order to date.
- Operator - The user who took this order and registered it in the Mekashron system.
2 - The Recurring Orders Screen
To view all the recurring orders that you have in your system, select Sales -> Recurring Orders from the Main Mekashron menu:
Figure 2.1 - The Recurring Orders menu option
... this brings up the Recurring Orders screen:
Figure 2.2 - The Recurring Orders screen
At the top of this screen are some filtering options, as we'll see in a moment, and then you have the payments grid showing the details of all your recurring orders. The fields shown are:
- Order ID - The unique number assigned to the order.
- Next billing date - The next date on which this order is due to recur.
- Cycle - Which cycle of this recurring order we have reached, out of the total cycles that are scheduled.
- Bills Every - The frequency with which this order is set to recur.
- Total Order - The total monetary value of the order.
- Total Paid - The total that has been paid towards this order so far.
- User - The user who created this order.
In the Recurring Orders screen you can filter your recurring orders by Date Range or by User. You can also use the Search box at the bottom of the screen to find a specific recurring order or orders.
Double clicking on a recurring order in this list will open up the entity form that relates to this order, so that you can view all the associated information, and make any changes you require.
If you right click on a recurring order in the list:
Figure 2.3 - Options for a Recurring Order
you have the option to Stop this recurring order, or to Cancel/Delete it.
If you select to stop the order, then it will have a red square next to it in the list, and you can re-start the order by right clicking and selecting Continue.
Figure 2.4 - Re-instating a Recurring Order
Selecting to Continue will re-instate the recurrence on this order, and you will see that the green arrow reappears next to the order in the list rather than the red square that you see for an order which has been stopped.
3 - My Business Tab
When you have a number of orders linked to Clients/Entities in your Mekashron system, you may wish to quickly see the status of all your open orders in order to action them quickly and efficiently.
To help you with this, Mekashron provides an accessible, easy view that gives you the information you need at a glance.
This is accessed via the main Mekashron application window by selecting the My Business tab.
Figure 3.1 - My Business tab
Here you can instantly see that in the example above you are seeing three open orders; the order number for each order is towards the top left of each order, in this example numbers 11, 10 and 9.
As well as the order number, the other fields you can see for each order in this handy view are:
- Entity Name - The name of the client contact.
- Company - The name of the client company.
- Operator - Your user on Mekashron who created the order on the system.
- Due Date - The date on which this order is due.
- Total Order - The total order value.
- Total Paid - The amount paid by the client so far towards this order.
- Remaining - The amount currently outstanding on this order.
So that you can quickly see the status of each order, there are handy icons at the left of each order.
A new open order, such as Order 10 in the example above, shows the Open icon:
Figure 3.2 - The icon for an Open order
For Order 11, you have already generated an Invoice and this is shown by the additional icon: 
Figure 3.3 - The icon for an Invoiced order
And Order 9 in our example shows you by the icons that you have created both an invoice and a shipping label:
Figure 3.4 - Icons for an order which has been both Invoiced and Shipped
4 - The Payments Screen
Assuming that you have orders which have already been paid for recorded against an entity, you can return to the Entity form at any time and view the payments made by that entity via the Payments Tab. In addition, you can view all payments for all entities via the main menu by selecting Sales -> Payments.
Figure 4.1 - The Payments Screen
The fields shown in the grid of payments in this screen are:
- Payment Name - The type of payment (cash, cheque, credit card, etc).
- Total - The total of this payment.
- Count - The payment count.
- Entity - The contact name of the entity which made this payment.
- Date - The date the payment was given.
- Cheque/Card# - The cheque number or credit card number associated with this payment.
In the example in the previous screenshot we are viewing all cash payments. You can filter your payments with the Payment Kind dropdown:
Figure 4.2 - The Payment Kind dropdown
if you wish to see all kinds of payments, simply select the blank line.
You can also filter your payments by Date Range:
Figure 4.3 - Filtering Payments by Date Range
For credit card payments, you can charge one or multiple payments from this screen by selecting the payments you wish to charge with the checkbox next to each item in the list, and clicking the Charge button.
Figure 4.4 - Charging a Credit Card from the Payments Screen
Mekashron will then ask you to confirm this action:
Figure 4.5 - Confirmation is needed before charging a credit card
If you click Yes at this prompt, then Mekashron will automatically start up your credit card component in order to authorize the payments, assuming that you have associated a credit card component with this payment type in Mekashron (please see Payments setup in the Basic Sales Setup section of this chapter.)
5 - Order Documents
Mekashron maintains a full audit trail of all the documents that relate to each order in your system.
At any time, you can view, re-print or resend a Price Quote, Invoice, Receipt or other document.
The main screen for locating a particular document is the Documents List, accessed from the main Mekashron menu via Sales -> Documents:
Figure 5.1 - Accessing the Documents List from the Main Menu
This option takes you to the main Documents List screen, as shown below:
Figure 5.2 - The Documents List Screen
The fields that are shown for each document in the list are:
- Date - The creation date of the document.
- Document Name - The name of the document type, such as Invoice, Receipt, etc.
- Number - The unique document identification number.
- Order ID - The unique number of the order to which this document relates.
- Entity - The contact name of the entity to which the document relates.
- Total - The total value of the order to which the document relates (excluding VAT).
- Total(VAT) - The total value of the order to which the document relates (including VAT).
- Paid - The amount that has already been paid toward the order.
When you first access this screen, Mekashron will by default populate the list with all of the documents that exist in your system. So that you can easily locate the document or documents that you require, you can filter the document list by date range or by document type.
To filter the document list by date you can choose to specify either a From: date or a To: date or both:
Figure 5.3 - The Date Filtering Controls
To filter the list by document type, simply select the types you wish to see in the list:
Figure 5.4 - The Document Type Filtering Control
In addition to the filtering options, you have the usual Search facility at the bottom of the Documents List screen:
Figure 5.5 - The Search Facility
Once you have located the document or documents that you need, you have a number of options:
- Change Currency - You can choose to view the values for the documents in the list in a different currency by using the drop down list:
Figure 5.6 - The Currency Option
This will convert the values shown in the documents list into your chosen currency according to the exchange rate that is set up in your system.
- View Document - You can double-click on a document in the list, or alternatively right-click on the document and select View Document.
Figure 5.7 - The View Document Option
Either action opens the document in Print Preview mode.
- View/Edit Entity - This option in the contextual menu allows you to quickly gain access to the entity to whom the document relates.
- Print Grid - If you wish to print a list of the documents currently shown in the list, select this option.
- Select All or Select None - these options allow to select all or deselect all of the documents in the list. You can also manually select or deselect specific documents by clicking on the checkbox at the left of each document.
- Make a Copy - :
Figure 5.8 - The Make a Copy Option
When you Make a Copy of a document or several documents from the Documents List, you have the same options as when you originally generated the document:
- Print
- Send by Fax
- Send by Email
Whether you have selected to Make a Copy of one document, or of multiple different documents, when you make your selection the documents will be sent to the printer, fax or email queue as appropriate.
6 - Finding Orders
In addition to accessing all previously created documents via the Documents List, you can also use the Entity Search facility to quickly locate all entities which have a particular type of document recorded against them. In addition, you can perform useful searches on all kinds of other data relating to your sales.
You can read all about performing searches on your entities in Search Entities in the Entities chapter. Here we will take a look at a couple of specific examples of how to use the Entity Search in ways that will be of value to your order management processes.
Locating all your orders which have not yet been paid for would be one example. Mekashron makes this extremely easy.
First, access the Entity Search screen by clicking on the Search button:
Figure 6.1 - The Search Button
In the Search screen, select the Filter Sales checkbox:
Figure 6.2 - The Search Screen with Filter Sales Selected
... and click on the Settings button - this will take you to the Search Sales screen as shown below:
Figure 6.3 - The Search Sales Screen
To locate all orders which have not been paid, change the Orders Status option to select all Open orders:
Figure 6.4 - The Orders Status Options
... and click OK on the Search Sales screen and again on the main Search screen to return to the Entities List, which will now be filtered to show only those entities which have outstanding payments to make. This makes it very easy to then review these payments and take action, such as telephoning all of the entities in the list to chase up payment.
Another example of using the Entities Search might be to locate all clients who have purchased a particular product in the past, so that you can send them information on these products or related products in which they might be interested.
To perform this search, access the Search Sales screen as in the previous example, but this time select the product or products you want to search on in the Inventory list:
Figure 6.5 - Searching on Products in the Inventory
In the example above we have selected Purple Widget 1 and Purple Widget 2 to search on. When we return to the Entity List, only those clients which have purchased Purple Widgets in the past are shown.
We can then select these entities and choose to contact them by telephone, fax, email or SMS using the icons in the menu or the menu options under Campaign:
Figure 6.6 - Our Filtered Entity List
As an example, we might click on the Email icon:
Figure 6.7 - The Email Button
... and then compose an email to our clients informing them that there is a special discount on Purple Widgets:
Figure 6.8 - A Targetted Marketing Email
This is just a simple example, for more information about sending marketing messages to your clients, please refer to the Campaigns chapter.
7 - Summary
Now that you know all about creating and managing your sales and orders within Mekashron, in the next part of this chapter we will see how you can leverage the power of your client and sales data with the indispensable documents that Mekashron offers.