Order guides are product lists that can help users find products more easily when creating their orders. Depending on user permissions, these order guides can also be used to limit options that users have when creating orders from the products your organization creates and manages. All orders start from the base of an order guide, so at least one order guide must be available for every category your users will use to place an order.
Note: A user who does not have category rights for the categories assigned to an order guide will not be able to use or see that order guide. If a user cannot access any of the available order guides, they will not be able to start an order from the “Add Order” option.
Creating an Order Guide
If you have permission to manage order guides, you can begin creating one from the Order menu, or you can click the “Add new” button on the Order Guides screen.
Once in the New Order Guide screen, you will need to name the order guide. You can name it anything, but make sure it makes it easy for your users to identify.
You can also set an expiration date if this is an order guide that will need to be used only for a set period of time (if there is a vendor who is having supply issues, for example).
You can then add the facilities and the categories the order guide will be available for. You can add products from categories outside of the categories selected when creating the guide. These products will be available to your users regardless of their category rights.
To begin adding products, you can click on the “Details” tab. On this page, you will see all items currently in the order guide. You can search for products in the search bar on the left, and you can add individual products here by clicking the “Add to order guide”.
If you want to add items in bulk, you can click on the “Categories” tab. From here, you can add all products in a category or subcategory. Click the category or subcategory you want to add, the checkbox or checkboxes, then click “Add selected product(s) to orderguide”.
You can also import products from a vendor by clicking on the “Import from vendor” tab. Select the vendor you want and the products you would like from the vendor and add them to the order guide.
You can also use history to add products to your order guide. To do so, click the tab labelled “Import from history”. Select the time range you want to use. Select the products you want to add and click “Add to Order Guide”.
Note: Both “Import from vendor” and “Import from history” have an option to “Append to orderguide” or “Clear the orderguide and add new”. Be cautious when selecting the clear option as it will overwrite all products currently in the order guide.
Managing an Order Guide
Once the order guide is created, you can edit the order guide by searching for it among your existing order guides. You can add or adjust products on the order guide in the same ways as above. Removing individual items is as simple as clicking the trashcan next to the item in the Details tab.
Remember that the options when updating an order guide are to append (add to the order guide) or to overwrite the order guide, so be careful when adding products that you have the correct addition option selected.
You can also add additional facilities to the order guide, or additional categories if more users should have access to it.
It is also possible to set par levels or quantities on the order guide. The quantity will be the standard quantity ordered on the order guide of the product. This can be useful if you want your users to place roughly the same order every time they use the order guide. Par levels will allow you to indicate how much of the item you should have of the item, allowing users to order based on your current on-hand quantity.
You will only be able to manipulate order guides if you have category rights for the categories underlying the order guide. If there are order guides you cannot find, make sure you have the correct category rights or contact your administrator to update those rights for you.