CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Computerized sales order accounting as come a long way over the years passing through some changing processes such as manual process. As the sales development indicates managing competencies, setting competencies, components of sales development process. What is frequently lacking in sales training in managing to be successful; sales people must manage the interface between the organization and the customers, since so much of sales involves working dependently, sales people must also engage in self management of and other resources. Situational selling provides the frame work by which people can integrate their products and selling competencies. This section outline the process involved in a manual system and a real time system processing sales order accounting.
Once the company have received an / most industrial firms will transmit some form of documentary acknowledgement to the customer. It is commonly a duplicate copy of the customer’s purchase order. The sales order contains basically the same data as the invoice except for such things as item extensions (price times quantity calculation) shipping charges, taxes, invoice total and credit terms in cases where the quantity delivered is less than the quantity ordered, the extra units are back ordered. Its notation is made in the finished goods file so that when the stock is replenished the goods will be automatically shipped to the customer many firms, particularly those in which back ordering is not common, do not use a separate sales order document. Instead the begin to prepare the sales invoice immediately upon receipt of orders, and use extra copies of the invoice in place of the several copies of the sales order one copy of the sales order in filed numerically in the sales order department.
Three other copies are sent to the finished goods storeroom or warehouse. If the customer’s credit is not established the sales order may be routed through the credit department where a credit check is performed before shipment is authorized. In the finished goods storeroom the product ordered are retrieve from available stock the sales order serves as an authorization to release the goods to the shipping departments and is used as a source document to post shipments to the finished goods inventory file. It any goods ordered, and one copy is filed by storeroom personnel for future reference. Those goods which are in stock are assemble and the shipping department, along with two copies of the sales order. To acknowledge the transfer of shipping, an employee of shipping will sign a copy shipped of the sales order indicating the exact quantities to be shipped. This copy will then be sent to billing. The remaining copy of the sales order may be enclosed as a packing ship with the goods as they are shipped to the customer. In the billing department, the sales order evidencing the transfer of goods to shipping provides the basis for preparation of the invoice. After the invoice is prepared, the first (and often a second) copy is sent to the customer. Another copy is sent to accounts receivable department where it is used to post the billing department. The keying of the relevant data into the system using a terminal credit checking is done automatically and all of the files are updated in one process, without reloading and resorting of tapes.
The separate procedures being required basically, the real time system accomplishes, in a requiring manual intervention, in the batch processing system. The real-time system does have a major disadvantage with respect to control of data accuracy: there is only one point of entry of data at which the accuracy of data can be controlled the point of entry of data in to the system. If the system accepts inaccurate data, the chance to discover and correct the error before it contaminates all files documents, and reports is lost. However, in another sense, this fact is an advantage. It means that the control of data accuracy can be focused at a single point, the point of data entry, with the assurance, that if all errors are prevented there, no subsequent errors are likely. The first essential control feature of a real-time sales order processing system is the assignment of a unique user code to each sales persons. The user code numbers of each salesperson should be known only to that person. Each time the salesperson desire access to the system, the user code number is the item of data to be entered. The system should check the validity of the user code number before accepting any further instructions or data from sales person. Furthermore, each salesperson’s user defines the transactions he or she is authorized to initiate and the files to which he or she is authorized to have access.
A salesperson should be restricted to initiating only sales orders and inquiring only into the account receivable and finished goods inventory files. Another control feature over data entry into a real-time system is simplicity of operator data entry procedures. This might be affected by displaying an invoice format for the salesperson to fill in or by writing questions on the terminal that ask the sales persons for each required item of data. The system there by guides the salesperson through the data entry process and will not accept the order until all of the required data have been entered. One major form of data control which is lost in a real time is the batch total. Since transactions are entered one at a time as the occur, there is no such thing as a time as they occur, there is no such thing as a batch of input records in a real-time system.
Responsibility for controlling the accuracy of data input in a real-time system therefore shift more heavily to data editing routines programmed in to the system. With respect to sales order data, the first of these should be a validity check on the customer account member and on the inventory stock number, of each item ordered. The system should accept orders from new customer’s to whom no account number has been as signed, but should not initiate shipping papers until a credit check is performed. To assure that the salesperson does not enter a valid but incorrect account number or stock number, a redundant data check may be used. This would require that the salesperson also enter the first few letter of the customer name and the item description. The system could then check whether the number letters provides by the salesperson match with those in the customer name and item descriptions from the files and display these data back to the salesperson’s terminal for verification.
