After you have set up a lot item as a product, you can enter it on a sales order. All lot item orders must be entered as either bids or direct shipment orders. However, if you want to include some items from your warehouse on the order, you can assign them to a separate order generation.
Before you place a lot item order, you need to get quotes from several vendors for the materials and obtain pricing approval from the customer. If you enter these quotes as a bid, you enter the lot item and its materials along with the quoted vendor cost and your price. Once the customer approves the bid, you convert it to a direct shipment order.
If you are asked to enter a lot item bid and you have another similar order already in the system, you can copy the order information into the bid as a time-saving measure. You can then adjust the price and cost, if needed, and also add or remove materials.
After you have an established relationship between a customer and vendor or group of vendors, you no longer need to enter lot billing orders as bids. You can instead enter a direct ship order. You can enter the price, cost, and materials, and then schedule the order for multiple shipments, all in one sitting.
In the lot item products overview, we compared the lot item product to a box. The lot item materials are the products you place in that box.
When you enter a lot item order, you must select an invoicing method. You can enter the unit price and cost for each material to arrive at a total, or estimate the cost of the entire group of materials and determine a price from that.
The materials assigned to a lot item can include any number, variety, and quantity of stock or non-stock products. If you add stock items to the material list, they will direct ship from the vendor, but if you want to ship them from your warehouse, you add them directly to the bid or sales order as a separate order generation.
During the bid process, the system assigns all of the materials in the lot item to one ship date. When you enter a direct shipment order or convert a bid to a direct shipment order, you can schedule the materials for multiple ship dates. Most lot item materials will ship over an extended period. You specify, item by item, which items and how much of each item to include in each shipment.
If delivery, credit, or other problems must be addressed before the lot item can ship, you can place the order generation on hold. You can also raise or lower the price of the order, provided no items have yet shipped.
See Also