Setup

Order Processing

Ordering process is critically important for most businesses. Sales order processing can vary from business to business. In the retail industry there might be one sales process, while in the complex manufacturing business there might be multiple layers and approval process involved. For some businesses order approval workflow is essential. It is used to enforce the business rules of a company to ensure that all orders are within budget.

Sana complies with any individual business process flow. Placement of the quotes, orders, or quotes with a possibility to convert them into sales orders - all business scenarios are supported by Sana.

To configure the ordering process, in Sana Admin click: Setup > Ordering & checkout > Ordering. The settings of the ordering flow can be set up per customer type.

This article provides detailed information about order processing strategies and order placement types supported by Sana.

Field	Description
Order processing strategy	Use this option to set up the suitable basket calculation mode: Default Optimize for fast ordering Optimize for large orders Below you can read about order processing strategies in details.
Checkout options	Select the order placement type. It can be either order or quote, or both, giving a customer possibility to choose whether to place an order or a quote. A quote can be also converted to a sales order directly from the Sana web store. The final sales document that will be created should be set up in the ERP system. Below you can read about different sales documents in details.
Quote to order conversion	Allow or deny conversion of a sales quote into a sales order directly from the Sana web store. In the Sana web store, a quote can be converted into a sales order just with a single click ignoring stock and allowing customer pay on account, or you can lead a customer through the checkout process again to allow changing the shipping address, delivery date and to complete (online) payment. Below you can read about quote to order conversion in details.

Order processing strategies

Sana provides three order processing strategies:

• Default
• Optimize for fast ordering
• Optimize for large orders

These are the basket calculation modes, meaning different approaches on how the basket can be calculated.

Default
The default order processing strategy performs real-time basket calculation, triggering all available business logic in your ERP system.

Optimize for fast ordering

This order processing strategy uses a similar basket calculation method as in the maintenance mode. When the order processing strategy that is optimized for fast ordering is used, the ERP system does not participate in basket calculation. The basket is calculated based on the base and sales prices of a product. Customer-specific charges and invoice discounts, multi-line discounts, volume prices, taxes, sales agreements and retail offers are not used to calculate basket. If some product taxes are indexed by Sana, they will be also calculated in the shopping cart, but not customer-specific.

Only when a customer submits an order, it will be recalculated in the ERP system, and the customer will receive the order confirmation e-mail with the order details. If there is any customer-specific invoice discount, service charge or tax, they will be calculated and applied to the sales order. Keep in mind, that when the order is recalculated by ERP and if you use a complex price logic, you may encounter some issues with saving the order to ERP, for example, if the total order amount calculated in the shopping cart does not match the final total amount when the order is recalculated by ERP. Therefore, you should consider using the "Default" order processing strategy.

This order processing strategy allows to quickly place even very big orders with a lot of lines as it does not require specific business logic to be triggered in ERP during basket calculation. Business customers who need to quickly place a lot of orders or even very big orders without triggering all business logic of the ERP system during basket calculation will certainly benefit from this order processing strategy.

Optimize for large orders

This order processing strategy allows placing large orders, for example an order that consists of more than 100 order lines.

When this order processing strategy is used, an empty order is created in ERP at the moment a customer logs in the web store. Each time when a customer adds an item to the basket, removes items or edits the basket, the related order is updated and recalculated in the ERP system, triggering all business logic available in ERP. Customer specific prices, discounts, taxes, service charges are used and shown during basket calculation in real-time.

This order processing strategy is available to business customers that require the ability to create and process very large orders still using business logic of the ERP system at full.

If you use order processing strategy that is optimized for large orders, you must also select the synchronized basket type for your web store in the ERP system. It can be either quote or order (also the journal document type is available in Microsoft Dynamics AX). The synchronized basket type is the sales document which is used during the checkout process for large orders.

Limitations of the order processing strategy that is optimized for large orders

This article describes some limitations that you might need to know if you are going to use the order processing strategy that is optimized for large orders.

This order processing strategy is not supported in:

• Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 for Retail
• LS Retail for Microsoft Dynamics NAV
• SAP Business One

If you are connected to the ERP system that does not support the order processing strategy that is optimized for large orders, this feature will not be available in Sana Admin.

The following features are not supported, if you use the order processing strategy that is optimized for large orders:

• Sales agreements

Sales agreements work with the Default order processing strategy only.

• Quote to order conversion

When you select the order processing strategy that is optimized for large orders, the fields "Checkout options" and "Quote to order conversion" will disappear. That is because the order processing strategy optimized for large orders uses a different logic, and you cannot allow your customers to choose whether to create an order or a quote, and to convert created quotes to orders. Which sales documents will be used depends on the Sana add-on setup in your ERP system.

• Edit order

Business customers are not able to edit orders if order processing strategy is set to "Optimize for large orders". In this case, the "Edit" button is not available on the order details page in the web store.

• Mix and match discounts
   
• Extended texts in Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central that are used to add some extra information under order lines in the shopping basket.

Extended texts are added to the shopping cart as separate lines which substantially affect performance in case of large orders. To achieve acceptable performance with large orders the extended texts functionality was disabled for this order processing strategy.

Checkout options

Customers can create different sales documents in a Sana web store:

• Place orders
• Request quotes
• Place orders and request quotes

In the Sana web store, a customer can either create a quote or place an order, or you can give a choice to a customer, whether to place a quote or order.

 

If a customer creates a quote, he or she can convert it to a sales order directly from the Sana web store on the quote details page.

Quote to order conversion

Three options are available:

• Disabled
• With checkout
• Unattended

Using this option, you can manage quote to order conversion process - either disable it or choose one of the conversion types. 

Using the quote to order conversion With checkout, a customer will go through the checkout process again and will be able to change the shipping address, delivery date and to complete (online) payment.

If Unattended conversion type is used, then during the quote to order conversion, the checkout process will be skipped, stock levels will not be taken into consideration, and a preselected shipping address will be used. The order will be paid on account, if this payment method is used; otherwise it will be left unpaid.

Using the option Quote promotable by default in the ERP system, you can allow customers to convert quotes into orders only when a quote is approved by the sales manager in the ERP system. If this option is enabled in ERP, a customer can convert a quote into a sales order without approval. If it is disabled, a customer will be able to convert a quote into a sales order only when it is checked and approved by the sales manager in ERP.

Limitations

• It is impossible to convert quotes into orders if the Retail functionality is enabled for Microsoft Dynamics AX.
• There is one limitation in the quote to order conversion process with checkout. Imagine the following scenario: a customer created a quote and wants to convert it into a sales order. Before converting the quote into the sales order, the sales manager wants to apply some discount for this order directly in the ERP system. In this case, when a customer converts the quote into the sales order in the web store and goes through the checkout process, the discount will not be applied. Any discounts set globally for a customer or product will be applied. If the sales manager sets some discount on a quote directly in the ERP system, it can be applied only when the business customer pays online or based on prepayment rules and converts the quote into the sales order using the unattended conversion type.

In the ERP system, quotes have an expiration date. If the quote is not processed within the expiration period, it will expire, meaning that a customer will not be able to convert it into a sales order.

If availability of products depends on stock and a customer converts a quote into a sales order, in case some products are not available a customer will see a notification.