SalesDoc Architect makes it easy to add Excel-based forms, reports and other outputs that pull information from SDA quote files. The outputs are created using Excel, which means that you can take advantage of all the features and functions within Excel – including formulas, formatting and graphics – to quickly create attractive and useful outputs.
Creating an Excel-based form, report or other output is a three-step process: Read the rest of this entry »
Do you have customers with whom you’ve signed long-term contracts to provide specific products and services at agreed-to pricing?
SalesDoc Architect makes it easy to incorporate customer-specific pricing into quotes for situations where the seller is contractually obligated to provide specific items at agreed-to pricing. You can also incorporate customer-specific costing, such as when a manufacturer provides lower costing to the reseller to support the lower pricing that the reseller provides to a specific end customer.
An SDA user can incorporate customer-specific pricing and costing into a specific quote by connecting to an external price list in a properly formatted Excel file. The SDA user simply browses for the file by clicking the Architect button, then “Connect to external price list”.
The Excel file containing the price/cost list must be placed in the user’s Data folder (usually c:\CorsPro\PQuote\Data) and must contain the following named Excel ranges*:
As mentioned above, UnitSell and UnitCost are each optional. Usually, only UnitSell is used in the external price list file. However, in cases where the manufacturer provides customer-specific costing to the reseller, UnitCost can also be used.
Below is a sample of how the external price list file might look…
For situations where the customer-specific pricing must be referenced by multiple SDA users, Architect managers/administrators can push out customer-specific price lists to all users via the normal SDA updates process by placing the external price list Excel file in the SDA server’s Data folder.
* For further information on named Excel ranges, see Excel’s help topic “About labels and names in formulas”
One of SalesDoc Architect’s greatest benefits is its ability to auto-configure hardware, software, services and output doc content based on other items that have already been configured in the solution. For example, you might want to auto-configure certain peripheral parts (like racks, cables and power strips) when specific types of systems are configured. In the past, this was easily implemented, but it usually took a couple of steps to get there.
Last month, we introduced a new and very simple-to-implement capability that enables clients to auto-configure parts, services and docs based on specific part numbers that have been imported onto the Write-In tab. When might you need to use this capability? One client recently used this approach to configure a rebate when a specific part number was imported from a manufacturer’s configuration tool. Another client used this approach to configure a rectifier when a specific control unit was imported from another manufacturer’s configuration tool.
It’s easy to configure parts, services or docs using this approach. Simply insert a formula with the following syntax into the appropriate quantity or doc selector cell…
=SUMIF(WriteInPart,”[part number]“,WriteInPartQty)
For example, if you want to configure quantity 1 of part number XYZ if the quantity of part number ABC on the Write-In tab is greater than zero, you would type the following formula into the Qty Calcd cell for part XYZ:
= IF(SUMIF(WriteInPart,”ABC”,WriteInPartQty)>0,1,0)
Are there certain proposals you want to make sure get manager approval before they’re sent to clients? We have several clients who have implemented a workflow feature in SalesDoc Architect that prevents proposals from going out the door with too low of a margin or too high of a discount. Whatever the criteria may be, there is a very easy way to implement this feature within SalesDoc Architect. This is a brief overview of how easy it is to add management approval to your SalesDoc Architect setup:
1) Go to your “raw” MiscProd tab in your CorsPro/Tabs folder and go to any cell in the “hidden section” at the bottom. Once in that cell go up to the Name Box and name that cell range “OutputStatus”.
2) Next, insert an IF/THEN formula into that cell that is similar to the following (highlighted areas should be based on the criteria you would like to use).
One of the features that SalesDoc Architect (our sales document automation software) offers is the ability to easily import data such as product information. When importing product data, however, we require that only one version of each part number exists in the import file. We do this to protect against situations where the part number exists more than once but the associated data differs for each instance of the part number.
When importing a file with duplicate part numbers into SalesDoc Architect, the import process will be halted and an error message will pop up indicating that duplicate part numbers exist. I’m often asked how best to identify and delete the duplicate part rows with Microsoft Excel. Using Excel’s sorting function and IF formula, it’s easy to do, and it’s a three-step process… Read the rest of this entry »
