Tools

The Tools menu contains the options necessary to run the Delivery Manager program.  The program can not be used without some of the information in this section.

The Maintain section contains information about the items used to maintain the delivery of products.  These items are entered only once and they are then selected from for each job created in the system.  Each of the sub-sections is explained below:

• Customer Categories - Customers can be defined as belonging to any number of customer categories.  These are a way of grouping customers together and they can be searched on.  Enter as many customer categories as you like.  The customer categories entered here will be displayed on the customer screen.
• Delivery Areas - A delivery area is a useful grouping of suburbs or streets or any geographical region.  This groups jobs when they are scheduled making it easier to keep jobs in a similar area together.  The naming and breakdown of areas is completely up to you, but they should make the job of sorting jobs into groups easier.  If this option is not required, then anything can be entered here. 
  - You must have at least one Delivery Area defined, even if you are not going to use this option.
• Delivery Times - A delivery time is the preferred time for delivery to the customer.  This is a useful way of sorting jobs at scheduling time and this information appears on the Vehicle Schedule report.  The times can be ordered by selecting the scroll arrow buttons (56) at the bottom of the list screen.
  - You must have at least one Delivery Time defined, even if you are not going to use this option.
• Special Pricing Groups - Each product can be given a default price for as well as a teired pricing structre.  In addition to this you can create special pricing groups which can be assiged to each customer.  For each special pricing group, enter the special pricing for the products by double clicking on the product in the products area and entering a value.  If you now assign a customer to this special pricing group (from the customers screen) then each job created will use the special pricing value for this product, rather than the default value.  This option allows you to define multiple special pricing for a lot of customers, rather than having to change the default price each time a job is entered. The special pricing can also be teired, like the default pricing, by using threshold values.
• Vehicles - Each available vehicle should be entered here.  The vehicle names can be anything at all, but they should be kept simple and short to make the selection and reports easier to read and maintain.
• Users - Each new job can have a user name ("Entered by") assigned to it.  This is a useful way of tracking who has entered jobs in the system.  If this feature is required, each person who uses the system should be entered here, and users must enter this value (select their name from the "Entered by" list) for each new job.

Click on the following for information regarding the Options and Register menu items.