"I received my first order from my website…what do I do next?"

January 27, 2010

This is a popular question from Distributors, here are a few tips to get you on your way:

•  Once an order is submitted from your website, you’ll receive an email noting that there has been an order placed. Go to the Account Maintenance area in the Account menu to verify your email address. A notice will also display on the Home page in your DistributorCentral account (see figure below).  

 

•  Once you have located the order within your DistributorCentral account, you will be able to see who your customer is on the Order Summary page. You’ll also see  when they placed the order and any payment information they have provided (see figure below). 

 

DistributorCentral does not process any payments for you. Also, payments between you and your customer, and you and the supplier are separate. The payment information that your customer provides would need to be processed by you. You would then need to also provide your payment information separately to the supplier.
To access the payment setup area in your DistributorCentral account, Go to the Account Menu >> Payment >> Payment Setup.

•  On the Order Summary page, you’ll also be able to see who the supplier is for that product as well. Orders are never automatically sent to the supplier, and you will have control over when/if you would like the order to be sent to the supplier. (see figure below). 

 

•  Once you verify the order, you have the ability to create and send the PO to the supplier through the DistributorCentral system. If you prefer, you can also print out the order and fax it to the supplier, or you can save the order as a PDF and email it to the supplier with your standard email client (see figure below).  If it the first time placing an order with a supplier, you will need to contact them to setup an account and business relationship.

Watch the short video learn how handle orders from your DistributorCentral website. 

Click on the links below to access brief guides that can help you get your account setup and ready for business.

Checklist
Order Management Guide

We also recommend that you place a few test orders from your live website to see exactly how the system works. Make sure to log out of your DistributorCentral account when doing this.

Suppliers: New Product Editing/Updating Features

January 25, 2010

In an effort to help our Suppliers keep their product data up to date as easily as possible, we have added a few requested features to the product editor. Some of these features are below:

1. The Product Display Status Report. This report isn’t a brand new feature but we have added new ways to sort the report and new columns to the report. The report is meant for a Supplier to quickly glance through their products to see if they are displaying, if they have images, etc. If they aren’t displaying, you can quickly see why and correct the issue.

There are now added fields to allow you to sort the product status report by item number, name, or last updated date. The other fields available to sort by are Product Name, Style Number, Created Date, Updated date.

2. For those  Suppliers that set updated pricing to start at a future date, you can now quickly copy your current pricing to the future pricing for any specific product to help cut down on re-entry. To see this feature, go to edit a product and click on the pricing tab. There on the right side there is a link called “Copy current pricing to Future pricing.”

3. Product Updated dates are also easy to see for your products from the Product List page. You can tell when a product was last updated without editing it.

Let us know if you have any questions regarding updating your products.

Technical Support  – info@distributorcentral.com  – 888-516-7401


XML Feed Now Available for Advanced Users

January 15, 2010

We are now offering an XML feed of product Data for our advanced users!

Please note that you should work with a Website Designer that is experienced with XML feeds if you would like to use this feature. DistributorCentral does not provide support with integrating these feeds to your site.

The DistributorCentral product XML data feed is designed for developers wishing to design their own website, but still use DC product data. You will still create a basic website and catalogs using existing tools within your DC account, but the output will be pure XML …

See this guide to read on about this feature:   XML Guide


PPAI Expo 2010

January 14, 2010

We’ve been having a great show at the PPAI Expo this week. It was great to put so many faces to names at the Power User’s Social on Tuesday as well as talking to so many of you distributors and suppliers in our booth and on the show floor during yesterday’s opening day of the expo. We’ve had numerous discussions about the exciting new features that we’ve launched over the past few months and received some great feedback that will lead to even more exciting new features to help you conduct business.

If you are attending the show and haven’t done so yet, please stop by booth 5555 and say hi!


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