mbs arc training manual ordering · 2017. 6. 30. · mbs arc training manual ordering this chapter...

MBS ARC Training Manual

Ordering

This chapter focuses on creating purchase orders through the Ordering >

Maintain Purchase Orders menu. The Want List chapter will focus on creating

orders for wholesalers, however those orders also can be worked with in the

Maintain Purchase Order menu.

This chapter will also review how to electronically transmit want lists and

purchase orders to vendors.

This manual covers the following aspects of textbook ordering:

Two Types of Textbook Orders in ARC ..................................................... 2

Review Buying Decisions on the Open-to-Buy Report ................................ 3

Create Purchase Orders ......................................................................... 6

Automatically Create Purchase Orders .................................................. 6

Print Purchase Orders ....................................................................... 15

Purchase Order Report and Forms ...................................................... 15

Manually Create Purchase Order ........................................................ 18

Transmit Electronic Purchase Orders ..................................................... 22

Transmission Errors via Pubnet or EasyLink ......................................... 24

Delete the Entire Purchase Order ....................................................... 25

ARC Ordering Checklist ....................................................................... 26

ARC – Maintain Purchase Orders MBS Systems

MBS TEXTBOOK EXCHANGE, LLC PAGE 2 OF 26

Two Types of Textbook Orders in ARC

1. Wholesale orders. These are placed to wholesale companies such as MBS. The wholesale order goal is to order used and discounted

textbooks before publisher orders are placed. Wholesale orders are created using a Want List. More information regarding Want Lists is

available in the Want List chapter

2. Publisher orders. These are placed directly to publishers or distributors

for new textbooks, and the orders are created from the Purchase Order menu. They can be created for all publishers or for groups.

Increasing costs for textbooks often result in wholesale ordering to be

viewed as the first step in the ordering process. Acquiring textbooks for

discounts, often around 50% off for used or 30% off for new, allow stores to

save money on the purchases and pass that savings on to their students.

In addition to wholesale orders, acquiring books from students during

buyback provides the option to acquire the book directly without receiving,

shipping costs, and other considerations. Buyback also helps to increase

customer retention by allowing students to be the sellers.

Publisher orders are often the most convenient way to acquire customized

titles, books with access codes, and other new inventory items. Publishers

will occasionally offer discounts, but these are often less than the discounts

offered from a wholesaler.

Immediate publisher orders often take place around the same time as

wholesale orders. Bulk publisher orders often are created around when Want

List reworks end, closer to Rush.

The Open-to-Buy for a textbook is used to determine the order quantities

when placing Want Lists and Publisher Orders. Ensuring accurate Buying

Decisions prior to ordering helps create an efficient Open-to-Buy.



Review Buying Decisions on the Open-to-Buy Report

Creating accurate open-to-buy amounts relies on reviewing buying decisions.

To make more accurate decisions, print an Open-to-Buy (OTB) Report and

verify order quantities before beginning the ordering process. Processes for

setting Open-to-Buy are explained in the Buying Decisions Chapter.

The Open-to-Buy Report displays all titles to be purchased for the bookstore.

This report helps ensure accurate ordering. Print the report and verify

quantities before continuing the ordering process.

Reports Menu > Enter Report Requests

1. Highlight Buyer Reports and click Select Individual Reports. Select

Group allows for the printing of more than one report at a time.

2. Highlight the Open-to-Buy report and click Select. Choose the desired

store and term and click Save. Click Confirm Request.

3. More options are shown. Select report options, and click Save to

complete the report generation.



This is a listing of textbooks with an Open-to-Buy quantity. Also shown is a

summary of the vendors’ return policies to help determine the precision

needed in ordering.

Calculations of Open-to-Buy quantities are shown on the Order Quantity

Screen. This book screen is accessible through a variety of menu options

such as Maintain Adoptions, Maintain Book Information, and Work with

Textbooks.

On the Order Quantity Edit screen that follows, the Open-to-Buy calculation

is shown.



In this case, estimated sales are 85 textbooks. The estimate includes 5

reserved books and 20 Buyback books. Estimated units are subtracted,

leaving an Open-to-Buy quantity of 60 titles.

Buyback – Estimated is used to provide the system with the best estimate

for the number of books students will sell. This action does affect Open-to-

Buy.

Budgeted and Speculative units amount to the number of books that can be

bought by the system, and these fields do not affect Open-to-Buy. This

number may amount to more units than Buyback – Estimated. However, the

combined amount of Budgeted and Speculative should never be less than

the amount Estimated.



Create Purchase Orders

Ordering flexibility in ARC is provided with automatically generated and

manually created purchased order processes. The automatic generation

process saves data entry time for situations that require multiple titles

and/or multiple publishers ordering. Manual creation of purchase orders

may be more efficient in situations that require only a handful of titles from

one or two publishers.

Automatically Create Purchase Orders

Ordering > Maintain Purchase Orders

1. To create a purchase order, click Add PO.

2. The PO Creation Method defaults to Automatic. Click Save.



Defaults for these options can be set by your client representative, and you

can set them on this screen for each individual order. It is possible to

override the defaults for this specific generate batch only. Click Save to use

the listed defaults and to move on the next screen.

• Select Immediate Order Books Only? — “Yes” will load purchase

orders for only those books marked as “Order ASAP from Publisher?”

on the book’s Order Quantity screen.

• Add ”Withhold from Order” Quantities to “Open to Buy”

Figures? — “Yes” overrides any quantities that were withheld from the original Open-to-Buy calculation, and it adds those quantities to

the total order amount. Since Withhold from Order is often used for estimating Rental Returns and other purposeful reductions to Open-to-

Buy, this is not recommended.

• Zero “Withhold from Order” Quantities After PO Creation? —

When the PO is sent, “Yes” will decrease to zero any quantity in “Withhold from Order” on the Order Quantity Edit screen of books

ordered. This is also not recommended unless adding Withhold from Order to the order.



• List Books Still Requiring an Order? — If “Yes,” a report of all titles

that were not placed on a PO during this automatic generation will print.

• Create Purchase Orders Under Minimum? — This gives you the option of overriding the order quantity or amount minimum set in

Maintenance > Maintain Vendor Information > Other Data > Ordering Info.

• Send Pubnet Vendors Via Pubnet? — Pubnet is a 3rd party electronic order submission system that is integrated with the MBS

System. Select “Yes” if your vendor uses this service and you want to submit your PO via Pubnet.

• Send EasyLink Vendors Via EasyLink? — EasyLink is a 3rd party electronic order submission system that is integrated with the MBS

System. While typically used for wholesale orders, some publishers also can use this service. Select “Yes” if your vendor uses this service

and you want to submit your PO via EasyLink.

• Pubnet Ship Code? — “Ship Best Method” is the typical selection, but that can be changed to another code listed in the drop-down.

• Send all other orders via? — This field is used to indicate how all orders not being sent via Pubnet will be transmitted.

• FOB Point? — Free on Board set to “Destination” seeks to apply responsibility of the shipment on the shipper/vendor until the shipment

is delivered. “Shipping Point” refers to the bookstore having responsibility for the shipment while in transit (either after leaving the

vendor or a specified point along the shipping route).

3. Complete selecting options, and click Save. The screen that appears

has options relevant to Pubnet (pubnet.org). If not using Pubnet, Save

to continue past this screen.



• Earliest Ship Date — Enter the earliest date Pubnet vendors should

begin sending the orders.

• Special Offer Code — Enter any code the vendor has for a certain

discount.

• Delayed Billing? — This is used if an agreement exists between your

store and the vendor to defer billing.

• Delayed Billing Month — Enter the month number if billing is to be

delayed.



• Back Order Code? —These define how to manage backorders (items

temporarily out of stock).

o Back Order Only NYP (not yet printed) means to only

backorder titles pending print.

o No Back Order means do not backorder any items.

o Back Order All means put items on a backorder regardless of reason.

o Back Order Only OS means only backorder items out of stock.

• Cancel Date — Enter the date by which the order should be canceled

if backorders cannot be filled.

• Special Shipping Service? — Enter any shipping requirements (UPS

only, no weekend delivery, etc.).

• Exception Instructions —Enter any additional notes and

considerations to be sent via Pubnet.

4. Complete selecting options, and click Save. Your chosen options for

automatic generation are shown.



Additional Options include:

• Generate POs – Completes the automatic PO creation. This should be

the last step completed on this screen.

• Pubnet Defaults – Reviews the previous Pubnet selections screen for

Pubnet orders.

• Select Pubs/Groups – Allows selection of specific vendors or vendor

groups to be added to this order.

5. If selecting specific publishers or groups, click the Select Pubs/Groups

additional option. If generating all POs, navigate to step 11.

6. Select the Additional Option to Select Pubs or Select Groups. The

following example selects publishers, but both methods are entered

the same.

7. The example shows additions by publisher. Click Add Vendor to search

for a publisher to add, then highlight and click the option to Select.



8. Continue as needed. Alternative, the Option to Specify Range can be

used to select a starting and ending Publisher.

9. Once the list is entered, click Confirm Selection.

10. Save to continue back to the review of the Automatic Generation or

Update to add more vendors. The Change Equality option allows the

selection to be Equal to (default) or not Equal to the selected values.

11. If not selecting specific pubs/groups, or once those selections have

been made, complete the purchase order automation by clicking

Generate POs.



12. You can enter a PO number or let the system assign the next number.

Mark “Yes” to send the POs to the document center as soon as they

are posted. Click Save.

13. PO’s are sent to document center (if you chose that option), and they

are now created and display in Maintain Purchase Orders. Additional

summary review can be seen at this step regarding the auto-

generation.

Clicking Show Generated lists PO’s that were automatically generated: the

creation date, the finalization status (Yes=finalized, No=in process), the

number of errors in the PO, and if the PO order quantity or amount is under

the minimums set in the Maintenance menu.



14. Display Generation Options shows the options you chose earlier in the

ordering process. Highlighting a batch line and clicking “Display Errors”

can help fix errors.

15. Highlighting the order with an error and clicking Display Detail will

show the book with the error (in this case, an ISBN error). This error

can be corrected at Adoptions > Maintain Book Information.



To view these details again at a later time, the Additional Option in Maintain

Purchase Orders for Auto-Gen History will display the generations and

provide the options to review them.

Print Purchase Orders


1. Highlight a purchase order and click Select. This places an asterisk

next to the PO.

2. With the purchase orders selected, click the Print Selections option.

The printout will appear in My Documents.

Purchase Order Report and Forms

When printing purchase orders through the automatic generation, two

reports print.

The first is a summary of what was generated the purchase order creation,

and the second is a report version of the purchase orders that were created.

A third report will also print for the list of books still requiring an order if that

option was selected during generation.



Examples of these reports are as follows.

Books Still Requiring an Order

Purchase Order Generation Rpt



Purchase Orders: Report Format

The Purchase Order report format will contain a page break for each new

vendor purchase order.

A purchase order form is also available to print. This only is available if a

purchase order is printed from the Maintain Purchase Order menu after it

has been created. The form is designed to submit to a vendor, and an image

for the store can also be added to it if needed.



Manually Create Purchase Order


1. To create a purchase order, click Add PO.

2. Select Manual and click Save. Choose the vendor, and click Save.



• PO must be prepaid? — Check “Yes” if the PO has to be paid before

the textbooks are received. This is often defaulted to “No” as pre-pay will ask for a check number during receiving. Accounts Payable can

select vendors for pre-pay when working directly with the invoice.

• Vendor to Pay — Enter a separate vendor to receive payment (a

credit card vendor can also be used, but it must be set up in the vendor file).

• Send Via? — Chose how to send the PO. EasyLink sends POs to wholesalers who subscribe electronically (and some select publisher),

and Pubnet does the same to publishers. These are both 3rd party services that must be purchased outside of MBS Systems. The other

options are informational only and will print on the PO.

• Terms Code — This code is set in Maintenance > Maintain Purchase

Order Terms. The terms code refers to the publisher’s default payment

time frame (net 30 for example).

• Ship Date — Select the date for when the order should be shipped.

• Pubnet Code — “Ship Best Method” is the typical selection, but that can be changed. If using Pubnet, code 401 is “Ship Best Method.” If

you have no shipping preferences, or if you are not using Pubnet, leave this box blank.



• Ship all other orders via — If left blank, vendors may ship by

whichever method they want. Otherwise, select a shipping method.

• FOB Point? — Free on Board set to “Destination” seeks to apply

responsibility on the shipper/vendor until the shipment is delivered. “Shipping Point” refers to the bookstore having responsibility for the

shipment while in transit (either after leaving the vendor or at a specified point along the shipping route).

3. Click Save. A message states “The PO was created. Continue.” Click

Save.

The PO header is now created and you will be returned to the main menu

for Maintain Purchase Orders. The next steps review adding books to the

purchase order header.

1. Return to Ordering>Maintain Purchase Orders, highlight the PO header

you created, and click Book List.



2. Click Add Book. Find the book to order from this publisher. The

following ordering screen appears.

3. Enter the quantity desired, and click Save. Open-to-Buy displays on

the right side of the screen.

The Open-to-Buy report is useful in developing orders, and the Order

Quantity Edit screen (available on book information screens) shows detailed

data on the open to buy quantity.

Clicking Save again brings up a screen to add more books to the PO.

Returning to Ordering>Maintain Purchase Orders, the PO can be printed

(“Print Purchase Order”) or sent electronically (“Prepare Transmit”).



Transmit Electronic Purchase Orders

Once purchase orders are created, stores can electronically transmit

purchase orders to Pubnet and EasyLink vendors.

To use Pubnet or EasyLink the store must subscribe to that service outside

of the MBS System.

Additional options may need to be set (for instance, the SAN for Pubnet

vendors in the vendor file) prior to using this service for the first time.

Contact your MBS Client Representative if starting these services for the first

time to ensure set-up is complete.

To transmit purchase orders electronically, use the following steps:

Ordering>Maintain Purchase Orders

1. Highlight the purchase order to transmit electronically (via EasyLink or

Pubnet), and click Prepare Transmit.



2. Select the appropriate electronic transmission service. Options

include:

• EasyLink — to transmit purchase orders using the EasyLink communication service.

• Pubnet — to transmit purchase orders using the Pubnet communication service.

3. Select the transmission method and click Save. Displayed is the

current PO (in this case, #2104) along with any others that have not

been sent.

• Hold — Select this to exclude a purchase order from transmission.

• Release — Select this to include a purchase order that were marked

Held in the transmission batch.

• Hold All — Select this to exclude all purchase orders from

transmission.

• Release All — Select this to include all purchase orders that were

marked Held in the transmission batch.

• Generate — Select this to transmit the PO/PO’s.

4. Click Generate to complete the electronic submission.



Transmission Errors via Pubnet or EasyLink

Follow these steps if there is an error when transmitting purchase orders via

Pubnet or EasyLink (Maintain Purchase Orders).

1. Click Error Recovery. Any electronic transmissions that failed will be

listed in the Transmissions in Error Recovery table on this screen.

• Try Again — Select this to resubmit a batch of transmissions listed in the table.

• Display Purchase Orders — Select this to display the purchase orders in a transmission batch.

• Delete — Select this to delete the entire batch.

2. Sometimes a batch can get stuck transmitting. To view any batches

that might be stuck, click Show Active Requests. The same three options (Try Again, Display POs, and Delete) appear in the Active

Transmissions table.

Deleting titles off a PO or deleting an entire PO will update the Open-to-Buy

for those titles back to what they were prior to placing the order.



Delete the Entire Purchase Order


1. Highlight the purchase order and click Delete. (Purchase orders can

only be deleted if the store has not received any titles on the purchase

order.)

2. Click Confirm to delete the PO.



ARC Ordering Checklist

Print Open-To-Buy Report and Review Buying Decisions

Create Want lists (Automatically or Manually)

Edit/Print Want lists

Transmit Electronic Want lists

Receive Want list Responses & Create Purchase Orders

Create Publisher Purchase Orders (Automatically or Manually)

Edit/Print Purchase Orders

Transmit Electronic Purchase Orders