In OMICS today, buying groups work by crediting a distributor account at the end of the month, and debiting (with one big transaction) the buying group (or bill-to) account with an invoice. This is done automatically as part of the monthend and there is no opportunity for the lab to review before the credits and debits are created. Optionally, a discount is calculated on the purchases and applied to the buying group as well. The ordering ECP sees the original (full) amount of each invoice on their statement; the buying group sees the total discount that is calculated.
This allows printing a statement for the original customer, showing their purchases, but without any detail on the buying group statement at all. For example, on the statement for the buying group we see:
and on the statement for the specific ECP we see all the detail, in addition to the credit for what was applied to the buying group account:
My question is how best to handle the "moving" of charges from the ECP to the buying group. This could be done on-demand, for a range of dates, which would create the entries similar to how we create them today. That would allow volume discounts to be calculated on the buying group account after the debits have been created, for example, and would retain the detail on the
Buying groups are just bill-to/order-by
Buying groups are really just a case of bill-to/ordered-by for orders. In the case of a buying group, the order will be entered to the same customer as usual, with or without a different ship-to address. Keeping the ordered-by customer the same keeps all production reports and OE screens as-is; the bill-to customer field on the customer master affects the job when it is completed.
At time of completion, when creating the AR-TRX record, the sale is posted to the bill-to account (from the customer master), and the ordered-by account is put into a new field on the AR-TRX file. When printing a statement for a buying group account, we should sort the AR-TRX records by ordered-by account when printing. We should also have the ability to print a statement based on "ordered-by" account, so that the members of a buying group can see what they ordered (question - should this be a statement or a different report?). .
- Shouldn't be any changes to any reports needed
- Change AR-TRX file to add ordered-by customer and make new keys - duplicates of existing keys with acct number, with the ordered-by account instead, plus new key for bill-to/ordered-by/date which we will use when printing statements.
- Change completion posting program (RXSHIPORD) - ORD-ACCOUNT-NUM gets moved to the new ordered-by account in ARTRX. If the bill-to is set on the customer record, that bill-to becomes the bill-to on the ARTRX record, otherwise the ARTRX bill-to is the same account as the ordered-by account.
- Change AR-TRX maintenance program to allow lookup/search by ordered-by account
- Change RXRSTMT2 program to use the new bill-to/ordered-by/date key when printing the statement items, and output the ordered-by as part of the detail line.
- Change statement to add option to print by ordered-by account (checkbox on screen).
Volume Discounts
Note that volume discounts will need to be able to be calculated for members as well as the buying group.the "Customers" database, you will need to create the buying group account as well as the buying group members. When creating the buying group members, you will need to enter the buying group account number in the Bill-To # field. In the example below, BUYGRP, is the buying group and BGM-001 is a buying group member.
Orders will be entered using the buying group members. Once the orders are completed, entries are automatically created in the AR Transaction file with the appropriate Bill To (which is the buying group).
Before printing the statements, you will need to select the buying group statement template in the "Customers A/R" database. Our default template is STMBG001.XSL This statement lists all entries for the buying group, as well as entries for all buying group members, sorted by each member. You can also choose a different paper size or use the system default setting found in System Settings.
if you wish to print individual statements for buying group members, normally you would use the system default statement template. There is a checkbox, "Print Statement as Buying Group Member", which you must check in order to print a statement. When left unchecked, a statement will not be printed. However, you can override this setting when printing a statement for just one account on the statement printing screen.
