TMS iPad order in-take system

• 1. Introduction
• 2. Customers
• 3. Starting an order
• 4. Products
• 5. Entering orders
• 6. Order overview
• 7. Settings & Statistics
• 8. Media
• 9. Synchronisation

1. Introduction

OrderPad is a mobile application for the iPad allowing a sales team to have full access to customer information like location, representatives and financial data of customers. With the integration of a full company product catalog, the sales team can input orders for the customer, create order confirmations in PDF format, send order confirmations and manage all orders from customers. The product catalog supports different price levels depending on the customer type, discount prices, out of stock warnings, end of life products. A portfolio of images can be associated with products and the sales team disposes over rich media product leaflets, catalogs in JPEG, PDF or video format. OrderPad is a multilanguage application. The user interface language will automatically adapt to the language setting in the Apple iPad iOS.

2. Customers

The opening screen of the OrderPad application shows the customer information. The customer list is presented via an alphabetical list with direct alphabetical lookup, search functions on name, location, ID of the customer and filtering on different customer categories, like premium customers, new prospects, customers with backlog on payments. At the right side of the screen the details of the selected customer are shown. Several functions are available. With the 'Location' button, the customer can be located on Google map and with one click on the 'Nearby customers' an overview of other customers nearby is shown, which can be very useful when planning customer visits. For each customer, the list of orders entered by the customer can be shown, the client to send an email to the customer can be shown and finally, a company can associate specific media like images, PDF files, movies with a customer account. Selected information of the customer like telephone number, representative can be edited by the sales team and these changes can be synchronised with the main company customer database.

Not immediately visible to the customer but available with a simple left slide is the financial information of the customer. Here the turnover from the last 5 years , the credit limit, if the customer has any payment reminders open, ... is presented.

3. Starting an order

With the 'New order' button on the customer screen, a new order entry for the selected customer can be started. Here general order data like order date, delivery date, order type,... is specified. The order number is generated automatically. When the basic order information is provided, the application moves to the product screen where products can be added to the new order.

4. Products

The product information screen is organised in a similar and familiar was as the customer screen. On the left is the alphabetical list of products with quick alphabetic lookup, search function on product name or product ID and filtering on product categories like products that are currently in stock, products with discount prices, end of life products, ... At the right side of the screen the details of the selected product are shown. The product information is presented in a grid. At the left side of the grid product dimensions and prices are displayed, in the header product colors are shown. The cells in the grid are also color marked. Yellow indicates 'limited stock availability', red means out of stock and grey indicates 'not available'.

5. Entering orders

After a new order was created from the customers page, products can be added to the order by simple selecting the desired product in the left list and clicking in the grid to add quantities of a specific product in the order. When the grid cell is clicked, a numeric keypad appears allow to enter quantities. This numeric keypad also takes in account possible set packaging units. At the bottom of the screen, the total number of products in the order and the value of the order is shown. Multiple products can be added to the order till the "Close order" button is clicked.

6. Order overview

Similar to the customers' overview and products overview, an order overview is available. Orders are presented in the left list again with lookup and search capabilities. With the 'Magnifying glass' icon, lookup on a specific order can be done. This lookup function searches on the either the customer name or order ID. Filtering can be done on processed orders (green tick) and unprocessed orders (yellow star). From this page, products can be deleted from the order, moved to another order. The red tick indicates which product will be to deleted/moved. For moving a product to another order it is of course required that there is a second unprocessed order present in the order overview of the customer.

For each order, following actions are offered: synchronize your order and to generate an order confirmation in PDF format. Once the order is synchronized the status of this order will change into 'processed'. The second action is to print the order, via Apple's AirPrinting. The last action is to send an order confirmation in PDF format to the customer via email.

7. Settings & Statistics

In the Settings screen the application and sales person specific information is entered. Here the sales ID, device ID ( is linked to the salesman), order ID and currency is set. In the section Statictics three predefined statistics are offered: total orders / day, total orders / week and total order / month.

8. Media

	In the Media list, MP4, JPG, ,PDF,... files can be shown. This can vary from product images, product leaflets, promotional flyers to product movies. The list of media is sychronised with the company server. This ways, the salesman can always have the latest product documentation. With a yellow star, it is indicated which media are new and have not yet been viewed. The media can then also be sent to the customer from the device or printed via AirPrint.

9. Synchronisation

Four different types of information is synchronised between the iPad device and the company server: customer information, product information, order information and general + customer specific media. As each iPad can have a unique ID, it is possible to synchronise a specific set of information with different iPads. It is important to note that the OrderPad application is fully functional without internet connection. The salesman can synchronise information whenever an internet connection is available. The availability of new customer information, new product information or new media is marked with a yellow star. Only when new information is available, it will be synchronised. Whenever a syncrhonisation of orders is done, the 'unprocessed' orders are being sent to the company server. All synchronisation is done with the FTP protocol and is based on CSV files to easily interface with any type of backend system.