EDI / API (old)

This section covers all electronic communication through traditional EDI files and also live API real-time data flows available within Commerce.

Available Types	Details

Available Types	Details
Warehouse	connection to your warehouse is available we can send the warehouse the following sales orders purchase orders product codes tasting notes We can receive back from the warehouse the following items which are usually set to process automatically letting you know if there are any issues goods received → stock landed orders pick confirmation → invoice ready to send stock snapshot → book to book balancing of stocks For more details look here Warehouse XML Service
Web Sites	We offer a number of connectivity options for connecting to your website, depending on the level of connectivity will depend on the costs because some of the options need constant connection to the internet. Sending information to the web can be achieved by either Web CSV Web Extract CSV Live Database API API You can also opt to perform live stock checking through the Live Database API Incoming information from the website is sent through the API API It is best to have your developer contact us for more technical detail on the API
Marketing	The ability to extract information based on various criteria for marketing purposes, this produces a format that Mail Chimp can import and you can use this output to refine the search to exactly what you want.
Finance	This checks that all the invoices you have raised have reached the finance system, it performs a check of one weeks invoices each time it checks.

Below are the instructions as to how these work on all of the administration pages within Commerce.

Interfaces cover both the API interface which is used from the

web interface to your web site
Vision Insight (Andoird salesman application)
Vision Horizon (Android ePOS application)

and also the internal CSV output/loading of files and information which allow you to

output price-lists
import price list updates
CSV validate customers (now replaced by the API)
CSV validate sales orders (now replaced by the API)

File Options

Export and Upload
The Export and Upload functionality is designed to allow you to easily update prices on products, product price lists, and customer price lists.

It is NOT designed to amend anything other than prices on price lists, so to add product or remove them from price lists you should still use the relevant functionality on Vision Commerce.

This tab on the form deals with both Exports of Information and Imports and validation of the data.

You can export

Product Prices
Product Price Lists
Customer Price Lists

Specify the directory where you want the files to be downloaded to.
The system will then export a file which can be edited in excel or a similar application.

You should only update the sales prices on the files and reupload, make sure you do not alter the other information on the line especially the first field which is used to load the data back into the system.

When you have finished editing the files save them and go back to the system but this time use the UPLOAD button

When you upload the data you will be asked to provide a directory for the location of the file, this will then load the data and you MUST validate whichever price lists you loaded.

Should there be no issues during the validation it will load the data and immediately the new pricing takes effect.

Validation Issues

Anything which has failed validation will be shown in the VIEW/EDIT rejections page and from here you can double-click on the item, correct the issue and then resubmit it.

API Options

If you go to the API options you will be able to see all the items which are coming into the system from either the website, Vision Insight, Vision Horizon. where the items have NOT been able to go directly into the main system.

if you wish to look at the details of what has been happening then you should view the audit log which provides a complete breakdown of all the transactions being processed

The other tabs for customers and orders are built in such a way that only items with issues are left showing here on the screen, when an order or customer can be processed automatically then this will be carried out and you will need to do nothing.

The information shown on the tabs is the complete information we have been sent from the external application so you can see all the fields.

If you want to complete the information you can simply enter the missing information or double-click the entry will provide you with a form for key information which is missing, if there are further details which you have not noticed are missing then these need to be filled in.

When this interface is tested we expect the web provider to consistently provide the correct information in the field so failure for items which are mandatory should not be happening. There are however some fields that the website does not know and those fields may need to be entered at this point.

The API Maintenance tabs help you define what happens when items come in through the API menu.

The API maintenance form needs to be set up before you start accepting orders and customer records from either your website, Vision Horizon, Vision Insight.

This allows fields that those applications can not fill to be filled by the system automatically upon receipt to allow the new records to go straight into the system, anything missing you will have to edit through the interface module.

The general page is used for the general way that the interface runs, and whether you want to save items directly or whether you want to be able to stop everything in the interface for you to process manually. Assuming that you wish to post everything directly then you will only see those items which have issues in the interface.

Options	Explanantion

Options	Explanantion
Save Options	This has replaced the ‘Save orders directly into VC’ with the following options: (0) User will save manually from Interfaces (1) Auto save with other pending orders - save the order directly into VC (2) Auto save, allocate and submit to warehouse - this auto-allocate the order and submit to the warehouse (Warehouse Group is using EDI send and receive file)
Notifications User Manager	This will open a screen for you to select the Group or user to receive the Notifications when an order allocation fails or warehouse submission fails for an order submitted to the VC API, a notification is required for the VC users so that they can action them at the earliest. You are only able to have a group or a user set up against each notification This will be show on the home screen at the top next to the navigation as a Bell Icon
Default Sales Order Type	Assuming that your web interface is unable to tell us the type of order this is what we would set it to.
Shipping (Surcharge)	The standard code we need to use to identify shipping on VC when your incoming order has this charge on it.
Fee (Surcharge)	The standard code we need to use in VC to identify the charge, when this charge is in your incoming order. e.g. Credit card fee.
Meta Data used for rotation	Is ony used on v1 which was withdrawn on 01/09/2018 It is there for customers for backward compatibility
Incoming Values include VAT	If we are not told then this is what we need to assume for any order where it is not clear. It would be best to be consistent with this but we realise that this is not always possible.
Quantity is in cases	v1 format The quantity field is in cases or is this in singles

Customer defaults are to help you automatically create customers when the customer arrives from the external application, the fields above are mostly self-explanatory and come from the customer setup, which means they are choices of existing fields, such as VAT Code, Currency, status, analysis fields. If your external application can not complete or send these fields then this is what we will use to be able to save the customer record.

Auto Fill Lookup

There is a feature on the system which allows analysis fields to be automatically derived from other information the customer is requested to provide within their address and contact information.

This is an optional feature that you need to set up before switching on.

The feature will allow you to look up a new customer country, name, address, area, telephone, etc and from one of these fields, it will then base the analysis code on the contents of that field.

e.g. Customer sends in a +44 telephone number so we read this and we automatically know they are based in the United Kingdom.

Order Defaults tab allows you to specify any final order defaults which are needed for the incoming orders, if they are not specified on the inbound file then these are the defaults that we will be using for the order.

The web extract can be run manually or you can schedule this to run automatically one time per day.

This will produce a number of files for your website which can either be downloaded locally to your own system or if you provided FTP details we can send them to your website.

The options are simply which output(s) do you wish and where do you want them to go to.

The time taken to process this is generally within 30 seconds.

Automated Scheduling

This has to be set up by us on the system for you and is done at the time when the system is first implemented or the web CSV is first licensed.

The warehouse submission screen allows you to send information to the warehouse via EDI file or through the API (this depends on your warehouse)

We can send Sales Orders, Pre-advices, and product codes to the warehouse, only items which have been committed allocated stock will appear in this list for submission if their warehouse group is set up to send submissions.

When you open the screen you simply select the warehouse group and you will be presented with a list of the submissions waiting to be sent to the warehouse.

Only warehouse groups marked as SEND TO WAREHOUSE will be shown in the selection box

The sending process is relatively simple, select the items you want to send and then press the Generate Sales Orders XML and the system will generate the file send it and confirm that it has been received at the other end.

At the same time should there be any pre-advices waiting to send or product codes the system will ask you if you wish those to also be sent, it makes sending them relatively easily.

If you choose to send them separately, their forms are similar to the orders and need no further explanation.

In the event, there is an issue with a file or with an order you can resubmit this to the warehouse.

You can choose to either

Re-Generate - which will recreate the entire file, select the file you wish to re-generate and this option will re-produce the entire file.

Extract a Selected order - which will provide you with a single order from the file, to use this select the file, and the order and extract selected will provide you with a new file only containing what you require

Pre-Advices and Product Codes

These forms are similar in operation to the order's submission, they will list what needs to be sent and you simply select what you want to send and press the Generate button.

Only pre-advices have the ability to resubmit, and this works in a similar way to the order resubmit screen, except you have to select each pre-advice you wish to resubmit individually.

Warehouse Documents deals with information coming back to you from the warehouse, this is in the form of XML either run files or taken directly from the warehouse system at periodic intervals.

Inbound Information	Frequency	Explanation

Inbound Information

Frequency

Explanation

Goods Received

from live to daily

You send a pre-advice to the warehouse and the goods arrive and the warehouse book those goods into stock at this point the warehouse can provide you with this information electronically. When we read this in we match the purchase order and its respective line number to the inbound information and then we try to match those lines and we auto receipt, recording the quantity, rotation number, warehouse it was received into and the warehouse receipt notes.

If processed succesfully the purchase order will show the goods receipted.

In the event of an issue then an exception report is generated which you need to review so that you can complete the receipt.

Orders Processed

from live to daily

When you send the orders to the warehouse, following pick confirmation at the warehouse the information is then made available to you, this is what the warehouse have confirmed they have picked for the delivery

When this information is returned we match the sales order and sales order line number to the incoming information, the quantity we are provided from the warehouse is then the confirmed quantity that is despatched.

Where the warehouse have taken the stock from multiple rotations we will automatically split the sales order into those additional lines as it is important we record the stock used rotation by rotation.

We provide an exception report for this process, any orders which can not be matched you will need to process manually.

Stock Snapshot

daily

Each day we suggest a book to book is run.

The inbound information from the warehouse is loaded into the system, at the same time we generate a stock snapshot from commerce and then compare the two systems rotation by rotation, and any exceptions are shown on the exception reports.

This allows you to pick up discrepancies each day.

In the event you have issues with your goods inwards / orders processed, you can choose to fix those and recompare the incoming report or simply if the variances are small and you know what they refer to then you may not worry about running this again.

We record all the inbound information we receive from the warehouse, each file is logged and stored and you can see the information in the Incoming Files tab as well as in the audit log.

However the audit log shows much more information and a full audit trail of what is happening, in the example below the system, is polling the warehouse every 15 minutes for any new information, which it then processes automatically

When information arrives into the system you will be able to see it in the tab for the file type and it will show within the processing sub tab.

This form allows you to process waiting files or re-process files that are there and the view will show you the contents of the file.

However each time you process the file you can view the report, using the report tab, the reports will be shown in the list

When you view the report it will provide you with information, the example below shows a file which was re-processed where the system detected that the purchase was already receipted

Configuration

The example below is the standard configuration

We retain information for 14 days by default. You can of course change this however this all takes space and there is generally no need to keep this information beyond 14 days if you are reconciling on a regular basis