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The DEAR Sale module covers all processes involving making sales to your customers. DEAR offers the following features to help make your sales process smooth and efficient. All sales documents and email templates can be customised to suit your business requirements. 


Is there a feature you would like to see or an improvement that would help your business? Please make feature requests on our forum, requests are reviewed based on popularity and importance for inclusion in future development releases.


Sale module user permissions

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DEAR offers fine-grained control over user permissions. Grant users full or read-only permission to the different features of the sales module, and create roles with pre-defined permissions to assign to users.


DEAR allows you to set the following permissions for the sales module (Settings → Users and Roles):


  • Sales List & Tasks: (Read-only) View the list of sales and sale status. View recurring sales. View sale tasks assigned to you. View sale order lines and document header. View manual journals, Attachments and Logs & Attributes tabs of sales. (Full Access) Create and save new orders, cannot add items. Make changes to the document header. Clone existing orders. Add attachments to the order. Create invoices for recurring sales. 
  • Sale Task – Margin Info: Makes visible the Margin column on the sale order screen. 
  • Sale Task – Change Prices & Discounts: Edit price and discount fields on a sale quote, sale order or sale invoice. 
  • Sale Task – Ignore Mandatory Credit Limit: Ignore credit limit for that customer if applicable. Credit limits for a customer can be specified in the customer details. 
  • Sale Task – Quote view: Sales List & Tasks permission is required. (Read-only) View the Quote tab. (Full Access) Add and edit quote lines of non-authorised quotes. Print and email quote documents (Sale Quote, Sale Quote Matrix).
  • Sale Task – Quote authorisation: Authorise quotes. 
  • Sale Task – Order view: Sales List & Tasks permission is required. (Read-only) View the Order tab. (Full Access) Add and edit sale order lines of non-authorised orders. Print and email order documents (Sale Order, Sale Order Matrix).
  • Sale Task – Order authorisation: Authorise sale orders. 
  • Sale Task – Pick view: Sales List & Tasks permission is required. (Read-only) View the Pick tab. (Full Access) Add and edit pick lines if not yet authorised. Print and email pick documents (Pick List, Expanded Pick List). 
  • Sale Task – Pick authorisation: Authorise pick actions.
  • Sale Task – Quote Approve/Reject/Review: Approve/reject/review sales quotes.
  • Sale Task – Pack view: Sales List & Tasks permission is required. (Read-only) View the Pack tab. (Full Access) Add and edit pack lines if not yet authorised. Print and email pack documents (Receipt, Packing Slip, Box Label). 
  • Sale Task – Pack authorisation: Authorise pack actions, including warranty registration.
  • Sale Task – Ship view: Sales List & Tasks permission is required. (Read-only) View the Ship tab. (Full Access) Add and edit ship lines if not yet authorised. 
  • Sale Task – Ship authorisation: Authorise ship actions. 
  • Sale Task – Invoice & Credit Note view: Sales List & Tasks permission is required. (Read-only) View the Invoice tab and Credit Note tab. (Full Access) Add and edit invoice/credit note lines. Create a sale credit note. Print and email invoice/credit note documents (Credit Note, Invoice, Invoice Matrix). Add payments/refunds to authorised invoices/credit notes. Create warranty registration.
  • Sale Task – Invoice & Credit Note authorisation: Authorise invoices and credit notes.
  • Sale Task – Price and total info: View price, order line and total information on sale tasks and sale documents. 
  • Sale Task – Undo: Undo sale orders.
  • Sale Task – Void: Void sale orders.
  • Warranty Search: View and search product warranties.


Customers

Customers buy services and products from you.

  • Customers List & Editing: (Read-only) View customers list and customer details. View customer credits. (Full Access) Add and edit customers. 
  • Customer – Enable/Disable Credit Hold: Enable or disable manual Credit Hold on a customer. 
  • Customer Sales History: Makes visible Sales by Product and Sales by Document tabs on the customer details screen.
  • Customer Payment:Access and make bulk customer payments. 
    • NOTE: This does not affect payments on individual invoices.


Purchase/Sale CSV Import

Import purchase and sales tasks via CSV. This is accessed from Purchase → Purchases → Import or Sale → Sales → Import

NOTE: This permission is not required to import purchase/sale order lines via CSV. 


Gift Cards

Gift Cards are offered to customers to then be used to pay for your products and services. Full access allows importing, exporting and forfeiting Gift Cards. Read-only access allows viewing currently active gift cards, their balances and expiration dates. This permission does not affect generation of gift cards during the sale process. 


Order Routing

Order Routing causes DEAR to automatically route an order to the seller's inventory location nearest to the provided shipping address for fulfillment when a customer places an order on an eCommerce platform. This is accessed from Settings → Reference Books → Stock → Order Routing. This permission allows turning order routing off and on, create and edit order routing locations and change order routing sessions. 


Edit Authorised documents

Allows editing of authorised documents. To use this permission, the user will need the sale task view permission of the document they want to edit (quote, order, pick, pack, ship, invoice, credit note).


See Managing Users and Roles and User permissions explained.


Processing a Sale

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Processing sales is the main purpose of the sale module in DEAR. Through the sale module, you can create quotes, sales orders and sales invoices, and track sales orders through pick, pack and ship. There is an option to add a credit note (negative invoice) after a sale order has been created. Our sales process design allows quick duplication of line items from the previous stage, streamlining your operations. 


There are three types of sale currently available in DEAR:

  • Simple Sales are used for sales of goods or goods and services, with a single invoice and fulfillment. Most sales will fall under a simple sale. Learn more about Processing a Sale.
  • Service Sales are used for orders without stock items (i.e. orders of services or non-inventory items only). In a Service sale, the Sale Order and Fulfillment (Pick, Pack, Ship) sections are skipped as there is no change in Inventory. Learn more about Service Sales
  • Advanced Sales allow items to be shipped and/or invoiced separately while still being considered part of the same sale. It also allows multiple credit notes to be issued for a single sale order. You can convert simple sales into advanced sales but not vice versa. Learn more about Advanced Sales - Multiple Fulfillments.


Quotes and Orders

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Quotes allow the user to produce a cost estimate of goods and/or services upon customer enquiry. This can help prospective buyers decide which company to buy from and/or receive services from. Quote can be skipped to start the sale process at the order tab. DEAR allows you to generate quotes without making a customer record, in case no order is made. 


Sales orders are internal documents that are generated by the company itself. It records the customer’s externally generated Purchase Order details. It can be created from a previously authorised quote or without a quote. An authorised Sale Order on its own will not reduce inventory - this will only take effect once the order is picked. This is part of Processing a Sale



Invoices and Payments

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Invoices are documents issued by the company to the customer that indicate product and/or service details (such as quantities, agreed pricing on goods and/or services provided) and may include other additional costs (such as freight charges, fees, etc.). Payments can be applied to authorised invoices, either through DEAR, or imported from Xero/QuickBooks Online if DEAR has been integrated with an accounting system. This is part of Processing a Sale


Payments and Bulk Customer Payments

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Payments can be applied in DEAR to authorised invoices. If an invoiced customer has an unused customer credit, you will be able to use it as a payment towards the invoice balance. 


NOTE: If using Xero as your accounting system, ensure Xero payment settings are set to Synced both ways or Pushed to Xero. QuickBooks Online payments are set by default to sync both ways. Some users prefer to entirely manage their payments through their accounting system. If this is the case, you can leave this section blank; the payment details will be imported from your accounting system and applied to the order once a payment is made.


The Bulk Customer Payments feature allows you to apply payments to multiple invoices from a customer in one go to make your sales process more efficient. 


Learn more about Payments and Bulk Customer Payments.


Customer Credits

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Customer credit is money that you owe to the customer, and which can be used against future payments. Customer credits can arise from credit notes issued as store credit rather than cash payment, prepayments and overpayments. Customers in POS can make deposits on layby sales or receive store credit; however, these will only apply to POS sales and will not be able to be used against sale invoices processed through the DEAR web portal. 


Learn more about Customer Credits/Deposits.


Recurring Invoices/Orders

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Recurring Sales Orders/Invoices allow you to program recurring sales for a customer at weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annual intervals. Recurring invoices will either be automatically generated on the date set or can be pre-generated earlier from the Recurring Sales screen. 


Learn more about Recurring Orders/Invoices.


Fulfillment

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Fulfillment (Pick, Pack, Ship) allows users to manage and track the status of orders through the fulfillment & shipment process. It is part of Processing a Sale

  • Pick instructs the warehouse to gather the merchandise listed in the Sale order (based on quantities, serial numbers, batch numbers, etc.), allocating the stock and preventing it sold in a subsequent order. As this is solely a set of instructions to the warehouse that may or may not be completed, decrease in inventory will not be affected until they fully complete the shipment process. 
  • Pack involves taking the picked stock items and preparing them to be shipped, selecting the quantity of boxes and which items will be sent in which box. 
  • Ship takes the packed boxes, assigns a carrier and (if applicable) records the tracking number. Once the merchandise is fulfilled and shipped to the customers, the shipment process will record the transaction and decrease the number of items in the inventory. Merchandise can either be shipped to the customer’s shipping address, or the customer can physically pick up the item from the company’s location. Both methods will require the Shipping process to effectively remove the sold items from the inventory.

If one or more of these processes do not apply to your business (like, for example, for some eCommerce platforms), they can be set to automatic in your organisation settings. 


Dropshipping

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Dropshipping is a supply chain management technique where the retailer does not keep inventory in stock. The retailer transfers customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer. As in retail businesses, the majority of retailers make their profit on the difference between the wholesale and retail price, but some retailers earn an agreed percentage of the sales in commission, paid by the wholesaler to the retailer. DEAR allows dropshipping of products with attached suppliers when dropship is enabled for that product. 


Learn more about Dropshipping.


Split Orders and Backorders

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Backorders and Split Orders involve processing sales that do not have enough stock on hand to be fulfilled. Sales Orders can be authorised even if there is not enough inventory in stock to fulfil them. When attempting to authorise the sale order, an error message will be displayed, and you will be prompted to choose either Split Order or Backorder.


Split Order will cause a new Sale Order to be generated automatically. The original Sale Order will be amended, so the item quantity reflects the amount in stock. This Sale Order can be fulfilled and invoiced immediately. A second Sale Order with the remaining item quantity will be created. This can be saved for when the required inventory is in stock, then fulfilled and invoiced in a separate order.


Backorder will wait until all the required quantity of items are in stock before fulfilling the sale order. In both cases, the outstanding item quantity will be backordered (a purchase order for the remaining items will be created). To use the backorder function the products to be backordered must have suppliers attached. When the item comes back into stock, the sale order can be completed. 


Learn more about Backorders and Split Orders.


External Fulfillment and Shipping Services

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DEAR supports integration with a variety of shipping services which can then be used to estimate shipping rates and generate shipping labels for your deliveries.

If you utilise a third-party fulfillment service such as Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) to ship your orders, you can connect the service to DEAR as an external inventory management location. 


See Shipping and Fulfillment for more information. 


Sales Views

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The Sales module has three views, the General View, Accounting View, and Fulfillment View. The information and order statuses displayed on the View All Sales page depends on the selected view. Available actions and filters also depend on the selected view. Learn about the different views and how they can help you track your sales, estimates, fulfillments, and credit notes.


See Sales Views and Order Status Values for more information. 


Credit Notes and Refunds

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A credit note is considered a negative invoice. It is a way to amend the details of a sale order or invoice after it has already been authorised, for example, if a unit price has been overcharged, if a shipment is partially or completely incorrect or damaged, or for a discount applied to an order once the sale order is completed. It is also possible to create a standalone customer credit note that is not linked to any particular sale. When authorising a credit note associated with a sale, you will be given the option to restock the items from the order. 


Learn more about Customer Credit Notes and Refunds.



Attachments and Activity Logs

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Any documents printed or emails sent through the Sale module are saved in the Attachments tab for easy retrieval. All of the activities done by the user from the start of making a new Sale Order are logged in the Activity Logs tab.


Sales Bulk Actions

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DEAR allows executing actions in bulk for selected sales tasks in the View All Sales screen, which is accessed from the Sales menu. These actions are available for both simple and advanced sales. Using this feature, users can fill & authorise sales process steps in bulk, including completing the whole sale. Void, Undo, and generating sales documents and emails can all be performed in bulk. 


Learn more about Sales Bulk Actions


Price Tiers

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DEAR Inventory lets you set up to 10 price points for each product. Customers are assigned a price tier which sets what price they can buy products for (e.g. Retail, Wholesale). Price Tier names are set up in General Settings while Price Tier values are managed from the Inventory module (Inventory -> Products -> [selected product]).


Setting prices at the product level is optional since they can also be set and modified at the purchase or sales level. Besides, Price Tier amounts can be set manually or automatically calculated using defined markup rules for each Price Tier. 


Learn more about Managing Price Tiers.



Managing Customers

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Customers and customer details are added and managed from the sales module. 


Learn more about Customers



Customer Sales Statement Reports (Outstanding Balances)

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View and print sales statements with outstanding invoices for each customer using Customer Sales Statement Reports. A Customer Sales Statement Report is a report consisting of a consolidated list of all the transactions carried out for a particular customer. It is a good business practice to send regular statements to your customers, so they are aware of the amounts still owing on their account. There are two options:

  • Sale Statement Activity – Activity statement will show all activity within the selected date range. If there are invoices still unpaid from before the date range you have selected, these will be summarised as a brought forward balance. Then all the invoices and payments received within the selected period will be listed, giving you a total due balance at the end. This is often the preferred method when you are issuing several invoices per month to a customer.
  • Sale Statement Outstanding – This statement will show all invoices with outstanding amounts left on them as of the date you have selected. This option is useful when a customer wants a complete list of all unpaid invoices going all the way to the beginning rather than older period ones been represented just as a brought forward balance.


Learn more about Customer Sales Statements



Sales Channel Integration

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DEAR supports integration with many eCommerce and Sales channels – Shopify, Amazon, WooCommerce, Etsy and more! See the Integrations module for more information about supported integrations.



Product Discounts and Deals

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DEAR Inventory provides the ability to add discounts and markups to products. These can be applied at the product level, customer group level and individual customer level. Examples of product discounts are a 10% discount, a $10 discount, discounts if multiple items are purchased, and free shipping.


More complicated combinations of discounts (deals) that are applied at the shopping-cart level can be set up in the Product Deals section. Product Deals can be used to apply or combine discounts at the shopping cart level for your customers, for example, if the customer's shopping cart has met specific criteria, such as including certain products or brands or meeting a certain order amount. You can also create store-wide Product Deals, or issue coupons which allow certain customers or groups of customers to benefit from a deal.


Learn more about Product Discounts and Product Deals.



Gift Cards

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Offer Gift Cards to your customers that they can then use to pay for your products and services. Gift Cards can be used for in-app sales as well as for sales from B2B and POS sale channels. Gift Cards must be enabled and set up in DEAR before they can be used for in-app sales or in POS or B2B sales channels. 


Learn more about Gift Cards.


Sale Reports

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View information about your sales via the Reports module. Available reports include Sales Overview, Customer Payment Summary, and Fulfillment Details. 


Most reports can be automatically generated and sent out to authorised users using the Report Scheduling feature available to DEAR customers with Automation module subscriptions. 


Learn more about Sale Reports


DEAR Point of Sale App

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Make sales from anywhere using the DEAR POS app and standard smartphones or tablets. Sales are made immediately using the POS app, sent to DEAR inventory for processing, and input payment. DEAR POS also supports connecting to printers to print receipts. 


Learn more about DEAR POS



DEAR B2B Portal

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The DEAR Inventory B2B eCommerce portal has been designed to enable your customers to browse and order from your catalogue 24/7. The online portal provides a scalable and flexible platform uniquely focused on companies doing business with each other (for example, manufacturers selling to distributors and wholesalers selling to retailers). 


Learn more about DEAR B2B Portal


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