Dear All

Thank you  for your partnership and cooperation. Be it any suggestion or constructive feedback, input from every single one of you was valuable for the well being of our product. We are  really happy to have you as a part of the team. We have achieved a lot this year and have worked on different areas of the product to consistently give you a better experience. Now that things have became smoother, we look forward to continue supporting you and keep providing you exceptional service that helps you grow your business. We wish you all a great new year ahead. Please continue with what you are doing and reach for better everyday.

Here below is the update on December 2021 release of Better Commerce. There are several updates in this version that we hope you will like, some of the key highlights include: 

Highlights

  1. Better fulfilment process of dropship & backorder orders: Backorder is an order that is accepted by the retailer for the products that have gone out of stock. The retailer then requests the supplier of the manufacturer to send in more items to satisfy the demand and fulfill backorders. On the other hand dropship orders are fulfilled by your suppliers on your behalf. In the process of fulfilling backorders and dropship orders the warehouse team needs a proper system in place to handle these scenarios. This release has given much thought in the overall process of executing such complex situations.

  2. PO review screen: The order listing screen (Backorder & Dropship) gives you a link that takes you to a separate screen from where all the open orders can be reviewed, and a decision can be made if PO must be created or linked to existing open purchase order.

  3. Configurable tab shifting in order list screen: Based on the configuration at the organization level, you can now control the auto shift of the tabs when an order changes its state. For example: When an order’s picklist is created it automatically takes you to the pick tab and so on. However, a business might want to move few orders to picklist screen and still want to stay in the NEW tab to review and process rest of the orders. This is a business call and totally depends on the business model which is possible with the new enhancement done in the platform.

  4. Time zone difference management: 'Saved schedules' had a difference in the expected and actual time due to UTC time difference causing confusion at the time of launch of page, promotion, or scheduled import. To avoid manual calculation and mismatch, handling has been done so that business user selects the time based on their time zone and the server picks up the command accordingly.

  5. Improved order search: The order list screen has too much information which can be searched based on multiple properties. Based on the business requirements few properties have been added that makes it easier for the users to search for specific orders.

  6. Product variant group: Product variant group is an important technical handling of how a variant is setup. Business can decide on what attribute variant needs to be created like color, size etc. For an example if color is the primary variant attribute, user can select color to be used for variant creation and can add multiple sizes under each color. The platform can identify the variant groups and actions can be taken at variant group level that can be inherited by all the variants within that color group.

Changes & Improvement: E-Commerce

  1. Time zone difference management: 'Saved schedules' had a difference in the expected and actual time due to UTC time difference causing confusion at the time of launch of page, promotion, or scheduled import. To avoid manual calculation and mismatch, handling has been done so that business user selects the time based on their time zone and the server picks up the command accordingly.

  2. Completeness attribute display : The completeness attribute now displays much neater information making it easier for the user to have a look and understand the status of product completeness.
  3. Improved order & company search: The order & the company list screen has too much information which can be searched based on multiple properties. Based on the business requirements few properties have been added that makes it easier for the users to search for specific orders.

  4. Search quotes by post code: The quotes can now be searched using postcode of the customer. Sometimes customers give their postcode and using this input quotes can be searched. It makes life of the the customer service team much easier.

  5. Product variant group: Product variant group is an important technical handling of how a variant is setup. Business can decide on what attribute variant needs to be created like color, size etc. For an example if color is the primary variant attribute, user can select color to be used for variant creation and can add multiple sizes under each color. The platform can identify the variant groups and actions can be taken at variant group level that can be inherited by all the variants within that color group.

  6. Validation in the Pricelist creation: A validation has been added in the process of pricelist creation process. Currency which are enabled at the store level settings will only appear as options to create a pricelist. This has been done to avoid incorrect pricelist creation.

  7. Redirection on form save: As a part of regular testing and optimization we observed that every form in the system after saving redirects to the list page which can be time consuming and occasionally frustrating. Based on AB testing and feedbacks from multiple users we have changed this so that any add/edit you do and save the form you stay on the same screen until you explicitly choose to go out.

  8. Editable PO number: In the order detail screen of the commerce hub there can be a situation for the business to edit the PO# which was not possible until this release.


Changes & Improvement: OMS


  1. Configurable tab shifting in order list screen: Based on the configuration at the organization level, you can now control the auto shift of the tabs when an order changes its state. For example: When an order’s picklist is created it automatically takes you to the pick tab and so on. However, a business might want to move few orders to picklist screen and still want to stay in the NEW tab to review and process rest of the orders. This is a business call and totally depends on the business model which is possible with the new enhancement done in the platform.

  2. Dispatched tab for dropship orders: Dropship orders are fulfilled by the suppliers however we need to display the orders once they have been forwarded to the vendor. A new view has been added under dispatched tab as direct delivery. This tab will hold all the direct deliveries that are done by the supplier.
  3. Supplier pricelist upload: There can be frequent change in the supplier’s catalogue or the pricelist hence it was imperative to have the provision to upload the supplier pricelist.

  4. Create PO for non-default supplier: Business switch between suppliers to order stocks based on the price they are offering. A same product can be offered by 3 suppliers at 3 different prices. Its business decision to pick the right supplier to place the order. Every product has a default supplier assigned and its not necessary that every time you will create the PO for the default supplier. Hence, with the new implementation you can have multiple suppliers of a product and can choose from any of those to create the PO.

  5. Better fulfilment process of dropship & backorder orders: When you don't have or keep the ordered items in stock you need suppliers to send those good to you or delivery to the customers on your behalf. In the process of fulfilling backorders and dropship orders the warehouse team needs a proper system in place to handle these scenarios. This release has given much thought in the overall process of executing such complex situations.


  6. Separate delivery plan for dropship in mixed order: A mixed order contains multiple fulfilment type of products. It can be possible that a customer has added 3 products which are fulfilled in different ways by the business. Product 1 can be available in the warehouse, and it’s fulfilled as in Stock, Product 2 can be backorder for which PO has to be raised and when goods are received fulfilment will start. The 3rd product in the order can be an item that never gets stocked and is forwarded to the supplier to fulfill to the customers on businesses behalf. Now this can get complicated from the UI perspective while creating POs for backorder and dropship. Hence, a smart approach has been applied which on creation of PO for dropship, the delivery plan is split and sent to the respective tab of dropship order rather keeping it in the mixed order section.

  7. Better filter options in different screens:: The stock request & transfer list screen now gives you an option to drill down your search by delivery center to be able to precisely find what you are looking for.

  8. Order Cancellation in OMS: The customers can get their orders cancelled at any point of time until dispatched. Such cancelled orders from the website or backend-channels/eCommerce gets updated in the OMS and is displayed in a separate interface for quick access and information.



Notable Bug fixes

  1. Blank values in dropdowns in multiple screens: Dropdown fields in multiple screens had blank values which caused no functional problem however from the good UX perspective this was required to be removed. This release takes care of the blank values in the dropdown fields.

  2. Custom pricelist in the sales order creation screen: Customers can have custom pricelist which should be displayed while creating a sales order for the customer however, it wasn’t displayed for the order lines for those customers.

    Payment & order total validation: Payment amount and order amount must match for smooth transition and fulfilment of order. To avoid such occurrences a validation has been added that checks for both these values.

  3. Default billing & shipping address : The abnormalities related to saving a default billing & shipping address has been fixed in this release.

  4. Add 'company' : There has been proper validation added to give user a better sense of understanding about the minimum requirement to save a company.

  5. Pinning & sorting in a product collection: The non-pinned items in a product collection were not picking up the default sorting option if there were at least one pinned item in the collection. This specific scenario has been taken care of in this release.

  6. Pagination in stock request & transfer: The stock request and transfer list became too long to be displayed in a single view hence pagination with data on demand has been added to load the list faster and have visibility to historical dataset.

  7. Pack without tracking number: The orders can now be packed without having to mandatorily put the tracking number. This release has addressed one of the concerns raised by our users that occasionally they use private carrier service where no tracking is provided however, the platform should allow packing and dispatching the orders without the tracking details.

  8. Picker Role: The role of picker has been limited to view and action only picklist assigned to self. With this release, you can assign one or multiple picklists to a picker who can login using own credentials and access the picklist for further processing.