Most dealers are moving to a drop-ship model for toner, which involves a good calculation for "days until empty". Using CEO Juice versus the native integration not only creates supply orders but also fine-tunes days to empty, puts orders on hold for review if needed, and applies error checking. See below for specifics on how supply orders are created from the DCA supply alerts.
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Equipment Serial Number | Toner Item | Contract | Duplicate Orders | Contacts | Warehouses
Equipment Serial Number
Equipment Serial Number
The serial number of the equipment that generated the supply alert is used to find the equipment record to use on the sales order:
The information pulled from the equipment record is:
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The main customer on the equipment record will be used as the customer on the sales order.
- The sales rep on the order will be pulled from the customer record.
- The branch on the sales order is pulled from the equipment record.
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The ship-to location on the order will match the location on the equipment record.
**Please note that if you use the Pencil icon to make changes to the location address, it breaks the linking that our logic depends on to find the proper customer to use as the ship to on the order. When this happens, the logic will fall back to using the main customer as the ship-to on the order. See ID891 for an alert to catch when this happens so that it can be fixed.
Toner Item on Sales Order
Toner Item on Sales Order
Some DCA API integrations provide an item number in the low supply alert; if the item number provided is a valid item number in e-automate, that item will be used on the sales order created. The number supplied by the DCA must EXACTLY match an item number in e-automate; there is no logic in the process to attempt to find the item in e-automate, only a direct match on the item supplied by the DCA and the item numbers in e-automate.
Often, an item number is not provided by the DCA, or the item supplied is not a match to an item in e-automate. In these situations, the CEO Juice process uses the steps below to identify the item to be used on the sales order.
Steps to choosing the correct toner item if not provided by DCA:
Step 1: Check Recent Orders - The logic first looks at the equipment's history to see if there's a recently ordered supply item that matches the color of toner requested from the DCA. If a match is found, this item is used on the new order. If no match is found, the logic moves to step two.
Step 2: Look at Similar Devices - If there are no recent orders for the equipment/color combination, the logic checks for commonly ordered items for the same model of machine.
- Minimum of 20 supply orders for the model.
- Is there a 95% preference for one item?
- Does one of the items have the usage limit meter type set on the item record? (See details here on setting the usage limit meter types on items)
If an item can be determined from the model history, that item will be used on the order. If no match is found, the logic moves to step three.
Step Three: Use a placeholder item - If the logic can't find a matching item, it creates a placeholder item based on the color (dummy_black) and adds that item to the order. The order will be created in e-automate and placed on hold so that the order can be reviewed and the correct item added to the order.
Once the sales order has been updated with the proper item, the next time that the logic attempts to find a matching item for the equipment/color, it will have a recent order to review and determine the proper item.
Contract Assigned
Contract Assigned
A contract is only considered if all of the below are true:
- The equipment record for the serial number is active.
- The contract is active.
- The equipment is listed on the contract, and that contract line item has no end date, or an end date later than the moment the process runs.
If more than one contract qualifies in any of the passes below, the most recently created contract will be used.
The process to assign a contract to the line item goes through four passes:
- Match the supply item to the right meter. The process looks up the alert's item number in e-automate and reads the item's Usage Limit Meter Type (for example, a color toner tied to a color meter). It then looks for a contract that bills a meter on this device in the same meter type category, and that meter must belong to a contract meter group. This is the most precise match: a color toner goes to the contract that bills color.
- Any contract that bills a meter on the device. If the first pass does not find a contract, the process uses any eligible contract where the device has a meter in a contract meter group, regardless of meter type.
- Any contract the device is on. If the second pass finds nothing, the process uses any eligible contract that has the device and at least one meter for it, even if that meter is not in a meter group.
- No contract. If all three passes fail, the line item is not assigned a contract.
Duplicate Orders
Duplicate Orders
By default, the system checks whether a supply order for the same item was already shipped within the past 7 days. If a matching order is found, the alert from the DCA will be skipped.
You can override this default behavior by setting a Custom Property at the Equipment or Customer level:
- A number – sets a custom day count to use in place of the default 7 days.
- -1 – always ships a new order, bypassing the recently-fulfilled check.
- -2 – always ships a new order, bypassing both the recently-fulfilled check and the order-already-open check.
If no Custom Property is set, the default behavior applies: an alert is bounced if the item has been shipped within the last 7 days.
The process DOES assume just-in-time delivery, meaning that the expectation is for the customer to replace the toner soon after receiving it.
Note on Toner-to-Device Matching
While it's technically possible to see when a toner was shipped and intended for a specific device on one side, and see device replacement records on the other, matching the two reliably is not straightforward. Shipping time (and how long a toner sits before being used) varies significantly, and we cannot assume that a toner shipped for a specific device was actually installed in that device — it may have been used for a different device, taken from general stock, or held in reserve.
Because of this variability, an automated match between shipped toner and device usage carries a meaningful error rate across our general client base, and we don't consider it reliable enough to offer as a standard feature.
Order Contacts
Order Contacts
The ordered by contact is pulled from the equipment ship to contact on the customer record.
The logic will check the below locations to try and find a contact name to be used in the attention line of the ship to on the sales order.
- The equipment record ship to contact.
- The customer record equipment ship to contact.
- The attention line from the location customer on the equipment record.
- The attention line from the main customer record
Warehouse
Warehouse
The logic will pick up the default warehouse for the branch customer. We recommend setting this warehouse to a drop-ship warehouse.
*Note that this process does not currently check on-hand quantities to determine a warehouse to assign to an order. Due to processing multiple orders in one batch, it is probable that the process is creating 10 sales orders, eight of which have the same toner item on them, and there are only six on hand of that toner item. The logic to determine which of the eight orders get the inventory on hand and which ones would be drop-shipped or use a different warehouse is too complex for this process.
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