New Items - Products & Materials
The following help guide is for users who are NOT purchasing from the Default Supplier network. It will provide advice on how to manage custom pricing for new items in the Quotec database.
What is a New Item?
From time to time, Quotec will introduce new items (materials/products) to the live database to expand on the product base. New items are hard coded to the database. Once a new product is made available to Quotec LIVE, order codes and costs must be loaded against that new items to avoid pricing errors when quoting.
For users pointing to the Default Supplier network, management of the order codes and costs are overseen by Quotec Head Office. Once published by the Support Team, these codes and costs are available to be deployed via the Cost Update.
What’s the problem?
Quotec LIVE is one smart cookie. It has been designed to ensure you are not going to make pricing errors. In fact, the system wont allow you to produce a proposal if it doesn't have a cost for all of the materials needed to create a bill of materials for that quote.
While this is really helpful if you’ve missed a price(s) on spreadsheet, it can be really annoying if it's because there is a new item in the system and you haven’t got a price from your supplier yet.
Luckily we have some time up our sleeves to help avoid this issue as we know what items are going to need costs/codes BEFORE they are going to cause you grief.
What can you do?
During our development cycle, new items are programmed into our data records. They get assigned an item number and description and then able to be extracted (as price file template) from the Order Category where the item will be purchased.
Prior to a version release, our Support Team can provide users with order code/cost import (aka pricing template) of that new item. This will enable users to obtain costs/codes from their custom supplier BEFORE the new item(s) have been release to the live data base.
Meaning that we can endeavour to avoid pricing errors!
Steps to Remember…
- Items are materials or products in the Quotec database.
- New items are enhancements or variations to products or materials and available in version releases.
- Users not purchasing from the Default Supplier network will encounter pricing errors for new items once a new version is released because pricing/codes are not managed by Quotec Head Office.
- Quotec Support Team endeavour to remedy this issue by providing users with a price file template of new items so that users can obtain costs/code before new items are available for use.