Overview

There are services for processing supplier documents provided by your supplier, or Fintech, that passes the electronic invoice (EDI) documents to Cloud Retailer.  The integration is designed to save time managing purchase orders by automatically creating those purchase orders for you!

How does the process work?

1. You or your supplier's sales rep begin by creating a purchase order.
2. The purchase order is processed by the supplier and an electronic invoice is created
3. The purchase order is delivered to your store and the electronic invoice reflects the quantity and cost for all received items.
4. The electronic invoice is delivered to our server for processing.
5. If Fintech, they will process the document and deliver the file(s) to our servers.  
   • Note: Fintech files can take up to 72 hours to reach our servers after the invoice is billed.
6. Once the files are received, Cloud Retailer will automatically run a process to look for new files several times a day.
7. If a new file is found, the electronic invoice is parsed and a purchase order will automatically be created in Cloud Retailer with the location, supplier, reference number, items, quantity, cost, and extended cost values.

What is needed from you to integrate with any Supplier (Including Fintech)?

Before the integration between Cloud Retailer and the supplier can begin, you need to do two things:

1. We will need to know the company name and address you used to set up your account with the supplier.
2. All of your products must contain accurate and up-to-date supplier details.  The supplier details can be found on the product edit page, and contains the following fields:
   1. Supplier Name: The name of the supplier in Cloud Retailer.  This is a dropdown menu.
   2. Reorder Number: The supplier's item ID or item number for the product.
   3. Case Quantity: The number of individual units that come in a case.  Examples:
      1. If you receive a single 24-pack of beer when you order a case, the case quantity will be 1.
      2. If you receive 4 6-packs of beer when you order a case, the case quantity will be 4.
      3. If you receive 12 bottles of wine when you order a case, the case quantity will be 12.
   4. Is Primary: This is the primary supplier you purchase the product from.

The supplier's Case Quantity is different from the Unit of Measure.

Case Quantity (How you buy it): How many units come in the supplier's case.

Unit of Measure Quantity (How you sell it): How the product can be broken down to sell and tracking inventory. You can read more on Unit of Measure, here.

Once we have your supplier's account information, and all of your products contain supplier details, the rest of the process is handled by us!  We will share location and supplier data with the supplier, which will allow them to program the electronic invoices based on your existing data.

How accurate is the data?

The electronic invoice is typically exactly what you receive from the supplier during the delivery.  There are instances where the electronic invoice was generated, but actual inventory levels did not meet the required ordered quantity.  These types of discrepancies are usually only corrected on the paper invoice copy.  

It's important to know that the data is not manipulated by the supplier, or Fintech, which means if the paper invoice differs from the electronic invoice, you will need to make those corrections to the generated purchase order manually, or wait for a credit invoice document.

What if there are errors when creating the purchase order?

Cloud Retailer maps items in the electronic invoice to products in your database through the reorder number field in the supplier details portion of the product edit page.  If the item can not be found, the document processing log will display an error message for that item.  Clicking on the description or the barcode of the failed product will redirect you to the product catalog to search for the product.

After an error is corrected, you will need to go back to the error message in the document processing log, and click on the refresh (clockwise arrow) icon.

What happens if I manually create the purchase order before the system creates one? 

The reference number in Cloud Retailer is generated based on the reference number and order date assigned by your supplier.  For example, reference number 655910 was processed on 6/15/2022.  The Cloud Retailer reference number will be "655910 20220615".  If a purchase order exists with the same reference number, the process will overwrite the data.

If you created the purchase order manually and do not want to keep the generated purchase order, or vice versa, you can simply delete one of the purchase orders to prevent duplicating inventory values.

References

• Supplier Documents Integration 
• How to add a supplier for the Fintech integration?
  
• How do I correct inaccurate units of measure on purchase orders created by the Fintech integration?
• A file, invoice, or product did not import - What should I do?