Tip of the Month for February 2011

Price Exception/Schedule Import

Many users have become accustomed to using the Price File Import program to update costs and prices on items in their Inventory and Catalog.  But did you know that with a last-minute addition to the last release of Answers, that you can now also update Customer Price Exceptions and Price Schedules using the new "Price Exception/Schedule Import" program?

This program works very similar to the Price File Import program.  Users setup a "map" that describes the data that they wish to import from, which is usually a file provided by the vendor.  However it could also be an Excel spreadsheet that you created using an ODBC or XDBC query and then used Excel to manipulate the data such as prices, discounts, rebates, etc.

Once this map is defined, an update can be run that will update individual Customer Price Exception records or Price Schedules potentially saving a lot of manual entry work that has in the past had to be done on a manual basis using Customer Maintenance and Price Schedule Management.

Items are found using the same criteria as the Price File Import program which includes Stock Numbers, Vendor Part Numbers, Catalog Part Numbers, Cross Reference Part Numbers, etc. so it is important to understand the options available and how this works before attempting to use this new program.  However, if you are already using the Price File Import program, then you may well be on your way with a jump-start to begin using this new program.  Practically all of the fields available on Price Exceptions and Price Schedules are available for updating via this program including expiration dates, pricing, discounts, and rebate related fields.  And a preview option is available to see what your import is going to update before you actually do it.

For more detailed information on this new program go to Order Processing-->File Maintenance-->Price Exception/Schedule Import to bring up the program, and then click on the standard blue help icon on the toolbar to read more about it in Answers on-line help.  For reference and because of the similarities, you can read more about the Price File Import program by going to Inventory Management-->Processing-->Price/Cost Updating-->Price File Import to bring up that program and then clicking on the blue help icon on the toolbar.