Business Package - Lite

To automate sales activities the Sales module provides an universal method of creating and managing quotes, orders, invoices and payments. By integrating the Clientpanel Sales module into your organisation you relieve your business from many repetative administrative sales activities.

*1) The Payment Gateway is a seperate module which automates the processing of payment notifications from various payment providers. Once installed the sales cycle for ordering and delivering non-manual articles is complete.

Key features online orders & billings invoices in HTML & PDF automated order creation automated email delivery of invoice automated order execution periodic billing supports creditted accounts full online sales/status history order cloning for renewal orders

To handle the various parts of the sales cycle the following (sub)modules are included in the Sales module;

• Prospect, for management of prospect related information and progress.
  
• Order, for management of orders
  
• Quote, for generating order quotes
  
• Billing, for generating (and emailing) billing invoices, reminders and cancelations.
  
• Payment, for management of payments by customers

Prospect (sub) Module

For management of prospect related information the Prospect module offers storage of related prospect/sales information. This will enable your sales team to quickly review and update information before and during dialogs with customers. The following information is stored in the records and can be searched on;

• Contact information (name, addres, phn, email, etc.)
• Company sales contact
• Last date of contact
• Progress & Comments

The progress setting is to mark the status of progress which can be one of ;

• To call for first contact
• To receive a mailing
• Has received a mailing
• Will call us
• Is not interested
• Booked an order / Became a client

Listings include listing prospects with one of the above progress options. These listings offers a quick overview of the marketing /sales activities in progress.

Order (sub) Module

For the management of orders from customers the Order module offers various features to keep track of information and progress of orders. Orders can be created manually by your sales team. They can also be created automaticly by modules that support this.

Each order contains sufficient information to describe the requirements of the customer as well as direct references (links) to the articles in question. The following information is stored in the Order record;

Customer contact reference Date and time of the order Status of the order Description of the order Referer comment/URL Article names, references, prices and units

(Sub) Total Discount and VAT Billing currency Exchange rate Grant total Billing frequency

When managing the order multiple articles can be removed / added at once. References to the actual (unique) ordered articles are selected through popup listings which are filtered to show only articles of the related customer. This method provides easy and quick creation/altering of an order.

Listings of orders show the currently payed amount by the customer. Using these listings it is possible to quickly review orders in progress. Articles can be used to reference to Orders to allow full review of the related information to an order. The various information tables help you to quickly review the situation enabling you to fully focus on your customer.

Manual and Automated orders
Orders that have been created by other modules, through online order forms, are handled automaticly in full. These orders are closed immediatly after succesfull execution or at set intervals (eg. daily, weekly, etc..). For automated orders the related Billing(s) are generated and optionally emailed to the customer.

Orders that are created manually will not be processed automaticly by the system. These orders will remain in your pending list for further processing. Optionally orders can be further processed automaticly, for these orders the related Billing(s) are generated and optionally emailed to the customer.

Orders can be used to generate a Quote or Billing. Quotes are used to inform (new) customers about the expected fee. Billings are used to bill the customer for orders to execute or that have already been executed.

Quote (sub) Module

To inform your (new) customer about the fee for an order the Quote module allows creation of a quote. Using a default template the quote is generated with the information from the original Order which includes;

• Relation contact information
• Date and time
• Order/Quote titel
• Status of the quote
  
• Articles in the quota
• Grant total of the quote
• Currency of the grant total
  

Billing (sub) Module

The invoices for an order are managed by the Billing module. Using the familiar interface these records can quickly be reviewed or searched upon to obtain the invoice(s) for the customer.

The Billing module supports changes to be made to invoices. After a change has been made the updated invoice can be easily re-generated. Per invoice one can store a custom description, date, price and comments. These are automaticly taken from the corresponding Order record though may be altered. T

The billings (invoices) are created in standard HTML format for immediate viewing in all browsers. These HTML invoices are automaticly stored in the database for later retrieval by customers. This eliminates the need to print and archive paper invoice and offers quick access using the universal search options and links.

The invoices can be fully customised to fit your business presentation including logo, address headering, font style and colours and other HTML / PDF formatting.

Invoices for electronic delivery are created using the industry standard for electronic documents, Adobe Acrobat PDF. These invoices are optionally send as attachments in the notification to the customer. The customer can also access the system to obtain these invoices online at any time.

The Sales department will be notified of new orders by email. This notification includes the invoice information, the PDF invoice itself and a note if the customer requested a postal invoice.

Automated billing reminders

To manage the outstanding and overdue billings the system can be set to verify these each day. Clients will be informed of overdue billings by email using templates that can be customized. Using the configured 'billing expiration settings' billings will be set to overdue, for far overdue billings an administration penalty fee can be imposed. For billings which are to far overdue the client is notified of the cancelation and the Sales department will be notified of the status for further actions.

For billings which were created to be payed in the future (for example quarterly billings) the system will notify the client automaticly one day before the billing becomes actual. This notification contains the invoice information and the invoice in PDF format.


Payment (sub) Module

To manage the incoming payments from customers this Payment module allows quick administration of the payment. Through a link on the related Billing record a payment can quickly be manually administered. All the related information is automaticly filled into the form which is shown and holds the following fields;

• Refering order and billing - with link to related order and billing record
• Date and time of payment
• Amount payed
• Currency of amount payed
• Current exchange rate
• Method of payment (custom options)

Completed payments are added to the total of the payed amount in the overview of Orders and Billings. After adding the payment one can continue with execution of the order.


Automated processing of orders

The Sales module supports online orders without interaction of your sales staff. Several modules support automated processing of orders. To administer and handle these orders in the appropiate manner the following customer (client) classes have been defined.

• New Client
  Clients that are to forfill payment before the order is executed. When these customers place an order the Order record and Billing record (with the invoice) are automaticly created and (optionally) emailed to the customer.
  
  
• Creditted Client
  Clients that have deposited money to their order credit account can place orders which are immediatly processed if there is sufficient credit. An Order record is automaticly created, no Billing record is used with credit deductions.
  
  
• Trusted Client
  Clients for which orders are immediatly executed if the outstanding and new amounts are not exceeding the set order quota. The Order and Billing record is automaticly created and (optionally) emailed to the customer.
  
  
• Trusted Reseller
  Clients for which orders are immediatly executed if the outstanding and new amounts are not exceeding the set order quota. The Order record is automaticly created, for Trusted Resellers the Order records is closed either on reaching the maximum order quota or when the billing period (daily, weekly, monthly, annually) is reached. The Billing record is created automaticly at either of the above events.

If installed then the Sales module handles the creation of orders automaticly. Customers can use the order and renewal pages of the Domainame module to order or renew domainname registrations without interaction of your sales staff.

For online orders the automatic actions performed by the system are;

• generates the order record and adds the articles
• use the defined fee for Registration, Transfer and Forwarding
• generate the invoice (HTML & Adobe PDF format)
• optionally deliver the invoice notification with attached PDF file
• remind the client and Sales department of overdue and canceled billings