Route Accounting - Common Features of Route Accounting Applications

Common Features of Route Accounting Applications

Route sales (sales staff) productivity

  • Route accounting systems also gather accurate statistics as to productivity, not only of inventory items, customers and suppliers, but also customer routes and route sales staff. Information that is collected usually included time and date stamping, amount and price (with taxes) of sold products, returned products and reason for return.

Pricing rules

  • A route accounting system also should offer some way to attach special price lists to a customer or customer group based on regional locations, routes, quantity breaks, or specials. There should be some method to control consistency of pricing.

Inventory control and management

  • Where DSD, van sales, or delivery confirmation is a requirement, then accurate inventory control of items in the warehouse (or truck) is required. A complete route accounting system therefore will have some way to assign warehouse identification to trucks, to count and reconcile inventory, and to have a full audit trail for adjustments. These trucks are then rolling warehouses representing a point-of-sale location.

Integration

  • Transactions should integrate smoothly with full audit trail to the main accounting system. Collisions, if any, need to be recorded and reconciled.

Mobile management and control

  • Mobile computers, or PDAs are usually used. Since these are specialized devices, there needs to be some method for managing these devices.

Settlement systems

  • Since mobile computers control and collect transactions, as in a mobile point-of-sale system, some settlement method is required.

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