NECS entrée Dot Foods Interface Specifications

Draft #2, 01/10/11

The purpose of the Dot Foods Interface (proposed name: entrée.DOT) is to allow NECS entrée usersto leverage the buying power Dot Foods, automate procedures related to costs, pricing, purchasing and receiving, along with the ability to make your entire order guide from Dot available to your customers.

Items purchased from Dot Foods can be integrated into the NECS entrée system providing you the ability to drastically increase the number of products you can supply to your customers – without having to increase the size of your warehouse.

This enhancement is designed to save you time, so that all of your cost, pricing, purchasing, receiving and inventory updates from Dot Foods are handled within your entrée software by means of EDI type data transmissions.

Note that even with this enhancement to your entrée software, you will still want to access the “Dot Expressway” website for its reporting and other features.

entrée Software Enhancements to System Preferences:

  • The following System Preference setup options will be provided:
  1. Your “Dot Foods Partner Number”.
  2. Include Dot Special Order Items in Inventory Search (Y/N)
  3. Include Dot Drop Ship Items in Inventory Search (Y/N)
  4. Dot Special Order Items Highlight Color in Search
  5. Dot Drop Ship Items Highlight Color in Search
  • Set default “Dot Cost Markup % for Stock Items” and “Dot Cost Markup % for Non-Stock Items” in System Preferences that will be applied to all Dot Food items when they are first imported to derive the items “Base Cost”. The default cost markup can be overridden on a per item basis after the item has been imported using inventory file maintenance. The items “Real Cost” will represent your direct cost from Dot Foods.
  • Based upon the above method of determining costs, the system can automatically create/update your sell Price Levels based upon the data in the “Pricing Setup” tab of System Preferences. Customer Special Pricing can also optionally be updated, if entries exist for the item and customer.

entrée Software Enhancements to Inventory File Maintenance:

  • As normal, Dot Foods will be defined as a vendor for that item in the Vendor tab of Inventory File Maintenance, along with Dot Foods Item Number (Vendor Item Number). Note that this is how the system will determine matching records between your Inventory File and Dot Foods item file.
  • Items can be configured as “Special Order” or “Drop Ship”. Special Order items will be delivered to your warehouse with your regular Dot Foods delivery. Drop Ship items are delivered directly to the customer by Dot Foods.
  • A new “Dot Foods” tab will be available in Inventory File Maintenance that contains key informational data about the item provided directly from Dot Foods. It will also contain fields, related to how the item should be handled by entrée including:
  1. Dot Special Order Item (Y/N)
  2. Drop Ship Item to Customer (Y/N)
  3. Update Cost on Import (Y/N)
  4. Update Price Levels on Import (Y/N)
  5. Update Special Pricing on Import (Y/N)
  6. Update Min Sell Price on Import (Y/N)
  7. Include Item in entrée.DSR (Y/N)
  8. Include Item in entrée.NET (Y/N)
  9. Lead Time in Days (This data will be used in entrée.NET to show your customer how long it will take to receive this item if it is a non-stock, special order item.)
  • The new “Dot Foods” tab will also include a “Unit of Measure translator”, so that you can avoid situations such as ordering Pot Roast, which you may have setup as a catch weight item, so that when ordering 60 LBS, you receive the correct amount, instead of possibly 60 CASES from Dot Foods.
  • A new “Item Manufacturer” field will be added to Inventory File Maintenance with the goal of tracking sales information by manufacturer, which is difficult when purchasing from a master distributor such as Dot Foods. Sorting by “Brand Name” doesn’t work because many manufacturers produce product under a variety of Brand Names. Specific reports will be enhanced to support this new field.
  • Related to the “Item Manufacturer” field described above, a new “Manufacturer File Maintenance” option will be included (similar to how “Class Maintenance” currently works) to ensure consistency of the data in this field, along with any easy to use drop down menu to select an already defined manufacturer.

entrée Software Enhancements for Importing Dot Food Items:

  • A“Dot Foods Order Guide Import Utility” will be provided to allow you to select and import items into your existing inventory file.
  • A “Preview Import Grid” with filtering to exclude certain items from being imported, set various option switches per item/item group will be provided.
  • Items may be filtered during the import process by IFDA Class, IFDA Category, Buying Group, Product Category, and Kosher Items (as defined in Dot Foods data).
  • The import process can automatically update costs and pricing in entrée based on your specific pricing data from Dot Foods and your System Preferences setup.
  • Items which are imported and have no matching records in your Inventory File, can be automatically created by entree, using the data from Dot Foods. This includes item number, description, unit of measure, etc.
  • Related to the above, you will have an option NOT to have the system create new inventory records when matching records in your inventory file cannot be found. This will allow you to use the import feature simply for the purpose of updating costs, pricing, etc., only for existing / matching records.

entrée Software Enhancements to the Inventory Search Screens:

  • Special Order and Drop Ship items can be displayed by default in the entrée search system or accessed only through a special function key when needed. This helps to keep your regular day to day items from being overshadowed by the numerous items from Dot Foods. Each of these items can also be configured to use a different highlight color in the search system so they stand out to your DSR’s.

entrée Software Enhancements to Purchase Order Generation:

  • Your buyers can manually create a purchase order for Dot Foods. When they are finished, they will be prompted to submit the PO to Dot Foods using the EDI system. In one step, Dot Foods will immediately have your order, and you will receive an acknowledgement in return.
  • The automatic purchase order generation system within entrée will be enhanced to collect all items that need to be ordered from Dot Foods for a given date range. This will include special orders of non-stock items from open customer invoices. Besides open customer invoices, this procedure can look at other data such as below minimum stock level, etc. to create suggested purchase quantities. entrée will automatically create a purchase order from this data which you can review and edit before your EDI submission to Dot Foods.
  • Any invoices that have drop ship items on them will have a single purchase order created for each customer with the proper delivery address.
  • To summarize, once the purchase orders are created, entréecan automatically submit the PO to Dot Foods in EDI format, providing you with a simple and easy one click ordering / acknowledgement system.

entrée Software Enhancements for Receiving / Dot Advanced Shipment Notices:

  • Optionally import the EDI Advanced Shipment Notice from Dot Foods. This document will contain all of the items that will be shipped on your upcoming delivery, broken down by pallet.
  • The Advanced Shipment Notice data can then be used to generate a Dot Foods Receiving Sheet Report, containing each items warehouse location to assist in the receiving process.
  • Advanced Shipment Data can also be used to print receiving labels for your Dot Foods delivery. Any special order items can include the customer and invoice information for the customer that purchased the item.

For more information, contact:

Chris Anatra

President

NECS, Inc.

203.245.3999, x20

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