The Total Auction Management system may be used to manage
all your ordering and accounting tasks, as well as effectively
track stock levels. There are many tools and features
that have been developed to ease administration for
online sellers, an overview of the services follows
below.
Customers
To begin processing TAM orders you must first create
new customers, you may do this from your TAM activity
page. None of the fields are required, and after you
submit a new customer they will be assigned a unique
tam customer id, you may then begin performing actions
on the customer such as attaching products, creating
orders and quotations, adding payments, and adding customer
notes.
The customer page has a set of user defined sub-pages
where you can configure tables that directly relate
to each customer.
details
Customers may be managed
from the TAM customer table, which allows you to filter
by such variables as name, country, and credit.
The customer code field is a user defined field that
you may use to link to other customer lists, or perhaps
as a keyword searchable field for filtering your customers.
Purchase orders and suppliers
To add stock to your TAM items you must enter purchase
orders, but before doing this you must configure your
suppliers. You may simply have a generic stock correction
supplier for altering stock levels, or enter every source
of your products so that you can monitor prices paid
and purchasing trends. To add a new supplier follow
the link from your tam activities page, to edit suppliers
click on their name from tables such as the TAM supplier
table.
To enter a new purchase order select the link in your
tam activities page, or view a supplier and click on
the new purchase order link. When entering or updating
purchase orders you must enter the unique tam item id
for each entry, the quantity (defaults to 1), and the
price paid. The supplier code is not necessary but may
be helpful for cross checking supplier records.
Attached items
Attached items is a method that links a customer to
a TAM item, that is not an order or a quotation. This
is useful when you want to place an item on hold for
your customer, or perhaps order a product for them.
To attach items you must have attached item status settings
configured, do this by following the link in your tam
activities page, you must enter a name for the status,
and choose whether the stock is reduced when an item
is set to this status. An item being put on hold would
reduce stock, but an item being put on order would probably
not reduce stock.
To attach an item to a customer first go to the customers
details page and choose to attach an item, you may attach
multiple items at one time, choosing the price, quantity,
status, and if applicable item number and site. You
may edit attached items after they have been entered,
including changing the status or removing the attached
item, which will adjust stock levels if applicable.
If you wish to make a quotation or dispatch from an
attached item or multiple attached items, select them
using the bulk action column in the attached item table
and select the dispatch bulk action. If you process
them as shipped or to be shipped the attached items
will be removed (as they are now part of a shipment),
if you process them as a quotation the attached items
will not be removed, unless at a later date you change
the quotation to being a shipment.
Orders and quotations
You may create a dispatch or quotation for a customer
from their details page, from which you may choose whether
you are inputting a quotation, a shipment, or a dispatch
waiting to be shipped, you may choose the currency of
the sell pricing, the shipping method, cost, sell values,
sales tax settings, and the detail of what TAM items
the order consists of.
The dispatch form contains a lot of data including the
total cost and sell values and the calculated profit
on the dispatch. If you have entered a shipping calculation
for the shipping method you have selected, and weight
values for the items you are shipping, then a suggested
shipping sell price will be calculated.
Each TAM item entry
must be chosen using the unique TAM item id, and you
may remove entries by deleting this TAM item id.
When you are working on a dispatch you may press the
update display button to recalculate any changes you
have made, then once you are satisfied you can press
submit to save your changes.
After you submit a dispatch as shipped or waiting to
be shipped the TAM system will calculate if you have
enough stock for the shipment, if not the dispatch will
not be saved. After a shipment or quotation has been
saved you may enter it and change its dispatch setting,
this is useful for when you wish to change a quotation
into a shipment.
The waiting to be shipped setting is often used when
you have warehouse staff who process orders for shipment,
they may view the unshipped dispatches table to see
what orders they need to process and ship.
To manage available shipping services click on the link
in you tam activities page, you may add new services
and update existing services, services may not be removed
once added. You may enter shipping equations for each
shipping service, these are powerful functions that
calculate the suggested shipping value on dispatches.
help
Payments and accounting
To begin accepting payments you must first configure
your available accounts, to create a new account follow
the link in your tam activities page, enter a name for
the account and currency it is processed in (this cannot
be changed once the account is saved). You may choose
whether each payment has a fee attached to it (such
as with online methods like Paypal), and whether you
would like to have a confirmation tag on each payment,
useful for bank reconciliation's. The default fee equation
may be used to save manual entry when entering new payments.
fee
equation examples
Once you have your accounts set up you may add customer
payments by going to the customers details page, selecting
an account and choosing to add a payment. You may also
add misc transactions to accounts, useful for charges
such as interest and bank fees, or business costs such
as advertising or salaries. To configure the misc transactions
follow the link on your tam activities page, misc transactions
may not be removed once entered but you can change the
name and include in profit settings. The "include
values in profit calculations" setting must be
set if you wish the values for this transaction type
to affect your profit summaries. To add a misc transaction
to an account, click on the account name from the TAM
accounts table, select the type of transaction you wish
to add next to "add misc bank charge" and
submit. You may also view a statement of each account
for the account details page.
All activities within the TAM system may have the currency
altered, although most sellers will never need to use
this, it is a useful tool for international sellers,
and extends to allowing the currency rate for each activity
to be set. TAM tables will detect whether the content
of the table is in a single currency or multiple currencies
and adjust its values to match, you may also set your
convert to currency in your options page to convert
table data and other TAM values.
Automated sell activities
Some of the administration tasks of selling on free2auction
and eBay may be automated within the TAM system, the
following activities may be set from your tam activities
page:
attach win to
tam customer using this status:
At the time of a winning bid or store purchase, if a
TAM item and TAM customer can be detected then the item
will be automatically attached to that customer with
this setting.
attach open bid
to tam customer using this status:
When a buyer places a bid on an open auction, if a TAM
item and TAM customer can be detected then the item
will be automatically attached to that customer with
this setting.
attach lost bid
to tam customer using this status:
When a buyer places a bid on an auction but does not
successfully win that item, if a TAM item and TAM customer
can be detected then the item will be automatically
attached to that customer with this setting.
automatically
create new tam customer for new bidders:
For any of the above three situations, if the TAM customer
can not be detected then a new customer will be created
to allow the automated action to occur.
To detect the TAM item, the title will be compared with
your TAM item catalog, if a match is found that TAM
item will be used for the activity. To detect the TAM
customer the free2auction or eBay id (depending
on the site the activity is being automated for) will
be compared with your TAM customer data, if a match
is found that TAM customer will be used for the activity.
free2auction activities will be handled automatically
when the action occurs at free2auction, eBay
activities will occur when eBay statistical data is
updated on free2auction, either at timed intervals
(set from your options page) or manually using the link
in your options page or tam activities page.
The above automated TAM activities are automatically
logged so you can review previous changes the system
has made. To view this log select the view automated
activities log link in your tam activities page.
Automated TAM activities may only be configured by the
TAM accounts main user, free2auction users who
are authorized to perform actions on someone else's
TAM system will not be able to configure automated events.
Shipping equations
Shipping equation strings may be set for each shipping
method, these strings are able to calculate the shipping
cost for dispatches depending on their weight and the
destination country. The actual equation is handled
like a normal equation string including stepped functions
to facilitate stepped shipping pricing structures,
learn
more, but maybe
be further split by country. To split the functions
by country enter a comma delimited list of country ids
enclosed by square brackets, with 0 representing any
un-stated countries. For example a shipping equation
that charges $12 for shipments to USA and Canada, $21
for shipments to UK, and $26 for shipments to any other
country would be entered as:
[100,103]12[106]21[0]26
Shipping equation strings are often difficult to understand
to begin with and the free2auction customer service
team are always happy to help create them for the shipping
methods you require.
Default bank fee equations
Each Account you configure may have a default fee equation,
this equation inputs a calculated fee when you first
enter a payment. The actual equation is handled like
a normal equation string including stepped functions
to facilitate stepped pricing structures.
learn more.
Default fee examples:
A US Paypal Standard Rate account pays fees of 2.9%
+ 0.30c, the equation string would be: (val*0.029)+0.3
A US Paypal Merchant Rate paying fees of 2.2% + 0.30c,
equation string would be: (val*0.022)+0.3
Equation strings are often difficult to understand to
begin with but are very powerful, the free2auction
customer service team are always happy to help you create
them.
