The reason for tracking lost sales is simple, you can’t fix a problem you don’t know about. Tracking lost sales helps identify where your team should focus its energy. Does your purchasing department need to adjust the re-order points so you don’t run out of stock or is your competitor cutting their prices? The Business Edge has a feature that will help you track lost sales.
There are two System Flags that are used for tracking lost sales. The first one is below – Record Lost Sales During Order Entry, located in the path below.
Utilities
System Administrator System
System Set Up Miscellaneous
Setup Enter & Edit Entity Flags
After you have enabled the flag to Record Lost Sales in Order Entry, any time you delete a detail line from an Order or Quote, the Business Edge will present you with a screen to record the lost sale along with a comment as seen below. If a line is being removed for another reason, you simply click delete.
The user can enter a freehand comment or there is an option to select a pre-defined comment by clicking on the selection box or pressing spacebar enter
These pre-defined comments can be entered ahead of time in Enter & Edit Comment/Final Message screen located in:
Accounts Receivable System
A/R File Maintenance
Customer Misc. Maintenance
Enter & Edit Comment/Final Message
Each time a Lost Sales is saved, the values for On Hand Inventory, open Sales Orders and open Purchase Orders is recorded. This can be helpful for evaluating stock levels at the time the sale was lost.
An additional feature tied to this flag is, when you zero out a backorder while Allocating and Invoicing, the system will automatically record that record as a lost sale when invoices are updated.
The second flag related to Lost Sales is located below – Include closed Orders in Lost Sales. That flag is located in
Utilities
System Administrator System
System Set Up Miscellaneous
Setup Enter & Edit Entity Flags
Order Entry Flags Page 4
Include Closed Orders in Lost Sales?
When this flag is set to Yes and the line items on any Closed Order or Quote will automatically be added as a Lost Sale.
Another feature you can use with or without the above flags set to Yes is you can record lost sales while in Product Inquiry, under Additional Information, F3 Lost Sales Information. If you do not provide a formal Quote and give a price over the phone you can easily enter a lost sale here and could notate the Customer or Prospect along with the reason.
Click Lost Sales Information and New Line to add a new lost sale note. Then, select the Customer, Quantity requested, price and lost sale note related to the product
The Lost sale information is available for future reference in that product with a Time/Date stamp as well as the user who entered the note as seen below
Users can run reports in The Business Edge to assess any recurrent trends as to why sales were lost. Consider filtering your reports not only by the comment field values, but on a more granular level in which you can view lost sales by the Customer, the product or the date. The Lost Sales reports are located in:
Order & Quote Entry System
Order Reports
Lost Sales Reports
The Customer Lost Sales Inquiry will show all lost sales for a single Customer or range of Customers for a single date or within the selected date range. The Lost Sales Report – by Customer is located in
Order & Quote Entry System
Order Reports
Lost Sales Reports
Lost Sales Report – by Customer
When the report is sent to the screen you can see the Customer, Product Code, Lost Sale date, Lost time and the comment
The Optional fields on the Customer Lost Sales Inquiry are:
The Product Lost Sales report will allow you to view product or a range of product’s lost sales. The Lost Sale Report – By product is located in:
Order & Quote Entry System
Order Reports
Lost Sales Reports
Lost Sales Report – by Product
The second sort screen will allow you to select a date range in which you would like to view lost sales for the products selected on the previous screen
The Lost Sales by Product will show Product Code, Default Alternate, Customer Code and Customer Name, Quantity, Unit of Measure, Lost Sale Date and Lost Sale Comment
The Lost Sale by Date will allow you to select all branches or a specific branch as well as the sequence by can be set by Product code or Customer. The beginning lost sale date can be set as one day or a range of dates. The Lost Sale by Date Report is located in
Order & Quote Entry System
Order Reports
Lost Sales Reports
Lost Sales Inquiry – by Date
The report will show you the Customer, Product, Lost Sale date, Lost Sale comment and Lost Sale date
The Optional Columns for the Lost Sale by Date inquiry are below
