Intro
In SMRT Systems, we track the origin of every order. The ability to group orders by origin has many advantages. The most significant being that you get a clear distinction in sales numbers.
In the POS we refer to the origin as an "Agent"-- the entity that produced the order.
An agent can be any of the following: Store, Route, or a Group.
Orders, Customers, Payments, and Credits are all assigned an agent.
The following explains how Agents are assigned.
Orders
Delivery Orders: When an order is created through the delivery app, it automatically assigns the current route as the agent for the new order.
Store Orders: An order created through the POS uses a more complex logic, prioritizing in the following exact order.
If the customer is in a group that is a separate agent - use the group agent.
If the customer has a future delivery or is on a route; show the Route vs Store's return location selection.
If the return location is set to a route - use the selected route agent.
If the return location is set to a store - use the selected store agent.
If a customer is not on a route and had a delivery that was not deleted in the last 3 days - use the agent of the most recent delivery.
Group all unpaid orders for the customer by the agent - use the agent with the most orders.
Use the agent of the current store.
Note: The agent of an order can be changed in the order menu as long as the order is not in A/R.
Customers
All Customers are assigned to an agent, however, the agent of a customer can vary if they decide to use different stores or even routes.
Every time a new order is created, it will update the customer's assigned agent to the one derived from the order agent algorithm.
Note that this does not mean the Agent is sure to change even if the customer has a one-off where they went to a new store on a single instance. This is because the order agent algorithm is tailored to return the "current store" only as a last resort.
While a customer's Agent is important for reporting purposes, it's not as serious as an order's Agent. It does not define how sales are accounted for but, rather reflects the customer's most recent method for using your services.
Payments
Payments along with every bookkeeping transaction are assigned an Agent. This is because every Agent has its own ledger.
In turn, this means that every financial action needs to keep agents separate.
For example, an order from one agent must be paid with a payment assigned to the same agent.
You cannot pay orders of different agents in a single payment.
Credits
Credits follow the same rules as payments, with a single difference. For practical advantages, we have developed a system that automatically transfers credits between the accounting ledgers whenever necessary in order to make the payment process easier.