Knowledge Base
Admin users now have the ability to rename the default labels for the Ranking feature.
Now you can customize the purpose of the ranking feature while making its meaning clear to your whole team.
To customize your Ranking labels, click on the pencil next to “Ranking” at the top of the ranking column (as shown below). Enter your own labels and click save.
Invoices in Showroom Exchange represent the shipment of the merchandise by your mfrs/brands to your customers.
Entering invoices into Showroom Exchange allows you to keep track of the following:
1) Open Orders (which orders have or have not shipped)
2) Paid and Unpaid Commissions (some mfrs/brands report their shipments to the showroom 1st and pay later)
3) Mfr/brand’s % ship through rate (how WELL your mfrs/brands are performing). More on this in Measure Brand Performance with Ship-Through Percentages.
When entering an invoice, first reference its corresponding PO, give it an invoice number, then provide an invoice date (invdate: the date it shipped). You then have the option of giving it a paid date (pdate). Consider pdate as the date the showroom got paid.
The difference:
We at Showroom Exchange use SE to manage follow-ups with our potentials.
We use Showroom Exchange in two ways to remind us to follow-up with showrooms:
1) the rating/profile fields, and
2) notes with email reminders
The rating and profile columns are great for tagging your customers. The great thing about these columns is that they are open to YOUR implementation and can be updated in BULK.
For example, after we’ve given a showroom their first training, we’ll put a “t1” in their rating profile, and a “t2” after their second. This allows us to reach out to customers that may have missed their second training session, (i.e. we’ll type “*t1*|^*t2*” into the search bar at the top of the column to see who has had their first training but not their second).
Below, we search “pot” to find customers we mark as potentials, whom we can send PBEs to, make market calls, etc.
2) Make Notes with Emailed Reminders
We also use reminders in the notes feature to be reminded of a specific action. For example, if we contact a potential and want to make sure a follow-up occurs, we’ll make a note for that customer with an email reminder. The email that we receive in a month, or a week… is the reminder to follow-up with the customer.
To make a note with a reminder:
1) Assign a due date
2) Confirm the address you want to send the reminder to
3) Check the box next to “send an email reminder to”
Ever wonder why there’s a red “(SR)” next to one of your reps? It’s because they have been assigned as the “Showroom Rep,” the rep used to track commissions due to the showroom from the mfrs (not the individual reps).
The SR rep is not supposed to represent a real rep, including the showroom owner. The showroom owner should have their own record with 0% commission. Consider the following scenario:
Sally’s Showroom and Sally K., the owner
There should be 2 records:
SSR: Sally’s Showroom as the showroom rep
SK: Sally K. as a regular rep @ 0% commission.
When entering order, assign the ‘non-SR’ rep that was responsible for the booking as rep1 and all other reps (if any, who are simply sharing commission with rep1) as rep2, rep3 and on. The final rep on every order will be the showroom rep (SR) – SE will AUTO-ASSIGN the SR rep to the last available rep field as long no more than 5 ‘non-SR’ reps are sharing commission. Whether just one rep made the order or if 5 reps are getting commission on an order, the SR rep is always included. By doing so, Showroom Exchange tracks how much commission is due to the showroom as a whole.
The (SR) rep always receives 100% commission, i.e. 100% of the mfr’s base commission rate, which is then broken down to reps. When adding a new order, the SR rep commission will automatically be switched to the mfr commission.
To edit which rep is the SR rep (there can only be one per showroom), go to the reps page under “Main Categories” and click on a rep name to edit. On the rep edit page, check the box by “this rep is the showroom” to assign them as the showroom rep.
Browsers render web pages to display content.
We’ve identified Google’s Chrome to be the most efficient at rendering and the most compatible with SE.
Consider using Chrome for SE:
https://www.google.com/chrome
Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari work well but may have an occasional incompatibility with their older versions.
See the additional features admin users have access to.
Monitor your business through activity logs (admin feature).
Learn the most efficient methods of creating a new user.
Admin users can edit the permissions of non-Admin and when specified, for other Admin users, create/delete users, and view user activity logs.
All of these functions can be found from “Setup Categories | Showroom users”
On the Showroom Users page, you can…
1) Add a new user (copying an existing user is faster)
2) Associate a rep to certain territories, sub-territories, or states, limiting the customers (and their respective orders) they can view or edit
3) Copy an existing user’s permissions to create a new user
4) Click on an existing user’s name to edit their current permissions
Below are screenshots of all of the permissions you can allow/deny a new or existing user.
Assign login hours to limit what times of the day/week users can access Showroom Exchange.
1) You can pick which reps the user has access to (i.e. viewing their customers/orders)
2) Here you can limit from where users/reps can access Showroom Exchange. Enter the IP address of your showroom so the user can only use SE while they are present in the showroom. To determine the IP address of the showroom, visit the following URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=ip+address