Product Maintenance (FTD Mercury X)
From FloristWiki
The products you sell in your store include your wire service–branded products as well as any custom products that you sell.
Product Codes
Product codes are abbreviations for products you sell in your store. They help you track sales and quantity on hand. Wire service–branded and Selection Guide products are installed in your system for you. FTD Mercury allows you to add your own products, and allows you to enter care and design information for each product in the database. You can also associate pictures with your products.
Product codes also help you when you are processing an order. For example, when a customer requests an FTD-branded product, enter the product’s code and the product information is completed for you. This way, your system knows which product is to be sent, eliminating product entry errors and faulty pricing.
How the Mercury Network Uses Product Codes
Multiple Price Points
Each product can have up to three price points (good, better, best pricing). You can enter these values in the Product Detail window for any product. The lowest value is recorded in the Price field, the middle value is in the Premium Price field, and the top value is in the Deluxe Price field.
When you perform a Product Search and display results, you can click in the Price column to display a drop-down list of available prices. Select the price you want to use, and select the product. When you return to Order Entry or Point of Sale, the product is entered in the Products area with the price you selected.
Bar Codes
FTD Mercury includes support for bar codes and bar code readers. You can either scan an existing bar code and assign it to a product, or you can create a new bar code for a product by manually entering an alphanumeric code as a bar code. Once you have associated a bar code with a product, you can use a bar code scanner when entering an order to scan products.
If you want to create and print bar code labels to use with your products, you must purchase your own third-party bar code creation software. You can typically find this software at an office supply store or on the Internet. Once you create bar code labels, you can affix them to your products so they can be scanned in Point of Sale or Order Entry.
NOTE: FTD does not support any third-party software for printing bar codes. However, to ensure you are purchasing bar code creation software that is compatible with your bar code scanner, consult the bar code scanner documentation. This documentation (or the manufacturer’s Technical Support department) can tell you which software is compatible with your specific bar code scanner model.
Steps for Associating Bar Codes with Products
How-to Procedures
Using Product Codes in a Mercury Order
When sending a Mercury order, FTD Mercury allows you to enter valid product codes and fills in the description and price for you if the product is set up in your product database. If you type an invalid product code, the system allows you to either add a new product or enter a different product code.
You can enter the product code and then press TAB to allow the system to look up the product for you, or you can click the Search button (…) to browse your product database. You can also type in product descriptions in free form. This allows you to enter descriptions without valid product codes so that, for example, you can enter “similar” to indicate that a similar arrangement of the first choice product is acceptable.
Using Product Codes in Order Entry and Point of Sale
The product areas of the Order Entry and POS Order Entry screens work just like the product area of the Mercury Order Message screen. When entering the product information, type the product code and press TAB to allow the system to search for the product for you, or click the Search button (…) to browse your product database.
Add products that you regularly sell into your product database to reduce order processing time. Wire service–branded products are set up for you.
If you have multiple stores, products are associated with each store. If in Order Entry or Point of Sale you type a product code of a product that is not associated with the logged in store, you receive the following message:
The product code you have entered is not available at this store. Use anyway?
Click Yes to use the product code anyway, or click No to select a different product code. If you select Associate product with all stores and then click Yes, you associate this product with all stores (this message will not appear the next time you select this product at this store).
Searching for Products
You can search for products from the FTD Mercury Main Menu, the Order Entry window, and the Point of Sale window.
Steps for Searching for Products
Adding New Products
FTD Mercury is preloaded with your wire service–branded and Selection Guide products; however, it is likely that you will want add your own products to your system.
Steps for Adding New Products
Adding Pictures to Products
You can also add your own pictures to local products (Selection Guide products already have pictures associated with them). You must have previously saved a new product before you can add a picture to it. You can either take a picture using the Logitech QuickCam, or browse to an existing picture.
Steps for Adding Pictures to Products
Removing Pictures from Local Products
You can remove pictures you have added to local products. You cannot remove Selection Guide images.
Steps for Removing Pictures
Adding Product Recipes
Each product in your system can have a recipe associated with it. By default, FTD Selection Guide products have their recipes included so your designers know the components that go into making up these products. Likewise, you can include recipes with your own products.
When you have configured to print recipes on Worksheets (in Mercury Administration), the entire recipe you enter (or was provided by the FTD Selection Guide) will be printed.
Steps for Adding Product Recipes
Designating Quick Pick Products
You can designate items as Quick Picks in FTD Mercury. When you perform a Product Search from the Products grid in Order Entry or Point of Sale, the Product Search automatically returns all items marked as Quick Picks. Although you might already know the product codes for common items, designating an item as a Quick Pick can substantially help a person who is unfamiliar with the product codes, or help you find items that you want to suggest to a customer when there is a question of what the customer wants.
Steps for Working with Quick Pick Products
Copying Care Instructions
When you create a new product, you may want to use the same care instructions from an already existing product. FTD Mercury provides a mechanism for copying these instructions.
Steps for Copying Care Instructions
Deleting Products
To delete a product from your system, you must first search for the product via a Product Search. The product will be deleted from your system permanently. You can only delete local products from your product database; you cannot delete Selection Guide products.
An alternative is to remove the check from the Active check box in the Product Entry window. This will cause a message to appear when you try to enter the product in the Products area in Order Entry or Point of Sale. Additionally, if you perform a Product Search from Order Entry or Point of Sale, inactive products do not appear in search results.
Steps for Deleting Products
Setting up Gift Certificates
To set up your system so that your customers can purchase and redeem gift certificates, you must first set up a gift certificate product so that the gift certificate can be purchased in Order Entry and Point of Sale. A payment type of Gift Certificate has been added to the payment window in Order Entry and Point of Sale so that your customers can pay by gift certificate.
Steps for Setting up Gift Certificates
Setting up Coupons
FTD Mercury allows you to create coupons and to assign quantities, amounts, and GL numbers to them (if you use the legacy General Ledger module). Coupons are set up similar to products, and can be taxable or non-taxable. Taxable coupons reduce the sale amount before taxes are calculated. Non-taxable coupons reduce the sale amount after the taxes are calculated.
Steps for Setting Up Coupons
Setting up Delivery Zones and Fees
If your store charges for delivery, you can set up multiple delivery zones and a delivery charge for each zone. After you set up your zones and charges, delivery charges are automatically entered in Order Entry and Point of Sale when you select a zone for delivery.
There are three ways that you can set up delivery zones:
- Using the Mercury Delivery application—If you have purchased it, you can set up delivery zones in Mercury Delivery. You can set up delivery zones by postal codes, address, or by drawing a boundary on a map.
- Within Mercury Administration—If you do not have Mercury Delivery, the quickest and easiest way to set up delivery zones and delivery charges is within Mercury Administration. By setting up delivery zones in Mercury Administration, you are assigning delivery zones to postal codes (when a recipient address with a particular postal code is entered in Order Entry or Point of Sale, the associated delivery charge is added to the order automatically).
- As product codes—You can set up delivery fees as product codes. There are a few steps to setting up zones this way. The delivery zones are available to select as products in your product database. They are also assigned to delivery zones in Mercury Administration so that when a recipient address with a particular postal code is entered in Order Entry or Point of Sale, the associated delivery charge is added to the order automatically.
Steps for Setting Up Delivery Fees as Product Codes
Associating Bar Codes with Products
Window Descriptions
Product Search Window
The Product Search window is used to look for the products you sell in your shop. This window provides you access to all products in FTD Mercury. This window is most frequently used when looking up products (performing Product Searches) from Order Entry and Point of Sale. You can also access it by clicking the Product Search button on the FTD Mercury Main Menu.
Product Entry Window
The Product Entry window opens when you either view a product’s details (by double-clicking a product in Product Search) or when you add a new product to FTD Mercury.
