How to Fill Out Order Milestones

| 5 minutes

Salesperson must fill out the Order Milestones once the order is confirmed by the Customer. Order Milestones is a section that is used to fill out the most important dates/steps of any Order. There are several purposes of Order Milestones section:

• Record estimated dates of order steps;
• Record actual dates of order steps;
• Collect the information for future reference/reports.

Predefined milestones/dates of the steps of an order are important for tracking progress and ensuring every order is completed on-time.

Defining milestones/dates for Customer payment/order confirmation/factory packaging is subject to circumstances outside of our immediate control, making setting accurate milestones difficult. However, regulating the parts of the process that are within our control and tracking the process are important to completing registrations in the shortest time possible.

This SOP will explain how to enter estimated dates into Order Milestones. How to handle actual dates in Order Milestones is described in Closing an Order SOP.

ORD: 1. Communication Initiated with Customer – the date the task was created (fill Closed Date & Closed By) and proceed to ORD.2
ORD: 2. Payment Request Sent to Customer – the date Accounting Dept. send the down payment request email (fill Estimated Date & set Event Date in Calendar with reminder and Closed Date & Closed By, Attendees: Sales Dept. Manager and Sales Director) and proceed to ORD. 3
ORD: 3. Customer Payment Received – the estimated date is according to the Payment Terms stated in the Sales Contract (fill Estimated Date & set Event Date in Calendar with reminder and Closed Date & Closed By, Attendees: Sales Dept. Manager, Sales Director and Accounting Dept. Manager)
ORD: 4. Customer Confirms Packaging – the estimated date should be 3 days after Salesperson has sent the PDCA to the Customer (fill Estimated Date & set Event Date in Calendar with reminder and Closed Date & Closed By, Attendees: Sales Dept. Manager and Sales Director) and proceed to ORD. 8
ORD: 5-6. Purchasing person fills out
ORD: 7. Packaging Samples/Images provided by Vendor – the date Vendor provides with samples/images of the printed packaging before packing of the product

Note: once the milestones are added by Purchasing Specialist, Salesperson is to set activities for “Packaging Samples” and “Completion date” on vendor basis with the dates taken from ORD. 7 Milestones

ORD: 8. SO Production Completion Date – the date production will be completed for the Customer. Production time is stated in the Sales Contract. The days are calculated from the date the Customer has confirmed the PDCA with the Salesperson. (fill Estimated Date & set Event Date in Calendar with reminder (Attendees: Purchasing person, Purchasing Manager, Sales Manager, Sales Director))
ORD: 9. Purchasing person fills out. Purchasing person will add the initial estimated production completion dates provided by the Vendors. If the dates should change, the Purchasing person will inform the Salesperson via Task. The estimated dates will not be changed in the Milestones.
ORD: 10. Final Payment Request Sent to the Customer - the date Accounting Dept. send the final payment request email (fill Closed Date & Closed By) and proceed to ORD.11
ORD: 11. Customer Final Payment Received - the estimated date is according to the Payment Terms stated in the Sales Contract (fill Estimated Date & set Event Date in Calendar with reminder, Closed Date & Closed By)
ORD: 12. Purchasing person fills out
ORD: 13-15. Logistics person fills out
ORD: 16. Order Closed – the date the task is sent to Sales Manager to close the order (fill Closed Date & Closed By)
ORD: 17. Logistics person sets Event Date in Calendar with reminder (When Salesperson receives notification on the event date, Salesperson is to set an Activity 3 weeks after to follow up with the Customer for next order)

1. Locate Order Milestones table of the relevant order.
Note: Order Milestones table is located in the bottom of Opportunity Info tab in the Task, under Purchase Orders section.

2. Click 'EDIT' on the top left of the screen.
3. Click 'Add a line' in the Order Milestones table. Add all Order Milestones (1-16) at the time you are adding the date for Milestone 1. The fastest way to do this, is to write a number and the milestone option will appear. Be aware there are milestones for ORDER (ORD) and for REGISTRATION (REG). Salesperson will only add the Milestones for ORDER.

There are 2 ways to add the Milestones:

1) Select 'Milestone' and click ‘Search More’ to see all of the Milestones.

2) Select ‘Milestone’ and type a number and the milestone option will appear. This is the fastest way to add Milestones.

4. When all of the Milestones have been added, select 'Milestone' and fill as described per Milestone.

5. For the Milestones that require Salesperson to set the ‘Event Date with Reminder’, the field 'Event' will appear for those milestones that have an option for estimated dates. If there should be no estimated date, the field 'Event' will not appear.

6. Click 'Event', then 'Create and Edit'. New pop up window will open that will be used to create an Event in the Calendar. The event created from Order Milestones will be exactly the same as if created through Calendar directly.

7. Create the Event Name.
Note: For ORD: 3. Customer Payment Received, follow the format for the event name: "SOXXX Milestone Name". For example: "SOXXX Customer Payment Received".

8. Add 'Attendees' - the people that will receive inbox notification of the event. Always add the Sales Dept. Manager.
9. Select 'Starting at' - the estimated date. For example, estimated date of when the Customer payment will be received.
10. Select 'Reminders' - the time when notifications will be sent to every subscribed person inbox.
11. Add ‘Tags’ – Event
12. Add ‘Location’ – Other
13. Add ‘Task’ – enter the SO# task that the event should be linked to.
14. Once all the above points are done, click 'SAVE'.
15. When back to the previous Milestone pop up, click 'SAVE & CLOSE'.
16. If the Salesperson needs to add more milestones, repeat the steps from 4 to 13.
Note:Note: At this point of the process, there is no need to fill out the following fields: 'Closed Date', 'Closed By'. These 2 fields will be used at the stage of closing an order to record the actual dates of a milestone - the actual dates of production completion, receiving the payment, shipment departure, etc.
17. Click 'SAVE' on top left of the screen.

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