In Xentral, the master data includes contacts and products. The contacts consist of your customer, supplier and employee data, the products consist of your goods. In the following sections, you will learn how to create and work with them.
Note
You can import existing master data from another system or other sources to Xentral. The prerequisite for this is that the data is available as a CSV file.
Further helpful information on importing can be found summarized under Initial setup article - Master data import - Addresses, products or in the handbook article on data import: Import of master data and company data.
Finally, you will learn about working with sales orders in the sales process and the differentiation of individual business areas with the help of projects.
Open the address overview in the left sidebar under Sell > Contacts (in Classic Design: Master data > Contacts). Click +NEW to create a new contact. A form opens which applies equally to customers, suppliers and employees. Enter the new address in the Master data area and click Save.
You will now be asked to assign a role to the contact. The roles Customer, Supplier and Employee are available to you, whereby multiple selection is also possible, e.g. if one of your employees is also one of your customers. Depending on which role you have assigned, the contact will receive a corresponding customer, supplier or employee number from your number range.
Note
You can assign additional roles to the contact at any time in the Role tab. You can find information on this in the article Maintaining contact master data.
Depending on the role you can create different kinds of documents directly from the contact:
-
Customer: Offer, Sales order, Invoice, Delivery note, credit note
-
Supplier: Purchase order
Tip
You can find out how your employees get access to your Xentral instance and how you can adjust their user rights in the setup article System setup (Implementation).
A business customer often differs in a few aspects from a regular customer:
-
Multiple locations (warehouses, branches, etc.): You can enter multiple delivery addresses in the Delivery addresses tab and then select the correct address as the alternative delivery address in the sales order.
-
Deviating billing address: When using multiple delivery addresses, the billing address is usually different from the delivery address. In the Details tab > Contact data subtab, you can select Dev. Billing address in the Master data section and then enter the address.
-
Taxation: In the Details tab > Terms of payment/ taxation subtab you can enter a VAT ID in the Tax/ Currency/ Customs area so that your customer can use the input tax deduction.
-
Payment by invoice: In the B2B sector, payment is often made by invoice. In the Details tab > Terms of payment/ taxation subtab, you can define special payment terms for invoices.
Everything you sell in Xentral is considered a product. This includes stock items that you physically store in your warehouse and ship to your customers. In addition, non-physical goods without stock are also considered products. This category includes shipping costs, discounts and services.
You can find your products under Sell > Products (in Classic Design: Master data > Products). All the products you have created are listed here in a table. You can search for products, filter them and edit existing products. This is also the starting point for creating new products.
Click + NEW in the top right of the product table to create a new product. A form will open in which you must enter an item description and specify the type of item. You have four options for the type of item:
-
Stock item: Stock items are all products for which stock is held.
-
Item is postage: With a postage item you can display shipping costs as a separate item in documents.
-
Discounted item: With a discount item, you can grant a discount on the total order or invoice value and display this as a separate item in the document. The discount grants a percentage discount on the entire sales order.
-
No checkmark: If you don't check any of the options, the item is considered a service.
There are no other mandatory fields. The item number is automatically assigned from the corresponding number range of the selected item category. You set the sales price of the item in the Sales tab.
For stock items, we still recommend that you fill in the other fields as best as possible, as they can have an important function in other areas of Xentral. For example, you can add an item description that you can transfer to your online shops or enter a customs tariff number that is important when shipping abroad. You can find a description of other fields and their options under Maintaining product master data.
A bill of materials is an item that consists of multiple items or components. Xentral differentiates between two types of bill of materials:
-
Bill of materials: A bill of materials is an item that consists of several individual items, e.g. a gift basket. In this case, you remove the individual items from stock beforehand and create a new item with an item number using the bill of materials and store it once.
-
Just-in-time (JIT) bill of materials: The just-in-time bill of materials offers you more flexibility in warehousing. The components of the bill of materials have their own storage location and can be offered in different bills of materials. The bill of materials is compiled in the picking process and the individual components are only booked out of the warehouse when the bill of materials is purchased. For example, if you have several electronic items on offer that require the same charging cable as an accessory, you can store devices and cables separately to save costs.
You define the type of bill of materials in the main item of the bill of materials. Open an product and select Parts list or Just-in-time parts list in the Other settings area. The new Parts list tab appears. Here you can add further items to the bill of materials.
Note
You can display or hide the individual items of your bills of materials for the customer in documents. Alternatively, you can include the items of a normal bill of materials in the item description.
You can use variants to quickly create a series of similar items, e.g. clothing in different sizes and colors. You create variants in Xentral via the matrix product. The variants are derived from a general product (parent item), e.g. the variants red T-shirt and blue T-shirt can be derived from a T-shirt. Make sure to maintain the item information of your parent item in detail, as its item information is passed on to the variants.
Note
You can also create an item directly as a variant of a parent item. However, we recommend that you always create your variants via the matrix product, as this offers easier processing and many online shops prefer variants in the form of the matrix product.
You can create a matrix product directly in the product. Open the product and select Matrix product in the Variants section. The new Matrix product tab appears. Here you can assign new properties to the item, e.g. a color. To do this, click New group to create the property. You can then assign a characteristic of the property to the group via Add option, e.g. red. In the graphical user interface, you can select the items you want to create from the resulting combinations.
Tip
The groups and options added in this way only apply to the selected item. If you have certain properties that you want to use repeatedly for different items, you can customize them in the Matrix product module.
Here you can create a so-called basic table in which the property and its options are permanently saved. This allows you to quickly add the required properties to an item.
The sales order is the most important element in Xentral's sales process. All other documents such as delivery notes and invoices are derived from this document.
Sales orders can be created in three different ways:
-
Continuation of an offer: This is particularly common in the B2B sector. You can take over all the data from the offer and convert it into a sales order.
-
manually: You can manually create sales orders in the system that were received by phone or email.
-
automatically: This is the typical case in the B2C sector. Sales orders are imported from an online shop such as Shopify or a marketplace such as Amazon and created automatically. You can find out more about this in the Online shops section.
You can find a list of all sales orders under Sell > Sales Orders (in the classic design: Sales > Sales Orders). Here you can edit orders and create new sales orders manually.
Before you start with the automatic creation of sales orders, we recommend that you create a few sales orders manually to familiarize yourself with the information required.
Click on + NEW in the top right-hand corner of the sales order table to create a new sales order. A new form will open. In this form, you should first select a contact from your contact master data in the Customer field and click Apply. The master data required for the sales order is then copied from the contact. In addition to the address, this also includes other information such as project, payment method, shipping method and taxation. If necessary, you can also adjust this manually and enter a different delivery address, for example.
You can add items to the order in the Positions subtab. The sales price is taken from the product master data, but can also be adjusted manually using the pencil icon. You can check your details and the design of the sales order confirmation in the Preview subtab.
Finally, click on Approve. This gives the sales order an order number from the central number range and it can be processed further. Approved sales orders can no longer be deleted, only cancelled. Approving the sales order also activates the order status indicator for the sales order in the overview.
The order status indicator uses colored symbols to help you track the current status of a sales order. Process steps that have been successfully completed are shown in green. Open process steps that still need to be checked are shown in orange.
As soon as all symbols turn green, you can pass the sales order on to logistics.
Note
You can activate and deactivate order status indicator symbols under Settings > Set up your system > System settings in the Hide order status indicator area.
You can process a sales order in a variety of ways using the action menu on the right-hand side. Among other things, you can send a sales order confirmation to your customer (Submit order) or reorder the items contained in the order from your supplier (Continue as a purchase order). The information contained in the sales order is passed on in full to the subsequent document and does not affect the status of the sales order. You can therefore create several different documents from one sales order.
The two most important documents that can emerge from the sales order are the delivery note (Continue as a delivery note) and the invoice (Continue as an invoice). In the event of a return, you can also create a credit note out of an invoice.
Note
If you continue a document as a new type of document, e.g. continue an order as an invoice, the documents are linked together. You can then access all linked documents in the protocol, i.e. in this case you can see the invoice, its processor and the date the invoice was created.
When the sales order is handed over to shipping, a delivery note and an invoice are automatically created for each sales order.
If all symbols on the order status indicator are green, you can pass the order on to logistics. The following options are available to you:
-
Individual sales order: Select Auto dispatch: create invoice and delivery note in the sales order's action menu.
-
Multiple sales orders: First select all the sales orders you want to send in the Delivery handover tab. Then select Auto-shipping from the drop-down menu in the Batch processing area and click Execute.
-
Automatic handover: If you have set up the “autoversand_plus” process starter, all sales order that are ready for dispatch will be handed over to the dispatch center in regular intervals.
Note
Further information on the dispatch process can be found in the Logistics and warehouse management article.
The sale of products can be controlled in Xentral via projects, which have an influence on the import of your sales orders and your logistics, for example. You can use projects to separate business areas (e.g. B2B and B2C) and define your own logistics processes for each project.
Before you create a project, you should think about how you want to set up your company and which areas you want to separate from each other:
-
Target group (B2B, B2C)
-
Currency, customs and taxes (domestic, foreign)
-
Sales channels (branches, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)/Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM))
-
Logistics processes (package shipping, freight forwarding)
Note
We recommend that you create a separate project for each shop/marketplace. This is particularly important for Amazon if you sell via both FBA and FBM, as the logistics are drastically different here.
Projects also allow you to assign certain areas of the company to employees. In addition to assigning rights, this is another way of ensuring data protection in your company.
You can create a new project under Settings > Set up your system > Projects. You can either create a completely new project or copy an existing one and modify it slightly. Enter a name and an identifier. These will help you to identify your project in the software. All other fields are optional. Click Next.
Then open the Settings tab. You can set up your project here:
-
Basic settings: Decide whether emails should be sent for paid or missed payments and for cancellations. You can also set up your own stationery for the project.
-
Logistics / Shipping: Set up the logistics process for the project. This includes choosing the picking method, a printer and the documents to be printed. You can find more information on logistics processes here: Logistics and Warehouse (Implementation).
-
Separate number ranges: You can use project-specific number ranges to separate B2B and B2C for tax purposes, for example, or to specially label orders from abroad.
-
Tax / Currency: Enter financial information about the project. Here you can enter the tax rates and currency, for example, if the project is abroad. The values for Germany are entered by default.
Optionally, you can also store settings for your cash register system/point of sale (POS) and the address of a branch.