LOU Onboarding Practice Exercises for Retail Bundle

These exercises will help you become familiar with day-to-day activities in LOU before you go live. We want you to be successful!

You should have received an email from us, inviting you to one of our practice databases. Using this database to practice allows you to continue your onboarding efforts on your company database without disruption.

Keep this document handy while working through exercises. All the resources you need to successfully complete these exercises are included.

 

 

 

Section I: Customers, Vendors, and SKUs

Before you can create an Order and sell your product, you need to have Customers and SKUs! During Onboarding, you’ll use several import tools to upload your current Customer, Vendor, and SKU lists. However, there will be many occasions to enter these things individually throughout your daily activities and it’s good practice to understand how to do that.

Exercise 1: Create a Customer

1. Enter a First and Last Name.
2. Leave the default Customer Type.
3. Use your Account Manager’s email for the Customer’s Email Address.
4. Customer Messaging preferences should be configured to Email Only because we don’t have a public Phone Number which can accept Texts.
5. The customer’s address can be anything you like.

 

Exercise 2: Create a Vendor

1. Use your company name or your own name as the Vendor.
2. Leave the default Vendor Type.
3. You don’t need to enter any other information. If you choose to, remember not to use personal protected information.

Exercise 3: Create an Inventory SKU

1. Create a SKU for the Vendor you just created.
2. Choose Inventory as the SKU Type – we’re keeping things simple for this exercise.
3. You don’t need to create a real SKU. Create something that looks realistic.
4. Determine Fixed Price or Profit Margin. It doesn’t need to match other SKUs in Inventory.

Exercise 4: Add Quantity to a SKU

Once you’ve created the SKU, you need to get quantities of that SKU into your Inventory. There are two ways to do it: Purchase Orders and Stock Adjustments.

Exercise 4a: Create a Purchase Order

1. Choose the Vendor you created.
2. Add the SKU you created with a quantity of 3.
3. Place the PO On Order.
4. Receive Inventory for that PO (Hint: you can start this process from the Receive Inventory page or from the PO profile.)

Exercise 4b: Create a Stock Adjustment

1. Adjust the Stock for your SKU to increase the QOH by 2.

 

Section II: Lifecycle of a Sales Orders

Sales Orders are primarily used for transactions that do not include work such as service and installation. These are typically retail-only transactions that are bigger than cash and carry. In this section, we’re going to create everything you need to complete a Sales Order.

Optional – Estimates

Estimates are commonly associated with labor or work to be performed in addition to product. If your business relies on Estimates during the sales process, take a minute to complete this exercise before continuing. If you don’t rely on Estimates, skip this exercise.

 

Create an Estimate:

1. Select your Customer.
2. Select a Department.
3. Select a Distribution Method or leave the default.
4. Select a Document Type or leave the default.
5. Add the SKU you just created.

Sales Orders, Deposits, Invoices, and Payments

Create the Sales Order, then complete the lifecycle by collecting a Deposit, Invoicing, and collecting Payment for the Order.

Exercise 1a: Promote your Estimate

Exercise 1b: Create standalone Sales Order

1. Use your Customer.
2. Add the SKU you created.
3. Optional: Add some additional SKUs if you like.
4. Take a Cash or Check Deposit on the order.
   • REMEMBER! This is a test database, so credit cards don’t process like they will in your production database.
5. Message the Order to your Customer.

Exercise 2: Create an Invoice

1. Invoice the Order. (Hint: start on the Order Profile)
2. Message the Invoice to the Customer.

Exercise 3: Process a Payment

1. While on the Invoice Profile, take a Cash or Check Payment.
2. Message the Payment Profile to the Customer as their Receipt.

Section III: Reports

Reporting is huge. We’ve got hundreds of reports available in LOU. On your database, you’ll have access to the full range of reports LOU has to offer. On this training database, we’ve provided a few of the most used reports. You’ll find most reports in LOUs Reports and a few others scattered throughout different areas of LOU. All reports can be customized and manipulated to provide the analytics that are most important to you.

 

For this exercise, we’re going to run a single report that should give you information on the transactions you’ve completed in the sections above.

Exercise 1: Create an Orders Report

1. View the Orders Report
2. Change the Date Range to the current week. (This will help limit the data output and make the report easier to digest for the exercise.)
3. Limit the Columns displayed to only Group, Email, Total Amount, Document Type, CustomerNo, Display Name, DocumentNo, and Date.
4. Reorder the Columns to move the Date next to Group as the second column.
5. Export report to .xlsx
6. Review the report for your Order information.

Section IV: LOU Accounting

This section will allow you to familiarize yourself with a few of the features of the LOU Accounting suite that are commonly used daily.

Exercise 1: Create an Expense (hint: go grab the ID for the PO you created up in Section I to complete this exercise)

1. Create a Bill
2. Select your Vendor
3. Keep the default Post Date
4. Enter the PO ID

Exercise 2: Create a Bank Deposit

1. Use the default Post Date
2. Choose Cash and Checks

Exercise 3: Run the General Ledger Register

1. To keep it easy to review, choose Date Range and enter the current week.
2. Output to spreadsheet.
3. Review the General Ledger Register to locate the entries related to your Order.

(Hint: You can also find Financial Records linked to various documents associated with your Order.)

Section V: You’ve Completed the Exercises

By the end of this exercise your Account Manager should have received an email containing the Order, Invoice, and Payment you created. You should have a spreadsheet of the exported Orders Report and General Ledger Register. Send your Account Manager an email, letting them know you completed the exercises, and include the Order Report and General Ledger Register for their review. Feel free to summarize the information you analyzed in the report for your Account Manager. If you believe you found any discrepancies, call those out as well.