FAQs

• Some of my manufacturers are interested in learning more about eSi. Where can they find more information?
• I am ready to start eSi with a manufacturer. Do I need to set-up all the Manufacturer/Customer x-reference records before I import the first file?
• I imported a file into eSi and now I want to delete this file so I can import a different file. How do I delete the file?
• Do the X-Reference records apply the same in eSi as they do in normal Sales Entry?
• If an eSi file has both commission % and commission $ fields, which is used to figure the commission?
• I want to track sales by Ship-To location. However, the manufacturer only provides the Sold-To customer number in the file. Is there still a way to have dynaMACS automatically post sales to the Ship-To location?
• After I run the “Create Sessions” process in eSi, where did my file go?
• Some customers for one manufacturer have different commission rates. How do I change their rate when I use eSi to import the file?
• My commission rates in the Sales Entry session imported through eSi don’t seem to be correct. How do I fix them?
• The manufacturers’ customer codes have zeros at the front. After I open the file in Excel and save it as a CSV file, the zeros disappear. How do I prevent this?
• After importing a file, I discovered that most of my commission amounts are zero, why?
• I opened the file from my manufacturer in Excel and some of the columns were changed to date format. How do I fix this?
• The spreadsheet we receive from the manufacturer contains subtotal rows. How do we remove them from the spreadsheet?

Q.1 Some of my manufacturers are interested in learning more about eSi. Where can they find more information?

They should visit our website and go to the eSi page from the Products menu. There are links on the eSi product page specifically for manufacturers. You may also copy the following link into an email to the manufacturer:

http://www.dynamacs.com/optional-modules/esi/

Back to top.

Q.2 I am ready to start eSi with a manufacturer. Do I need to set-up all the Manufacturer/Customer x-reference records before I import the first file?

No, the easiest way to implement eSi is to just start processing a file. The quickest way to setup the manufacturer’s customer codes in the x-reference file is to do it during the correction phase of eSi.

Back to top.

Q.3 I imported a file into eSi and now I want to delete this file so I can import a different file. How do I delete the file?

When attempting to import another file into eSi while another file is already in process a warning message comes up. The user has the option to delete the existing file and start over with the new file or cancel out of the process and then continue processing the existing file.

Back to top.

Q.4 Do the X-Reference records apply the same in eSi as they do in normal Sales Entry?

Yes, all the rules that would normally apply during Sales Entry as they relate to the X-Reference file will apply during eSi. However, it should be noted that if there is a commission percent or commission dollars in the eSi file, it will be used as is and any commission overrides setup in the X-Reference file will be ignored.

Back to top.

Q.5 If an eSi file has both commission % and commission $ fields, which is used to figure the commission?

If the file has both a commission percent and dollar values, the commission dollars will be used and not the commission percent. If either the commission % or the commission dollars are in the file, that will be used to calculate the commission. If both are left blank, then the normal commission calculations will be done using the mfg default value or any x-reference values that might be in effect.

Back to top.

Q.6 I want to track sales by Ship-To location. However, the manufacturer only provides the Sold-To customer number in the file. Is there still a way to have dynaMACS automatically post sales to the Ship-To location?

Yes, most files from a manufacturer should have either a ship-to city or a ship-to zip code or something to indicate where the invoice was shipped. If one of these fields is “appended” to the sold-to customer number, then a unique ship-to identifier is created. This unique field would then be set up in the x-reference file to the appropriate ship-to location record in the dynaMACS file.

Back to top.

Q.7 After I run the “Create Sessions” process in eSi, where did my file go?

A session is created just as though the entries had been manually entered. This session can then be listed and edited. When you are satisfied with the entries in the session, run the Post Sessions program to complete the updating process.

Back to top.

Q.8 Some customers for one manufacturer have different commission rates. How do I change their rate when I use eSi to import the file?

Refer to the earlier FAQ regarding commission rates and commission percent. If the file comes in with either a % or $$ that value is going to be used. If there is no commission that comes in then any overrides should be setup using the x-reference file.

Back to top.

Q.9 My commission rates in the Sales Entry session imported through eSi don’t seem to be correct. How do I fix them?

Go into Sales Entry and Edit the session. In the edit mode, any of the entries in the session may be retrieved and changed on screen including the commission amount.

Back to top.

Q.10 The manufacturers’ customer codes have zeros at the front. After I open the file in Excel and save it as a CSV file, the zeros disappear. How do I prevent this?

If a file with a .csv extension is opened by excel, any fields with numeric values (i.e. customer numbers with leading zeros) will be treated as numbers and the leading zeros are dropped. If the file is opened in Excel by double clicking on the csv file and then saved again the leading zeros will be lost.

To avoid this, do not open the file in Excel. Under some circumstances, this may be necessary to manipulate the data prior to import into dynaMACS. The only way to “work around” this problem with Excel is to first rename the file with an extension other than csv. For example, you could put .eSi. Then start excel, open the file in Excel and a wizard will come up that will walk you through opening the file. The import wizard has three steps.

Step 1 – Tell the wizard that the file is a a delimited file.
Step 2 – The delimiter should be comma and not tab.
Step 3 – In the wizard, highlight any of the columns with leading zeros and change from a general classification to a text classification.

This will retain the leading zeros in the values when the file is saved after the manipulation.

Back to top.

Q.11 After importing a file, I discovered that most of my commission amounts are zero, why?

It may be that the commission percent or commission dollars had a zero in the value and the import program assumed that the zero value was to be used instead of a calculated value. A zero is treated differently than a blank value. If the value is blank then the appropriate calculations are automatically done using default commission rates.

Back to top.

Q.12 I opened the file from my manufacturer in Excel and some of the columns were changed to date format. How do I fix this?

Refer to the earlier question regarding leading zeros on customer codes. The same approach may need to be done on Step 3 of the wizard where the column that is getting changed to a date format should be highlighted and checked as a text column.

Back to top.

Q.13 The spreadsheet we receive from the manufacturer contains subtotal rows. How do we remove them from the spreadsheet?

If there aren’t too many subtotal rows, manually highlight the rows and then click Delete to eliminate the subtotals rows. Under some circumstances there are so many subtotal rows that it may be easier to sort the entire spreadsheet on a column where all of the subtotals sort to the front or the back or end of the file. It is then easier to delete the subtotal rows. This same approach can be taken to get rid of any heading rows where there are multiple pages in the spreadsheet and each page has a set of headers and column heading on it.

Back to top.