The Integration Workflow

After you have finished setting up the Invoice and Shipping, you can go ahead and begin the integration workflow by creating an Estimate to send to a MIS program. The workflow of the integration begins with the Estimate, passing through the Job and Sales Order creation, until it ends on the MIS program. 

This is an overview of how the integration works:

Before The Integration

Before sending all the data from iQuote to the MIS program - in this case, Monarch - you should first review all the records.

 

Reviewing the Estimate

Once you create your Estimate, specifying the product and generating the engineering, you should review the delivery data associated with the record. For that, from the Estimate record page, go to the Shipping tab. 

The Shipping tab displays all the information regarding the shipment details and the address related to the Estimate record. You can change any of the options in this window by clicking on the drop-down lists or rewriting the fields.

The system automatically fills in the Type of Shipment field with the default one that you defined on the Estimate Standards page at Sales > Records > iQuote > Commercial > Estimate Standards > General Default > Type of Shipment, but you can change and select another one.

Moreover, the system automatically gets all the address information that you see on this page from the main address of the Customer record associated with the Estimate. However, note these points:

The Customer can have several addresses, so it is possible to change the one that you want to use in the Estimate by clicking the arrow on the Delivery place field and choosing another option.

The system displays as an option on the Delivery place field only the addresses that have the Is Main check box selected or the Address Type defined as "Shipping" in the Customer record.

For the integration to work, it is mandatory for the address to have a valid value in the State, ZIP Code, Country, City Name, Delivery Place, and Address fields.

For more information on how to create an address for the Customer, see Customer - Addresses.

When you are done editing the information in this screen, just click Save.

Note: See Shipping Tab for more information.

On the Proposal tab of the Estimate, you can see that there is a line in the Price Detail tab for each line that you defined an Invoice Type to, as explained on Making the Invoice Type Available.

When you have everything ready, change the Estimate status to Ready for Pricing (or a similar status) so that the system generates a Job and the Sales Order.

 

Reviewing the Sales Order

The Sales Order record, that you can access by navigating to Sales > Commercial > iQuote Sales Order, has all of the product and shipping details that it inherited from the Job, and it is this record that you will send to the MIS program once you finish to review all of the details. To check these details, you can consult the Product, Shipping, and Invoice Lines tabs.

There are some specifications that you can change in the Sales Order record, in case you need to update the information, such as the available addresses. Follow the steps below to add or edit addresses in the Sales Order.

From the Sales Order page, click the Address button on the top bar. The Address window opens.

To edit an existing address, select the line and change the information that loads on the right side of the window (i.e., address, contact, receiving restrictions).

To add a new address, there are two options:

Click the New button. A new line opens and you must fill in the fields as follows:

Actor: look for and select a Customer record.

Delivery Place: this field will load with the shipping type and main addresses from the Customer selected. Choose one of them; the system fills in the other fields automatically according to the delivery place selected.

Click the Add multiple addresses button to add several addresses at once. The Add multiple addresses window opens.

Look for a Customer on the Actor field. Once you select it, the system loads all of the Customer's shipping type and main addresses on the area below.

Select the address(es) that you want to add and click Confirm.

Back on the Address window, click Confirm to save the new address(es).

 

Other than that, there are a few other actions that it is possible to do on specific tabs of the Sales Order.

 

The Product tab

In the Product tab, you can click the expand button to display more of the product information and also edit the shipping quantity by clicking on the field under the shipment and entering a number.

It is also possible to add a new shipment record by clicking the Add Ship button:

Click the Add Ship button. The Add Ship window opens.

Enter a date and select one of the addresses already registered in the Sales Order in the Ship To field.

Select one of the available Type of Shipment, Carrier, and Ship Methods. Enter a Description for this ship so that you can recognize it later.

Click Confirm.

The system creates the new shipment without products. Make sure to enter a shipping quantity for the product and Save the Sales Order.

 

The Shipping tab

On the Sales Order's Shipping tab, you can review and edit all the information related to the shipping of the product(s). It inherits all the details that you defined in the Estimate, such as the address, type of shipment, and the items being shipped.

If necessary, you can change any of the selected options in the shipment line. If you do not know which Carrier to select, you can simply select the Ship Method (or the other way around) and the system fills in the other field. This is possible due to the mapping that you did to set up the shipping.

Similar to what you can do from the Product tab, you can also create a new shipment from this tab to send the product to a different place:

Select a shipment line and click the Duplicate button. The system creates a new line using the same information from the selected line.

Click on the fields to change the Type of Shipment, Carrier, Ship Method, etc. if necessary.

As this process duplicates the line, the product quantity is also duplicated. To change it, you can:

Select the line and edit the Requested Qty in the Item Line tab below.

Note: The Item Line tab on the lower section of the Shipping page displays the items that are being delivered related to the Shipment line selected above.

Go to the Product tab and change the value in the new shipment column.

 

There are three addresses on the Shipping tab that change depending on the shipment that is selected at the moment. The Ship From Address displays the Company's address by default and the Ship To Address and Billing Address are the same as defined in the Estimate/Job. It is possible to change the last two by one of the addresses that you have created in the Sales Order using the Address button.

 

The Invoice Lines tab

The Invoice Lines tab displays all the invoices that your Estimate generated, according to the configuration from the Price Detail Style used. You can check the information sent from the Estimate on its Proposal tab (navigate to Sales > iQuote > Estimate > select a record > Proposal > Price Detail).

Note: The invoice does not include the blank lines from the Estimate.

It is possible to include or exclude the price details as you may need or as your customer requires in the Invoice Line, allowing you to send information such as the printing costs, finishing, substrate, etc.

Note: If you want to send to the customer only a simple description of the price charged, you can use the information from the Product tab.

Note: Although we removed the Date Sent to MIS field from the Invoice Lines tab, the system still saves this data.

 

During The Integration

Once you have reviewed all the information related to the Sales Order and Shipping, you can start to send the data to the MIS program that your iQuote system is integrated with.

The record able to send the Sales Order data to Monarch is the Job, which is the responsible for the planning. So, to tell iQuote that you are ready to send a Job to Monarch, you just need to change its status:

Navigate to Planning > Planner > Job > select the record.

Click on the Job's status and change it to Ready for Planning (or something else similar, according to your setup).

When Monarch receives the Job and creates a record for it, it changes the MIS Sync Status to "Successful" and sends back a MIS Job ID.

With the Job integrated with Monarch, you can start to integrate the Sales Order:

Navigate to Sales > Commercial > iQuote Sales Order. The Sales Order list appears.

Select the Sales Order related to the Job and click to Edit it.

Go to the Shipping tab and click on Change Shipping Status. The Change Shipping Status window opens.

Select the check box corresponding to the line(s) that you want to send to Monarch. You can select one or more lines; the ones that you do not send now, you can send later.

Select the Confirmed status on the Change Status To field and click Confirm.

Change the Sales Order status to Confirmed (or something else similar, according to your setup).

Once you change the Sales Order status to Confirmed, the system gets all the shipment lines with the Confirmed status and sends them to Monarch. If you leave any lines in their On Hold status, the system will immediately send them when you change the line status to Confirmed. You do not need to change the Sales Order status more than once.

The next step is to send over the invoice lines, but before being able to do that, you must associate the lines with a parent job or a sub job:

Go to the Invoice Lines tab and click on the related field to select a MIS Parent Job or a iQuote Sub Job for the line.

Note: By selecting a Sub Job, you can split the invoice lines per Sub Job.

NOte: By selecting a Parent Job, you choose to which Job each invoice line is integrated with. This also allows you to use invoice integration on Sales Orders with every MIS Job Creation Type.

Click on Confirm Invoice Line. The Confirm Invoice Line window opens.

Select the check box corresponding to the line(s) that you want to send to Monarch. You can select one or more lines; the ones that you do not send now, you can send later.

Click on Confirm. The MIS Status column displays if the line was already sent to Monarch or not.

 

After The Integration

To check in Monarch the data sent from iQuote, follow the steps below:

In Monarch, navigate to Job management > Jobs.

In the Job field, enter the MIS Job ID that you can get from the Job record page in iQuote.

Press tab on your keyboard. The Job information will load on the page.

To check the Sales Order data, from the Job page, navigate to Pages > General Data > Ship to Data. 

Select the Include Sub Jobs check box. The Sales Order information is loaded on the table.

To check the Shipping and Invoice data, from the Job page, navigate to Pages > General Data > Invoice Data > Pre-Invoice.

Select the Include Sub Jobs check box and click the iQuote Entries button. The "Monarch iQuote Entries" window opens with the shipping and invoice information.

To build the invoice, click the Build Pre-Invoice button on the Pre-Invoice page. The "Automatically Build Pre-Invoice" window opens.

On the "Automatically Build Pre-Invoice" window, define how to group the iQuote entries on the QuickQuote/iQuote Entries field and click on Ok.

When the data loads, the table displays the invoice information.