Home Delivery Service for Retailers: How to Manage it With Candela
Home delivery service for retailers is becoming increasingly important. While the home delivery trend has been gradually catching up, it has now become all the more necessary. As you all know, Covid-19 is altering the way we work, social distancing is a must if we want to get past these challenging times. Keeping in view the current situation, LumenSoft introduced many changes at our workplace. We understand, retailers also need to make adjustments to how they conduct their businesses.
If you are using Candela retail software, you already know that with Candela you can perform a wide range of retail activities. From sending SMS to customers and creating a data-base of walk-in customers to managing sales return, Candela retail software has features to make retail simple.
In this article, we will show you how the various features in Candela can help retailers easily manage home delivery service for their customers.
Let’s get started.
Spread the Word Around About Your Home Delivery Service
Once you decide that you will provide home delivery service, you need to inform your customers and spread the word around. Candela provides you the facility of sending bulk SMS to all your existing customers.
Go to Utilities>Send SMS
You can select customers on the criteria screen or use the loader file to load your customer mobile number database.
Write down the message and send SMS.
When Customers Contact for Home Delivery Services
Your customers may contact you by directly calling you and placing orders for the items they require or they can whatsapp you a list or even pictures of certain products.
You can handle both these situations in candela.
When Customers Call you for Placing Orders
When your customers call you and list down the items they want to purchase, you can load the items while listening to the order, and create an invoice. If it’s a new customer you can add the name to your customer database by using the quick customer definition screen, and later use it for your marketing campaigns.
When Customers Attach an Image of a Product or list of Products
If any customer whatsapps you the list of products or an image of a certain needed product, you can easily save it and later attach it to the customer’s invoice in your database for a ready reference. Later if there are any disputes regarding the items delivered, you can always show the image
To save the attachment and attach it to the invoice, follow the steps listed below:
Save the attachment in a folder on your computer
Note: You can install whatsapp on your desktop. This will make it easier to save attachments from whatsapp to your desktop
Now go to configuration>shop definition>Misc tab
In Receipt Prescription Path click the Browse button and select the folder path where you want to save the attachments.
Go the Security>Group Rights
From Form Menu, select Shop Activities
Expand Sales and Return and mark the checkbox “Browse attachment’
Update.
Now when you make an invoice against the attachment, click the Attach button at the bottom of the sales and return screen to attach the image. This will save the image in the attachments folder with the invoice number.
Note Down Customer’s Address
Obviously, home deliveries require customers addresses. You can easily note down the address in the Comments field of the Sales and Return screen while preparing the invoice. These comments will be printed on the sales receipt, and your delivery person can check the address from the receipt.
Remember, to be able to print comments on the sales receipt, the ‘Print Sales Receipt Comments’ checkbox on System Configuration>Sales tab should be checked.
Send Confirmation SMS to the customer
After making the invoice, send the confirmation message to the customer. You can configure candela to send automatic SMS to the customer to inform about the delivery status and bill amount of the home delivery order.
And the next step is to hand over the items and the invoice to your delivery person or rider to deliver it to customer’s address
Managing Sales Returns in Home Deliveries
Sometimes, the items are returned because they don’t match the original customer’s specifications or maybe because your delivery person can’t find the address, or for any other reason.
To manage return of items, click the Search Receipt button on the sales and return screen.
A screen will load showing all the saved receipts.
In the grid, select the receipt you want to return and click the Return button. The receipt will load on the sales and return screen with the minus sign.
Click save
Managing Home Delivery Expense
You may or may not charge delivery charges from your customers. Or you may decide to charge delivery expenses if the invoice is below a certain limit. In either case, you can keep track of delivery expenses in Candela.
If you want to add delivery expenses to the total invoice amount, there is a very easy method to do so.
On the product definition screen, define Delivery Expense as a new product, and select user price to keep the price flexible.
On the sales and return screen, when you prepare the invoice, from the product help screen select the product ‘ delivery expense.’
A pop up screen will appear where you can add the delivery charges.
Save the invoice.
Conclusion
Providing home delivery service to your customers is the need of the hour. It is also the way to facilitate your customers and convert them into loyal buyers. Be it your grocery store, bakery or other items, you can easily manage your home deliveries in candela.
Do let us know in the comments section below how you are using Candela for managing home deliveries. If you have any question, or need training regarding any screen, do let us know and our support team will help you.