Water water every where - but not a drop to drink

Exploris has a LOT of sales reports -- take for example the REPORTS>Inventory?PN Code Report

Or the REPORTS>Financial>Line Sales

Ever wonder why one can be WRONG and it is still wrong --even thought the flaw was reported  on call more than a year ago .... and I am wondering about the accuracy of the other .... having access to a special report on sales that gives me yet a 3 set of numbers .... OMG ....  just for one accurate report ... please ....

want to know more-- call the help desk and ask them on the ticket #104 6699 called in in Jan 2010 - and ask them why errors take so long to get fixed in EXPLORIS

============  update ===========
I was inferring that ONE was correct and the other was wrong .... update .... both are wrong ... but for different reasons .... what total bullshit ....

Does your Gross Profit Pricing Utiity work?

We have not had a need to use the
  Gross Profit Pricing Utility after we did the gargantuan task of converting BACK TO WHAT WE HAD in J-Co ---to go to pricing by Model ...

so when we tried it and it was BROKE --and called the help desk -- ( call # 2027643 to prove this - call and reference this number ) ... and they tell us that our AE ( sales rep ) must come by and re-install the program ... hmm ... smell a dead fish here somewhere

OK -- have a call in ....

Dumping you data to Excel ... part #3

Had written this in 2010 .... click here ....

Here is part # 2  .... click here .....

Since then we have a couple of things to add ...here is part#3

-we try to limit the total number of sku's being pulled to preview at less than 150,000 ...yep - Exploris can have a LOT of items ... for our stores we pull store #1 all CQ lines then sure#1 X lines .... and so on thru the stores ... go do other things file you await the preview to come up ... takes a while - 3-4 minutes is a guess.  If you try TOO many -- something pukes in your  computer or EXPLORIS - not quite sure.
-we have a fast way to get all the text to numbers ( I think newer versions of Excel might have a better way ? ) by type a number1 in a cell and paste special "multiply only' to the columns needing the change
-BEFORE we do the above paste special--we sort out the  line totals --- we get all data into ONE main sheet ( our limit on excel is 1 million rows  - we have approx 350,000 rows for 3 stores ) and sort for BLANK PN Codes ...  these are parts that someone has manually entered ... these are the most problematic ... and we mark them with the word BLANK and send copies to store managers for review.
-remember if you are multi-store - add a column and mark your stores ( for us it is as simple as a 1 ..2   or 3 and we colour to flag easier .... see image
-we have not found a report much better than Inventory Info ...  not great by any means - but better than nothing -- line - part - desc - pn code - qty on hand - order point -  cost ( but no core cost ) - date added - date last sold - qty sold 12 mths - qty sold 24 mths ... have lots of other fields we can use -- but --we wait

SO --once you have all the data
-send replaced by data (oh - forgot to mention - an unmarked column you get the  superseding part #  --so sort for this data and for what stock you have on hand...  ( the image uses is this report - well - part of it )
-parts with blank PN codes

Then --as you work on a line .. you can grab just that data  ... for example in hard parts we look at our stock depth and see impact if we expanded stock depth ( yep - we do all our move ups ).  Or on things like RETAIL: lines - handy to see what one store sells that a 2nd store doesn't --and why/why not for expanding stock depth here

We change the column order --from the original data ...  have fun and work your data ....

Images - the more we learn - the less we really knew

see this blog on our sister site ...

http://cqchange.blogspot.com/2011/11/rotor-specs-what-do-you-know.html

Any more help- drop us a line

UPC Update

If anyone can tell me the reason that CARQUEST only sends the UPC data with 11 of the 12 digits -- can you PLEASEZZE leave a comment or send us an e-mail ...

Go figure ....

They drop the last digit ... so when we scan a part that we have from BOTH CARQUEST and a 2nd warehouse .... BUT we buy from CQ ...the 12 digit data trumps the 11 digit and the other source data shows up ..

We have a lot to learn about UPC data ....

UPC codes - what we don't know

http://cqchange.blogspot.com/2011/11/options-for-problem-parts.html

The above link takes you to our staff blog .... and the start of the discussion on UPC codes .... we have had to ask for a complete refresh on UPC codes for all CARQUEST data

There are times that if STAFF KNOW how to manually enter a UPC code --they can sell a part faster ...eg some retail lines like Castrol

Click here for more UPC info

Updating X line data - gee ... who thought of this ?

In J-Con when you updated a line -- you got a list of the parts that DID NOT UPDATE .... so when we went to Exploris in Jan 2010 we were surprised to see that this was missing ....

Why care ...well-- if you are updating a line and say 10 parts do NOT update --what do you do with them ... are they obsolete or superseded or ??

Couple this with the fact that EXPLORIS still can't quite figure out how to delete parts ..and we have the making of a mess in 5 years from now.

One solution -- CHANGE descriptions ( and ask DFIU to update descriptions on all price changes ) -then you can run a report and sort by description in excel - and figure out what you have to do ...

We have started to make a PN Code ( sub line ) of 999 where we are moving crap --and waiting while Exploris comes to grips with how to delete parts ....  you have to do this 999 with EVERY LINE you have crap in..that is quite a few when you start looking at excel dumps.

DFIU -the Import utility written ... badly ?

I was talking with some jobbers a while back and they had yet to try importing data for X Lines into Exploris - they said they were waiting for DFIU ( Data File Import Utility ) .... well ... if they thought DFIU would make learning excel any easier -- they sure were wrong.

I like to think I am pretty good in excel .. but DFIU taxes your ability.

Here is a summary - this has been areal pain to get a grip on.
1) make a template - the one CQ  gave us is poorly ordered ... we start with part # ( ignoring the line code in excel -as you have to define that in DFIU ...and go in the same order as the field questions
2) format all prices with TWO DECIMAL PLACES as standard in your template - be aware that DFIU ignores decimal point and takes the two right hand digits as pennies .... for $30 becomes 30 cents ... selling at a loss ( are we ? )
3) one might have thought they would have formatted DFIU for excel -- but you are better off ( who knows why - but the smart guys on the help desk that I trust - say so ) using CSV ( you have two different types of CSV if you dig deep enough ... the DOS CSV will error right away - like on huge run-on sentence - so use Windows CSV)
4) open in MS Word - change preferences to show invisible characters ( like carriage returns ) and look for BLANK LINES ...they will look like this ....  in MS Word you can save and it will save like the format it opened up - in this case CSV

Another Great Tip ( thanks Dick from Lansing ) is if you have multi store -- you can use the mass import from store #1 to other stores ... however as of yesterday this way seems to be broken ...so you have to REPEAT the process to add for additional stores ... until tier two figures out the problem (call #1975227)

Give DFIU a grade --- hmm ... at this point .... C-

***********  update ********  the Multi-Location Mass Update ... is indeed broken -- gone from Tier 2 to WHI programmers ....  I have asked if the Creator/Editor is also broken .... awaiting that reply *****