Credit Release is the process of checking the credit worthiness of customers prior to allowing goods to be despatched.
Within the QX systems there are two points of automation for this process; the exit from order entry and the credit release program. Each of these options will check the customer's credit worthiness and release goods to the warehouse for despatch where the criteria are met. However when the criteria for release are not met, there is a simple but informative process for interrogating these customers for the option to manually release the goods or leave them on hold pending receipt of payment.
Criteria for Automated Credit Release
For automated credit release to be successful certain criteria need to be met
1. Stock must be available and allocated to the order lines.
2. The request date for the goods by the customer must be within the defaulted time period, set within the Parameters.
3. The customer is not overdue on payment of existing invoices. Each customer has a term code set within the Customer Maintenance. The term code states the number of days credit available on their account as well as any potential leeway on payment your organisation wishes to set against that time scale. See Term Codes.
4. They are within their credit limit taking into account all outstanding invoices and the value of goods already awaiting despatch. Each customer has a credit limit set against them within the Customer Maintenance, which reflects the maximum value of outstanding invoices allowed before the customer is placed "On Stop".
5. The customer is not "on stop". This is generally covered by point one and two, however there may be times that even though invoices are within date and the credit limit has not been exceeded, the customer is "On Stop". For example they are going into receivership or have other legal or financial restraints upon them.
Exiting From Sales Order Entry
To view the whole process of Order Entry please select.
On Exiting a sales order if there is stock allocated to an order line the question is asked:
If there is no allocation or goods to release the message will be
If the answer to the credit check and generate question is YES then the system will check the Credit worthiness of the customer and advise a despatch note number where the criteria have been met. If the customer fails to meet these criteria the statement "failed to release" will be displayed.
Running Credit Release
Accessed from both the Sales and Sales Ledger Menus
Generally this process is reviewed periodically throughout the day. This is to ensure that any orders added during the day are kept under review and released promptly for despatch.
As the main criteria for credit release has to be the availability and allocation of stock, the initial process is the option to run Allocation of Customer Demand This searches for all orders within the set time period that do not have stock allocated but stock is available. It then creates the allocation links. This is normally due to goods being received during the day and placed into stock and demand already exists through existing orders. The options to run are as follows:
You can choose to allocate goods for orders with request dates up to "N" days forward. This should mimic your credit release criteria below, OR for a specific date. The specific date is often used when wishing to get a head start on picking and packing for future orders, commonly for example the 1st of each month.
Once this process of allocating the stock is complete the Credit Release function can then be run.
The options to run the credit release process are as follows:
DIVISION - Credit Release can be run for a single division or all
ORDER CUSTOMER - It can be run for a single customer within the division.
MINIMUM VALUE - Set by a parameter, if this figure is set the process will ignore all despatch values below this figure.
DAYS FORWARD FOR RELEASE - the number days forward for schedule request date. I.e. if today's date is the 10th April, with the above settings, the systems will look for all order schedules with request dates out until the 15th of April.
On acceptance of these options the system will search all relevant data and advise the number of orders eligible for automated release. These will now appear within the warehouse despatch listing.
From this point the process is available only to users permitted to manually release customer orders. A list all customers with orders required but failing one or more of the system release criteria is shown.
1 - Lists all customers with goods held due to credit restrictions. The value of goods is shown. The 
on the left of the grid indicates those customers agreed for release. While the on the right under the PN heading indicates the customer terms are proforma and therefore care should be taken to ensure payment has been received prior to the goods being released.
2 - Details the credit terms and limits for the highlighted customer. The red box indicates the "On Stop" code if valid. .
3 - LEDGER BALANCE TAB - The balance of payment required and credit available. If the credit available is negative it will be red.
OVERDUE DEBT - shows the time breakdown of the outstanding balance.
PROFORMA NOTES - added by sales during order entry.
INTERNAL NOTES - held on the Sales Ledger.
4 - The red box holds notes entered when the customer is Flagged. See FLAG below.
Function button options are
RELEASE - Marks the customer with a indicating the agreement to release this customer's orders for despatch.
UNRELEASE - Removes the release mark.
FLAG - Changes the colour of the highlighted customer to red and allows the addition of notes as shown in 4.
TOGGLE - Changes between the customers without Flag notes and all customers.
VIEW DETAIL - Shows the breakdown of the outstanding value to order level. See below.
VIEW LEDGER - gives access to the full ledger details for this customer. See Sales Ledger UAM Open Orders TAB.
DIARY - Access the ledger diary for the highlighted customer for review and addition. Most recent entries are shown on screen.
View Detail Option
PROF NOTES - View any notes as indicated under the From Prof heading in the top grid.
VIEW ORDER - Gives a view of the highlighted order
VIEW LINES - Enter the Order Schedule bottom grid.
RELEASE - This marks the individual order for release, allowing release of a single order while retaining hold of the others.
UNRELEASE - Removes the release flag.
On exit from the credit release screen any customers or orders marked for release will be available on the warehouse screen for picking and packing.