Method:Classic General Q&A

Re: Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

lsdrury — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 16:19:18 GMT

Naeem & Tech Team,

Thanks for all the time and hard work you all put into our post. I've walked myself through the process several times now and believe I'll be able to perfom the customization properly. Especially thanks to Naeem's exccellent step by step instructions. With the solution Naeem posted I'm positive we'll now have the Sales reporting functionallity we need. I'll post again once I've completed the customization and tested my results.

Have a great weekend guys,

Scott

Re: Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

Anonymous — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 19:54:00 GMT

Hi everyone.

I've drafted an explanation here to customize a basic "sales teams" workflow that will exist in Method, for your convenience.

The first step is to create a field in our tables for "sales teams". We need to store these teams somewhere, so we're going to create a table to store them. In order to do this, click on "Customize" > "Tables/Fields". Enter a name for your sales team table, say "SalesTeams". Make sure automatically create "new Screen" is selected, and pick a tab where you want to add this screen (important: remember which tab you place this screen in). Basically, this will add a screen that will allow you to add or remove sales teams from your database. Click "Add Table" and a pop-up wind will allow you to add a field. Add a text field with the name "Team Name". Your screen (after you click add field) should look like this (also, make sure you check off "Unique" and "Required"):

Now we need to add an option on our sales reps so that you can select a team. Click on "edit" beside the "SalesRep" field. For "Field Name", enter a name like "Sales Team" then select "Dropdown" in the Field Type. Click add field, and then select "Choose from an existing Table" and press Next. In the new dialogue, select the table (in my case it's named "SalesTeams"), and then press next. In the 3rd step, select the field you created in the last section (likely called "Team Name").

Now that we have the tables set up, we need to add capabilities to our existing "sales rep" screens so that you can view sales teams as well as add them. Go to the "Screens" section in "Customize". Edit (make sure you copy it if it's a stock screen) the QuickBooks_SalesRepList screen. There are two edits you want to do. First, in the "Sales Rep Info", drag over the "Sales Team" object from the "Add FIields" section and drop it under "Type". It should look like this:

Finally, click on "Edit" beside the "SalesRep" grid in the last section of the screen (named "Existing Sales Reps"). In Step 2, where it says "Insert a new column", select the field "Sales Team" (or whatever you called it earlier) and hit "insert Column". This will add the sales team as a column on the grid so you can see every sales rep's sales team. Now you're good to go. Go into the sales team screen (which you created earlier, and I told you was important!). In this screen, you can add some sales teams -- and they'll have to be unique. It should look similar to the following:

Now, go into your "Sales Reps" screen and you'll see that every sales rep has a "Sales Team" beside it. When you create a new sales rep, you will have the option of adding a sales team to it. Now and in the future, any time you want, you can filter by a particular sales team and see all the reps you have associated with that team.

Hope that helps!

Naeem

Re: Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

lsdrury — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 15:40:28 GMT

Fran,

Thanks for your repsonse. Our Vendors are Manufacturer Rep Firms who sell our products nationwide. There are more than one sale rep in each firm, currently we have 4 firms. We've entered each Rep Rirm as a Vendor in QB's. Once that done QB's only allows that one name or set of initials to be a ssles rep for that vendor. I CAN NOT add another sales reps initials and assign those initials to our Rep Firm Sales Partner's vendor name in QB's.

This is why I've called into Tech Support on a couple occasions to speak directly with the techs because I've had to reexplain this over and over again. I had hoped to make our case more understandable with my last post. I even took screen grabs but unfortunately this forum doesn't allow me to paste the grab into this post. In the Method Community Help Center Solution #364 titled Sales Reps Overview paragragh explains our case perfectly. I pasted that paragraph below, it may not appear from my paste.

"The definition of a sales rep goes beyond an employee at your company. Quite often, companies partner with other individuals and businesses for a variety of reasons, from outsourcing to reselling. That means you have a vested interest in tracking sales closed by everyone associated with your business, whether or not they are your employees personally. That's where Method's sales rep function comes in. This function allows you to assign the designation of sales rep to employees and vendors, and in turn assign those reps to leads, customers, and opportunities, and associate them with estimates and invoices, sales orders and sales receipts. This is a great way of tracking who is generating income and in what numbers, which helps build out your trail of breadcrumbs in terms of income sources and interactions with customers and business opportunities at every stage of the pipeline."

Okay Fran, we've done this, it works fine for one person. How do we add additional sales reps to the same Named Vendor?

Thanks

Scott

Re: Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

fran — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 10:59:48 GMT

Scott,

A Sales Rep has to exist as a Vendor or Employee or Other Name before you can assign it to being a Sales Rep.

Re: Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

lsdrury — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 17:00:48 GMT

Adam, Ben & Naeem,

Thanks to all of you who are working to help us resolve this issue. I understand there will be a post soon to resolve our probelm so I wanted to restate our concern to be sure we're all on the same page.

We employ Manufacturers Rep Firms for market our products. Each of our firms have several salespeople we need to track. I've had great success with Mthod's online tutorials and help so I turned there for answers. In the Help Center under Sales Reps I was sure I found the answer.

This is exactly what we need to do. So I followed the directions given in the balance of this post. However this doesn't work. When you have the Rep Firm name entered in QB's as a vendor or customer Method will only allow one set of initials to that one named vendor. I should be able to choose that named vendor and enter a different sales reps initials. But when I do this I get an error from Method stating the name is already used as a sales rep in QB choose another name.

Since my first post I've been working to find a fix, which I may have found. I went to the Customize tab, then tables/fields, then Sales Reps field. Where the fields are described there are 2 fields EnityType and SalesRepName, both these fields have boxes checked for required and unique name. These boxes are now ghosted because we have entries in the table, but if the table were clear and we unchecked one or both of these boxes it should resolve our issue. I think.

I have explained this to both Ben and Naeem on the phone, but I realize we want to share our work with the rest of the Method community so that's why I reposted. I look forwrad to your next post.

Thanks

Scott Drury

Re: Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

Method_Adam — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 21:42:09 GMT

Hi Scott,

I'm a little confused as to what you mean by selecting the sales rep for a contact? The sales rep field is selectable and can save when editing a customer. While viewable for a contact, in the Contacts table it is a linked field from the Entity table. You cannot edit a linked field, it is only viewable. Can you tell me which screen you are savind the sales rep in?

This will also go for the Opportunity screens. The oOpportunity table has a linked field to the Contacts table, which is linked to the Entity table. Again, you shouldn't be able to save a sales rep in this screen. It should merely load the saved sales rep for the Entity the contact is associated with.

First thing I would do go to the QuickBooks tab group > Lists tab > Sales Rep and confirm the sales reps are there. I'd also check your conflicts to make sure there are none relating to sales reps or Entities.

Let me know what you find.

- Adam

Adding New Sales Reps to Dropdown in Contacts

lsdrury — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 17:13:18 GMT

The Help Center shows to add new sales reps to the dropdown simply click on add new and add them. This is what I did, I clicked on add new and added the initials of each of our different reps. The additional reps that I added were saved and can be selected from any contacts record. The probelm is when I select any one of the manually added names/initials and then click on either Save or Save Back, Method is not saving the selected Sales Reps from the list.

I found this out after creating a new screen view for our opportunities list screen view. I duplicated the screen, as taught in your help and webinar, added the Contact Sales Rep field, published and saved. Once the new screen view for the opportunities list came up only Sales Reps who are from the Vendor list in QB populate that field. None of the manually added Sales Reps initials we entered get saved so they don't populate the report either.

Does every Sales Rep in the drop down have to be on the Vendor's Sales Rep list in QB to show up?

Thanks

Scott Drury