Bevica Functionality Spotlight: Unpaid Reserves (UPRs)

A smooth-running supply chain is crucial to the effective running of a successful drinks business. One element of this is ensuring that stock flows effortlessly in from their supplier and on to their customers with the minimum delay and disruption. One technique drinks businesses use to ensure that customers receive the stock they want when they want, is to allow them to reserve certain stock items prior to actually buying them. To help customers manage this process, Bevica has a built-in unpaid reserves feature which we are spotlighting here in our latest Bevica Functionality feature.

What are Unpaid Reserves (UPRs)?

Unpaid Reserves (UPRs) is the term used to describe specific stock that is set aside by a business for a particular customer or group of customers. Unlike a paid reserve, where the customer pays for the stock and owns it, this stock is still owned by the business. Hence why managing it efficiently is so important to avoid missing future sales opportunities.

There are a number of different scenarios where a customer would benefit from making an unpaid reserve on a stock item:

• Restaurants and bars often list specific vintages on their wine lists. Using UPRs, users are able to allocate stock to ensure the adequate supply of a particular cuvée or vintage to their customer.
• A customer may want to place a large order in the near future, but they aren’t ready to take delivery of the stock yet. Therefore, an unpaid reserve will guarantee that the stock is available when they are ready for it.

How are Unpaid Reserves set up in Bevica?

The Unpaid Reserves feature is set up in Bevica via the Unpaid Reserves fasttab:

1. Navigate to the Bevica Setup.
2. Click on the Update Reserves fasttab.
3. You will need to populate a number of fields:

• Unpaid Reserves Nos – Here you will need to create a No. series for Unpaid Reserves records.
• Default Unpaid Reserves Customer No. – For this, you will need to create a non-trading customer record and assign it here. All UPRs will be assigned against this customer.
• Default Review Date – Here will you will need to set a default date calculation such as 3M. When a new UPR is created, the Review Date will be set as the date the UPR is created plus the date calculation, e.g. plus 3M.
• Create Unpaid Reserve Group per customer – If you have a one-to-one relationship between your Customer & UPR Group, you should set this to Yes. Once a new customer is created, Bevica will automatically create a new Unpaid Reserve Group ready to have items assigned.

How are Unpaid Reserves created in Bevica?

In Bevica, these are managed via Unpaid Reserves Groups. Therefore, the first step to creating Unpaid Reserves is to create Unpaid Reserves Groups. These groups can be based on a number of different customer characteristics – sales channel, sales person, buying group, customer – and, as a result, a customer can be linked to one or more UPR groups.

To create UPR Groups:

1. Search for Unpaid Reserves Groups in Bevica Setup.
2. To add Customers to UPR Groups from the Unpaid Reserves Groups page action bar:
   • Select Customers.
   • Add the required customers to the Unpaid Reserve Group Customers list.
3. To add Items to UPR Groups:
   • Select Item Unpaid Reserves.
   • Populate the Item No. field to create a new line record.
   • Then select Edit on the page ribbon to open Unpaid Reserve Information page.
   • Here you need to populate Quantity to Reserve and amend Unit of Measure Code to Reserve if necessary.
   • Click Close.

How are Unpaid Reserves managed in Bevica?

Once this is set up, you can manage your Unpaid Reserves in a number of different ways:

1. The Unpaid Reserves card
2. Customer Page in the Unpaid Reserves section
3. Item Page in the Unpaid Reserves section.

From here, users can access simple, easily filterable reports, which can help ensure that stock assigned to a customer isn’t forgotten about. You can set review dates for all UPR entries to flag when the reservation needs to be reviewed. This is very important if a customer is changing wine lists and you want to make sure you’re not holding stock back for them that they no longer require.

One thing to remember when managing your UPRs is that the quantity on an Unpaid Reserves line can only be decreased. If you need to increase the quantity of the UPR, a new Reserve line must be created.

How do you create a sales order that includes UPRs?

Once a sale that includes UPRs is made, adding the UPRs to a sales order is fairly simple.

1. Navigate to Sales Orders and create a sales order as normal.
2. From the page ribbon select Prepare, Get Unpaid Reserves and this will open the Unpaid Reserves Selection page which will show the UPR lines available to the order’s Sell-to Customer No. on this order.
3. Populate the Selected Quantity and amend Select Unit of Measure Code if necessary.
4. Click Close. This will then copy the UPRs to new sales lines.

How we can help you

If you are already a Bevica customer and want to find out more about how to benefit from the Unpaid Reserves feature, contact our dedicated Customer Support team at bcsupport@tvisiontech.co.uk.

If you want to know more about Bevica and how it could help your business, please feel free to contact us to arrange a demo to see how it could be the perfect ERP to help you overcome your business challenges.