This exercise tests your understanding of the information needed to trace a sale through a multistep ERP sales cycle: sales order, inventory sourcing, delivery, billing, and payment. Assume that an order has been placed with your company and entered into your ERP system. The following events then take place:
a. The system automatically checks the customer’s credit and finds it to be acceptable.
b. The order is recorded for the delivery date requested.
c. The system schedules the production of the goods. (There is not enough inventory to ship from stock.)
d. The system schedules raw material orders from the vendors to produce the goods ordered.
e. The raw materials are received and stored.
f. The goods are produced and reserved for shipment to the customer.
g. The system schedules the delivery, and an invoice is printed and included with the shipment. The goods are then put on the delivery truck
h. Shipping notifies Accounting of the shipment’s details.
i. A month later, the customer sends in payment, which is recorded in accounting.
For each of these events, list the information that must be recorded in the common database. You do not need to know how to use a database to do this, nor do you need to understand bookkeeping. For example, for the credit-check step, think about what information is needed to perform a credit check on a given customer. At each step, did the wealth of the company increase or decrease? At each step, how did the company’s obligations to outside entities change? At each step, how did the obligations of outside entities to the company change?