Automation for Actinic (OSA) automatically downloads and processes orders for you. This does the repetitive tasks that you have to do for each order. It is used by a lot of people who want little (or any) interaction with the software side of running their shops. If fact, many people set Automation for Actinic up so that at various (scheduled) times during the day they simply walk to a certain printer and collect the packing lists and invoices and start packing the items sold.
Order Processing for Actinic (OSOP) presents you with a list of orders that you select for processing. OSOP can also enter payments into Actinic for multiple orders and send emails out to customers in batches, it also has very sophisticated search facilities. You can perform all the functions (e.g. send emails) from 1 to 10,000 orders at a time. This is used by a number of people for a variety of uses. Some of these are described below:
. Creating labels for the orders with CityLink, Business Post or Interlink.
They select all the day's orders click on the Export button and the labels are sent to the relevant parcel courier system (and in some cases the Courier labels are automatically printed out).
. Sending out order confirmation emails.
This can send out tracking information for the courier or your own status (using the built-in order tracking).
. Telephone enquiry system.
When a customer phones their detailss can be found very quickly. This is done using the free text search (typing in text and pressing F3) and defining a view of the Actinic data that matches how your business works. You can also add custom order fields to include additional information specific to your business. For example, the product batch numbers, person who is handling the goods, or various internal shipping statuses.
. Drop Shipping
Once the various orders have been identified the specific drop shippers email template is selected and all the selected orders' packing list sent to the supplier. This does rely upon all the goods within the order being from the same supplier. If not you can export the packing lists as RTF and pre-edit them before sending (to amend the details).
. Customer Account creation
Once your customer account policy has been set-up you can select orders and create an Actinic import file containing all the relevant details for those customers. This used in conjunction with the other features can notify the customers about their new details.
. Provide order tracking on your website and in emails.
Order Processing for Actinic can create an order tracking page (specific to each order) and put this on your website. The customer can then be sent a link to this page or can enter their Actinic order number into an order tracking box on your website.
A lot customers use both products Automation for Actinic to download and perform preliminary processing and Order Processing for Actinic to complete order processing and to answer customer queries, track progress etc..