Orders Export

The action hands your orders out to the ERP system, so that invoice, delivery note and dispatch can be made from them there. For most connections it is the actual reason for the connector: the shop takes the order, the ERP system processes it.

Its transfer plan is the connector's largest, and there is a reason for that. An order is not a record with fields but a document consisting of a header, two addresses, items of various kinds and a totals calculation, and each of those parts goes out separately.

What gets transferred

Not every order is handed out. Three conditions decide, and all three sit in the channel.

Condition	Where it sits
The order is released	On the record itself, see orders
It is not older than the configured number of days	The Age of Orders to Export field in the Configuration section
It is not completed	The Exclude Closed Orders from Export field, where it is set

The release is the most important of them. An order not released never goes out, however young it is, and that is deliberate: what goes into the ERP system becomes an invoice there, and an invoice for an unfinished order is more expensive than a late one.

The other two keep the answer small. An ERP system asks for new orders regularly, and without a limit it would get the entire history every time. The orders go out in chronological order, oldest first, and the ERP system can additionally say from which order number on it wants them.

How the transfer plan is built

The plan sits in the channel, in the Transfer Plans section under Orders and there in the Export tab. It has fourteen sections, and the tab bar above them is longer than the screen is wide: the arrows at its ends scroll it along.

Scrolled section bar of the orders export with the Shipping Costs section selected, below it the choice between Total and Single Product Positions and the six assignments of a total line

The fourteen sections read as five groups, and that is also the order they sit in.

Group	Sections	What sits in them
Header	Common, Info	Numbers, time, status, currency and buyer, plus the order's free texts
Addresses	Billing Address, Delivery Address	The same fields twice, separately for both addresses
Processing	Payment, Shipping	Payment method and shipping method, each once as plain text and once as a mapped abbreviation
Items	Products, Discounts, Vouchers, Surcharges, Shipping Costs	One section per kind of item
Totals	Subtotal, Total Tax, Total Amount	The same six assignments, once per total line

The structure mirrors the document. Whoever looks for a particular assignment finds it through the part of the order it belongs to, not through an alphabetical list.

On most rows there is nothing to set. Three places decide how the order looks in the ERP system.

Total line or individual item

Four of the five item sections carry a choice above their assignments: Total or Single Product Positions. It decides whether a discount, a voucher, a surcharge or the shipping costs appear in the ERP system as a line of their own in the totals block, or as a further item among the articles.

The default is not the same everywhere: Discounts, Surcharges and Shipping Costs sit on Total, Vouchers on Single Product Positions. The choice is not a matter of taste but hangs off how your ERP system builds its documents, and it changes the assignments below: for Total, the six fields of a total line sit there, for the other choice the fields of an article item.

The six assignments of a total line are Title, Value, Class, Sort Order, Prefix and Tax. Title is the label appearing on the document, out of the box the word belonging to that line. Class is the fixed mark by which the ERP system recognizes the kind of line, Sort Order its position in the totals block. The Value goes out without a sign, and Prefix carries it alongside, a + or a -. And Tax holds the tax rate in per cent, not the tax amount.

The Products section does not have this choice. An article is always an item.

Payment method and shipping method

Both sections carry two rows for the same thing, one for the plain text and one for the abbreviation. The plain text is the name as it stands in TRADElube. The abbreviation comes from the Payment Methods and Shipping Methods tabs in the channel's Mappings section.

Which of the two your ERP system evaluates is stated by its connecting program. Both are filled out of the box, and as long as the mapping table is empty, the abbreviation row stays without a value.

What gets written into the header

Four rows of the Common section take a fixed value or a script instead of a source: Customer Group, Partner Id, Price Group and Project Name. They are the place for everything your ERP system sorts its orders by while TRADElube does not keep it. Project Name is filled with TRADElube out of the box, so that the orders from this connection can be told apart from others there. The other three are unticked.

The two rows Header Info 1 and Header Info 2 in the Info section play the same role. They sit on the document and take any text you compose.

Special features and limits

The totals are formed per tax rate. An order with seven and nineteen per cent produces two Total Tax lines and two Subtotal lines, not one each. The ERP system needs it that way, because it has to show the tax per rate.

The bank details do not go along. The rows for bank name, IBAN, BIC, account holder and the SEPA mandate sit in the Payment section but cannot be filled: TRADElube keeps no payment details of the customer. Equally unfillable are Exchange Ratio in the header and Fax Number on both addresses.

An order once handed out does not go out again as long as it does not change. Where the age limit drops it out of the selection, it is out for good, even if it was never collected. So set Age of Orders to Export more generously than your ERP system's collection cadence makes necessary.