Summary #

eCat enables sales reps to record, edit, and share dealer showroom display inventories, and to submit inventories to the eCat server. Organizations can download a file with the most recent version of each dealer showroom inventory as a tool for analyzing market penetration and product sales.

This document describes how to set up this feature and download the resulting dealer showroom display inventory data.

Specifying Showroom Locations #

To enable users to use eCat for taking dealer showroom inventories, add a new column named ShowroomLocationCode to your eCat Customer File . Populate the column with a text value of your choosing for each ship-to location in the customer file that is a valid showroom location. If a value is present reps will be able to take inventories for that location. The value does not have to be unique.

Placements and Sales Data #

As of eCat 2023.5, eCat will use placements information to supply the display quantity for sales data reporting.

Each placements entry will add 1 to the display quantity for the given bill-to. So if a particular product shows up in the placement submission for more than one showroom, the display quantity will be more than one.

For more information on sales data, see Publishing Summary Sales Data.

Downloading Inventories Taken by Reps #

Your company can download the latest inventory information across all audited showroom locations as a CSV file at any time. The CSV file will contain the most recently submitted inventory for each showroom location, along with showroom location details, date of last audit, sales person name, and other information.

Downloading the CSV

Use the following URL to download the CSV: https://supercat.supercatsolutions.com/<org>/placement_reports/export_csv

Be sure to replace <org> with the short name for your organization.

The download requires a valid admin username and password.

CSV Format

The CSV contains the following columns:

• SubmissionID—unique ID corresponding to the report as a whole. Each time a rep submits an inventory it will receive a new ID.
• Username—the username of the user who took and submitted the placement report
• RepFirstName- first name of the user who took and submitted the placement report
• RepLastName - last name of the user who took and submitted the placement report
• BillToCode
• ShipToCode
• ShowroomLocationCode—The same ShowroomLocationCode value provided in the customer file.
• ShowroomLocationAddress1
• ShowroomLocationAddress2
• ShowroomLocationAddress3
• ShowroomLocationCity
• ShowroomLocationState
• ShowroomLocationZip
• ReportTimestamp—UTC, formatted yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss
• BaseItemCode
• OnDisplay - always true for now, since it's in a placeholder
• StockQuantity- always 0 for now, since it's a placeholder

Handling missing Ship To Codes #

We allow the customer file to be imported without the Ship To Code specified. In this case we generate a unique ship-to code we can use internally. This value is a "hash", generated from the shipping address information, looking like "f3602591390ca636e07584a10c6d9e4268829df1". As a result, the code will change whenever the shipping address changes, even if it's just a spelling correction or uppercase/lowercase change.

Because of the above it is challenging to populate the placements export with correct ship-to address information when you have multiple ship-tos per bill-to. For this reason we recommend you always specify the ShipToCode in customers.csv, even if it's just "1" or a repeat of the bill-to code.

If ShipToCode is not specified, we do our best to populate the correct ship-to information:

• If a bill-to only has one ship-to, we populate the address information from that ship-to
• If there's more than one, we match the auto-generated code with the code in the placements submission and use whatever matches
• If nothing matches, we leave the shipping address information blank.

Again, we recommend you always specify ShipToCode if you are using placements.