Tradesimple: Managing Concepts – Fourth & HotSchedules Customer Success Portal

Overview

Purchase-to-Pay Concepts are designed to allow the restriction of products from suppliers’ catalogues without the need to create individual catalogues or market lists for each restricted group of users.

Concepts can be used for a menu offering that multiple units share. The specific products are added to the Concept and it is then assigned to all units that require it. A Concept for an organisation/brand-wide Christmas menu would be a good example.

Concepts "mask" the superset of products, so that one large catalogue per supplier can be used. This helps to reduce catalogue complexity whilst maintaining control over buying behaviour.

Concepts are created and maintained from the Head Office 'Parent' business when logged in to Purchase-to-Pay, not at unit level.

Structuring Concepts

Concepts are entirely flexible and as such can be moulded to fit any purchasing model whether an organisation has a small number of specific brands or is highly individualised unit-to-unit.

It is worth spending time understanding brands and units within an organisation and particularly any exceptions to the rules before implementing Concepts. Good Concept management will result in there being a logical structure to them.

Typically, there can be two types of Concept:

Global Concepts - contain products that are ordered by every unit, regardless of the unit's style or branding (cleaning products, for example)
Menu Concepts - contain all products that make up a specific menu, used by groups of units or individual ones

When creating a Concept, the question must be asked - Does this product fit in a Global Concept or should it be on every menu Concept?

Having a product in a Global Concept allows the product specification to be controlled in only one place.
However, having it in every Menu Concept may make them (Concepts) easier to create and maintain as they would contain every product required to produce every dish on a menu

There is no “right” answer to the question. The way this is implemented should be what feels right for the organisation.

Creating a Concept

Having decided on the structure of the Concepts, they then need to be created.

Log in to Purchase-to-Pay as the 'Parent' Head Office business (not as a unit) and go to Concepts > Maintain Concepts under the Concepts menu on the left-side

Fig.1 - Selecting Maintain Concepts

Select Create a new concept
Enter a Code for the Concept - this could be a menu code if creating a Menu Concept or some other code which is unique and meaningful
The Name of the Concept should make it easy to understand what it is without having to view its contents (if possible)
Tick the Is Active? box if the Concept is to be used immediately - this can be ticked later on if required
Select Save concept

Fig.2 - Creating a new Concept

Adding Products to a Concept

A Concept cannot function without two repeating attributes: products and units.

Products

Go to Community > Maintain Suppliers on the left-side menu

Fig.3 - Selecting Maintain Suppliers

A list of all current suppliers will display.

From the 'Actions' column on the right, select Catalogues against the supplier whose products are to be added to the Concept

A list of the supplier's catalogues will display.

Use the Concepts button against the desired catalogue (see Fig.4)

Fig.4 - The Concepts button against a supplier's catalogue

Products are listed by Product Code, Description, and Pack Size. There are tick boxes alongside each product, one for each Concept that is available in the system. At the bottom of the screen is a search panel.

Fig.5 - List of products in the Maintain Product Concepts screen

This screen can be worked with in a number of ways:

To add a single product to a Concept, tick the box at the intersection of the required product and the required Concept, and select Save all changes

Fig.6 - Adding a single product to a Concept

To add all the products on a screen to a Concept, tick the box at the bottom of the list under the desired Concept (all the boxes above it will be automatically ticked) and then select Save all changes

Fig.7 - Adding all products on screen to a single Concept

To add a product to every Concept, tick the box at the end of the row beside the desired product (all the boxes beside it will be automatically ticked), and then select Save all changes

Fig.8 - Adding a product to all Concepts on screen

Use the search tool at the bottom of the screen to find products and add them to the Concept(s) as per the previous methods

Fig.9 - The search tool

Combinations of the above methods can be used to add products by exception. It could be that all products bar one are to be added to a Concept. In this instance, the 'end' box would be used to select all, and then the unwanted product simply un-ticked.

Adding Units to a Concept

Once a Concept is created, the next step is to give units access to it.

Go to Concepts > Maintain Units on the left-side menu

Fig.10 - Selecting Maintain Units

The screen displayed here is very similar to the one seen when adding products to a Concept, and the same rules apply.

Fig.11 - Adding multiple Concepts to units

The search tool at the bottom of the screen can be used to find Concepts and/or units if needed
Save all changes once complete

Activating Concepts

There is one further task required to activate Concepts successfully. This is so as to provide the flexibility and control required in a large and complex organisation.

Applying Concepts to Suppliers

Go to Membership > Maintain Suppliers
Select Edit against the supplier in question
Tick the box for Apply Concepts to this Supplier
Save

The Maintain Suppliers screen will display again.

Select Relationships against the supplier
If any units are not to use Concepts, remove the tick from Apply Concepts to this Supplier against them
Units can be searched for if needed
Select Save all changes once all units are correctly set up

Fig.12 - Removing access to Concepts at a unit-by-unit level

In this way, control can be gained incrementally over a large estate piece-by-piece by enabling concepts for a supplier then for all the units to which a new concept is applicable, leaving the rest able to access their catalogues unimpeded.

Housekeeping Concepts

Products can be added or removed from existing Concepts, following the same steps from Adding Products to a Concept
To delete a Concept, go to Maintain Concepts and use the 'trash can' icon next to the desired Concept. Please note: this option “soft” deletes Concepts such that an attempt to create a future Concept with the same code will result in an error message

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