Adding Notes to the Timeline, Products and Customers

System notes in Merchanter help track important details across three key areas: activity timelines, products, and customer records. These notes serve as alerts or reminders for specific requirements, ensuring smooth operations.

Adding Comments to Activity Timeline entries

Locate the relevant entry on your dashboard timeline, such as an allocated order. Hover over the item and select Add Comment to create a simple text note, like "Customer must have this delivery before 3:00 PM." Comments can be edited or expanded into standalone notes with categories, attachments, or reminders. For more detailed notes, use Create Standalone Note to add files (e.g., Delivery Documents) or set alerts with pop-up reminders for specific users at specific times.

Adding Notes to Customers, Products, Orders, etc.

When in a record such as a customer, supplier, product or order there will be a ‘Note’ button.  This can be used to enter in a typed note.  The note has a number of fields and features:

• Subject - summary title of the note
• Category - this is the topic the note relates to.  This will be set to the default, except where the place the note is created from may set the category, such as Credit Control from the Credit Control tab in a customer record.
• New (category) - allows new note categories to be added
• Alert - make this an alerted note (see product and customer alert sections below)
• Details - the body text of the note
• Cancel - cancel without saving
• Add Attachment - upload a document, file, etc. to this note
• Add Reminder - set a reminder for yourself or a colleague at a specific date and time
• Save - Save & Close

Setting Up Product Alerts

For products requiring special attention, like age-restricted items, navigate to the required product record and select the Notes tab. Create a new note with a subject (e.g., "Age Check") and assign it to a category, sales in this example. Enable Line alerts and add some details (e.g. Check ID—not for sale to under 18s) then configure your alert type to display a warning for the sales order and/or the Purchase order, choose your display type (pop-up in this example) customise the alert type (Information or warning) then copy your subject to the title and the details to your message and save . If needed, you can add attachments or a reminder to these notes.

Setting up Customer Alerts

Customer notes can be used to alert users to specific requirements, such as delivery restrictions . to add a note, open the customer record, go to the Notes tab, and click the Create a new alert button. give it a subject and Details  (e.g., “Length Restrictions” and “No timber over 3.6m”). When the customer is added to an order, the note appears as a pop-up at the beginning of the order process, ensuring your operator is fully informed before proceeding.

Reporting and Exporting Timeline entries and Notes

You can access the Timeline Overview in the reporting section to review all system entries. There is a comprehensive suite of filters to narrow results, and if required, you can export data to Excel for further analysis.

This feature streamlines communication and ensures critical details are never overlooked.