Role guide: sales manager

This guide is for the manager a sales team reports into. Your xMatix day is oversight: check the orders your team booked, move confirmed orders on to fulfilment and invoicing, keep trade schemes and claims under control, and read the numbers that tell you whether the month is on track. You work mostly in the web app. Your reps book the orders, often on mobile, and the warehouse picks and ships what you release.

Overview

A sales manager's week in xMatix follows one loop:

Two things shape all of it:

• You see the whole team's documents, but not everyone's pipeline. The shipped Sales Manager profile has View All and Modify All on orders, invoices, payments, accounts, schemes, visit plans and claims. Leads, opportunities and quotes are private records, and the profile has no View All on them, so you see only your own and those of people whose roles sit below yours. See Permissions.
• Nothing waits for your approval unless your organization sets it up. No approval process ships for orders, invoices or schemes. A scheme's Submit for Approval button is a plain save. The approval queue fills only once an administrator builds a process; see Approval processes.

Where you work

As shipped, a user holding only the Sales Manager profile sees these menu entries. An entry whose page the profile doesn't grant is hidden:

The profile also opens the Procurement, Inventory, Finance, Commerce, Tax Center, Expenses, Payroll and Fixed Assets apps. That is broader than the role needs; see Configuration.

The order list opens on the All Orders view. The summary cards above the register count the last 30 days. Use them to decide where to look, then narrow the register with search, column filters or another saved view, such as Pending Orders, High-Value Order or Closed Orders. Bulk actions apply to the rows you tick in the current view, so narrow the view before you select.

Your path

Read these in order. Each one is the full procedure; this guide doesn't repeat them.

1. xMatix Sales: the product overview and how orders, pricing, schemes and credit fit together.
2. The sales order lifecycle: every stage of an order, its pending counters and what its status means.
3. Create a sales order: how your reps build an order, so you can check one.
4. Allocating stock to orders: why an order allocates or is refused.
5. Picking and fulfilment: what the warehouse does after you release an order.
6. Invoices: posting, cancelling and crediting what was sold.
7. Credit limits: what counts as exposure and when an order is refused.
8. Trade schemes: slabs, conditions, benefits and why a scheme did or did not apply.
9. Trade claims: how scheme spend becomes claims, batches and settlements.
10. Visit plans and Routes: your team's coverage.
11. Running an incentive cycle and Tracking incentives: your team's targets and payouts.
12. Dashboards: building and sharing your morning read.
13. Troubleshooting sales: the refusals that confuse people most.

Prerequisites

Before your first day, your administrator must have:

• Given you a profile that opens the Sales, Field Sales, Rewards and Claims apps and grants the order, invoice, scheme and claim actions you are trusted with. The shipped Sales Manager profile does this; see Permissions.
• Placed your team's roles below yours in the role hierarchy, if you need to see their leads, opportunities and quotes. The shipped sample roles don't do this for you; see Configuration.
• Set up the customers, items, price lists and tax groups your team sells with.
• Licensed your organization for the products you use: Sales for orders and invoices, Rewards for schemes and incentives, Claims for claims. An app of an unlicensed product is hidden even when your profile grants it.

Procedure

This is a normal week. Each step links to the page with the full detail.

Step 1 — Start from the numbers

Open Sales → Home for the sales workspace, then Dashboards for the dashboards shared with you. A dashboard someone else built appears only once it is shared with you, your role or your team; see Who can see a report or dashboard. To get the numbers by email, set up a subscription.

Step 2 — Review the order register

Open Sales → Orders. Switch to Pending Orders or filter Status to Draft to see what is waiting, and sort by Total Amount to see the largest orders first. Open an order to check its lines, prices, scheme benefits and pending quantities. Use Reprice if prices changed after the order was taken, and Apply Scheme or Reset Scheme to re-run the scheme benefits. See The sales order lifecycle.

Step 3 — Release orders to the warehouse or to invoice

On a confirmed order, choose how it moves on:

• Fulfilment sends every pending line to the warehouse for allocation and picking. Fulfilment and Auto Allocate also reserves stock straight away. Selective Fulfilment and Selective Fulfilment and Auto Allocate take only the lines and quantities you choose.
• Invoice invoices the lines that are already allocated, and Selective Invoice chooses among them. Invoice ( OTC ) and Selective Invoice OTC invoice over the counter, without a fulfilment step.
• Cancel Order closes an order that won't be delivered.

What each button does, and when it is refused, is on Picking and fulfilment and Allocating stock to orders.

Step 4 — Post invoices and record payments

Open Sales → Invoices. Check each draft invoice, then select Post Inventory if the invoice is your stock document, and Post General Ledger. Record money received with Payment, and correct a posted invoice with Create Credit Note. The shipped Sales Manager profile has no Cancel grant on invoices; ask someone whose profile has it, or add it (see Permissions). See Invoices.

Step 5 — Build and approve schemes

Open Rewards → Schemes, create the scheme, and add its conditions, slabs and benefits. A scheme applies to documents only at Status Approved. Move it along the status bar one step at a time, Draft → Pending Approval → Approved. Submit for Approval only saves the scheme; it does not change its status. See Trade schemes.

Step 6 — Generate and settle claims

In Claims, open a claim generation setup and select Generate Claims to raise the period's claims. On each claim, review the lines, then use Approve All or Reject All. Collect claims into a claim batch and select Settle batch. See Trade claims.

Step 7 — Check coverage

Open Field Sales → Visit Plans to see current and upcoming plans and their progress, and Visits for what was done. Use Route Planner to shape visit plans and routes on the map, and Optimise Route on a visit plan to re-sequence its stops. See Visit plans.

Step 8 — Follow incentives

In Rewards, maintain the incentive plans, targets and KPI configurations for your team, and follow attainment on Tracking incentives. The Process Compensation step that calculates payouts is granted only to System Admin as shipped, so ask your administrator to run it at period end; see Running an incentive cycle.

Example

A regional sales manager at a farm-equipment parts distributor runs the first week of December.

1. On Monday they open Sales → Orders, switch to Pending Orders and sort by Total Amount. Three large orders from one dealer are still Draft. One has an old price, so they select Reprice, check the totals and confirm the order.
2. They select Fulfilment and Auto Allocate on the three orders. Two allocate fully. The third is short on hydraulic hoses, so the shortfall stays pending on the order.
3. On Wednesday the warehouse has picked the first two. The manager opens each and selects Invoice. The draft invoices appear on the orders' Related tab. In Sales → Invoices they post both with Post General Ledger.
4. On Thursday they create a December scheme, "Buy 10 filters, get 1 free", add its condition, slab and benefit, and move it to Approved on the status bar. The next order with 10 filters picks up the free unit.
5. On Friday they open the November claim generation setup, select Generate Claims, approve the claims with Approve All, add them to a claim batch and select Settle batch.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox, signed in with a profile that has the Sales Manager grants:

1. Create an order for a test customer with one line: 10 units of a stock item that has at least 10 in stock.
2. Confirm the order, then select Fulfilment and Auto Allocate.
3. With the stock allocated, select Invoice.
4. Open the invoice and select Post General Ledger.
5. Try to select Cancel on the posted invoice.

Expected result: after step 2 a fulfilment record appears on the order's Related tab with the stock reserved. Step 3 creates a draft invoice linked to the order, with one line per allocation line. After step 4 the invoice's Status is Posted. In step 5 the Cancel button doesn't appear, because the shipped Sales Manager profile has no grant for it.

Quick reference

• Orders, invoices, payments, schemes and claims: you see the whole team's records.
• Leads, opportunities and quotes: you see your own and those of people in roles below yours.
• Fulfilment sends lines to the warehouse; Invoice bills lines that are already allocated.
• Invoice ( OTC ) skips fulfilment entirely.
• A scheme works only at Approved. Submit for Approval is just a save.
• Approve All and Reject All decide a whole claim at once.
• Process Compensation and invoice Cancel are not in the shipped profile.
• The shipped profile isn't assigned to the mobile app.

Permissions

A sales manager needs four kinds of access:

1. The apps and their pages. Each app needs an app grant. Home in each app, Bulk Conversion, Settings, Visit Plans and Route Planner are pages, and each needs its own page grant.
2. The records. Read, create, edit and delete follow the profile's entity permissions. View All and Modify All decide whether you see and change the whole team's records or only your own.
3. The actions. Every release, invoice, posting, scheme, claim and route button is an action granted on the profile's Actions tab. A user with record access but without the action doesn't see the button.
4. The products. Your organization's licence must include each product you use.

What the shipped profiles give a sales manager:

As shipped, only System Admin sees Bulk Conversion and the Settings pages of Sales, Field Sales, Rewards and Claims, and only System Admin can run Process Compensation. The Order Processing page is granted to Sales Manager but ships without a menu entry; see Bulk order processing.

A user without a menu entry doesn't see it. A user without an action doesn't see its button, and running it another way is refused with The current user is not allowed to execute server action …. If a screen or button is missing, start with A user can't see something.

Configuration

This section is for the administrator setting up a sales manager.

Set up a sales manager

1. Clone Sales Manager on Setup → Access Control → Profiles. See Build a profile for a role.
2. On App Permissions, remove the apps the manager doesn't use; the shipped profile also opens Procurement, Inventory, Finance, Commerce, Payroll and others. Add the Bulk Conversion page if the manager converts orders in batches.
3. On the Actions tab, add Cancel on Invoice if the manager may cancel invoices, and Process Compensation on Incentive Period if they close the incentive cycle. Remove posting actions if finance posts.
4. If the manager approves on the move, open Setup → Design Studio → Apps → Mobile Apps, open the mobile app, and assign the profile on its Profiles tab. See Mobile app configuration.
5. Invite the user with the profile, and remove Standard User from them, because access is additive.

Let the manager see the team's pipeline

Leads, opportunities and quotes ship as Private with Grant access using hierarchy on. A manager reaches a rep's records only when the rep's role sits below the manager's in the role tree. In the shipped sample roles, Sales Manager sits under Regional Sales Director, but Sales Executive sits under Manager and HO Business User, not under Sales Manager. Give each rep a role below their manager's under Setup → Access Control → Roles, or add View All on those entities to the manager's profile. See Roles, teams and business units and Record security.

Settings that shape the manager's day

Common problems

I can't see my reps' leads, opportunities or quotes

These records are private, and the shipped Sales Manager profile has no View All on them. You see a rep's records only when their role sits below yours in the role hierarchy, which the shipped sample roles don't arrange. Ask your administrator to fix the roles; see Let the manager see the team's pipeline.

Bulk Conversion or Settings is missing from the Sales menu

Your profile doesn't grant those pages. As shipped, only System Admin has them. Ask your administrator for the page grant.

There's no Cancel button on a posted invoice

The shipped Sales Manager profile has no Cancel grant on invoices; the Sales Executive and Standard User profiles have it. Ask for the grant, or use Create Credit Note. Cancellation is also refused once the invoice is older than the cancel window. See Invoices.

My approval queue is empty

No approval process ships for orders, invoices or schemes, so nothing waits for you until an administrator builds one. See Approval processes.

A scheme I created isn't applying to orders

A scheme applies only at Status Approved, and Submit for Approval doesn't move it there. Click Pending Approval, then Approved, on the scheme's status bar. See Trade schemes.

I can't sign in to the mobile app

The shipped Sales Manager profile isn't assigned to the mobile app. Ask your administrator to assign it, or a copy of it. See Mobile app configuration.

Common questions

An order is stuck. Where do I look?

Start with the order's status and the pending counters on its lines, against the order lifecycle. Most stuck orders are waiting on one of three things. The customer may be over their credit limit, which refuses the order when it is first saved. An allocation may have found no stock at the order's branch; see Allocating stock to orders. Or the warehouse hasn't picked the released lines yet. Troubleshooting sales lists each refusal message and what it means.

Why did a scheme not apply to my rep's order?

The order didn't qualify when it was priced. The scheme may not be Approved, its period or conditions may not match the order, or no slab threshold was reached. A scheme approved after the order was taken doesn't change the order until the order is saved again, or someone runs Reset Scheme and re-applies. Trade schemes explains qualification, slabs and benefits.

Who can see the dashboards I build?

Only the people you share them with. A new dashboard is visible only to you. Share it with users, roles or teams, and make sure every report behind it is shared the same way, or viewers see gaps. Who can see a report or dashboard explains the model, and subscriptions can email the numbers out on a schedule.

How are my team's incentives calculated?

Each incentive plan sets targets and slabs for its members. As orders and invoices land, xMatix records performance against the targets. At period end, Process Compensation calculates each person's payout from the plan's rules. As shipped, only System Admin can run it. Running an incentive cycle walks through the cycle, and Incentive plans explains the rules.

Related topics

• Territory planning: shaping the beats your reps work.
• Pricing, discounts and taxes: how an order's price is built.
• Bulk order processing: invoicing many orders in one pass.
• Quotes: approving and declining quotes in CRM.
• Claim generation setups: for the manager who also configures claims.
• Role guide: field sales representative: your team's side of the day.
• Role-based guides: every role and the shipped security profiles.