Helpful Hints > Demos and Loaners

ASI Service Center helps you to track the demonstration units that you send to customers for evaluation, and the units you lend to customers while theirs are being repaired. These are called Demos and Loaners and a complete subsystem is dedicated to them. Demo units and Loaner units are treated exactly the same throughout, so this discussion will simply refer to Demo/Loaners to mean either type.

There are two methods for creating a Demo/Loaner record. You can enter it directly in Sales Order line entry, where you can enter an inventory item on a line, then use the new drop-box to flag that item as a demo or loaner (see Demo Loaner Lines). Alternatively, you can create a sales order directly from Service Item Entry that will set the flag to Loaner.

To create a sales order directly from Service Item Entry that will set the flag to Loaner, on the Service Item tab of the Service Order Entry, when you are entering the service item to be repaired, click the "Loaner" button just above the primary grid, to the right. It is an L button. When you click that button, a dialog pops up to let you specify the Item Number and the Serial Number you want to ship and the warehouse to ship from. You will be able to enter a Serial Number only if the Lot/Serial Distribution is enabled in Sales Order options, and the item you are going to send is a Lot/Serial item. The Warehouse defaults to the warehouse specified as Default Warehouse for Demo/Loaner on the Service Order Options Main Tab. You can change the item number, serial number or the warehouse here, and you can enter a charge if desired.

Once you click the Proceed button, a sales order is created with the text from Service Order Options Message Text Tab. The line containing the item you specified is automatically created on the sales order with the Demo/Loaner field set to Loaner, usually in the Secondary Grid.

The Sales Order you have created with the Demo/Loaner line is now processed just as if it were any other Sales Order. Once it is invoiced, though, the Demo/Loaner item is not relieved from inventory, but is flagged as a Demo or Loaner and will now show up on the Open Demo/Loaner Report. The item is automatically transferred from the source warehouse to the Demo/Loaner Target Warehouse specified in Service Order Options Main Tab.

The item will stay on the report until you return it with a credit memo. This is the only way to clear a Demo/Loaner record. Therefore, if the customer decides to keep the item, you must first return it to stock, then sell it as a standard item on a different sales order, or a debit memo to the same sales order. If you have the Auto-Transfer feature, returning the item will also transfer it back to the warehouse specified in Service Order Options. A quick way to create the credit memo to return a demo/loaner item is to click the Return button in Demo Loaner Maintenance (see Demo/Loaner Record Maintenance).