The Connect Homepage

Homepage

In this guide, you will learn how to navigate Connect homepage and best use the distributor credit information, reporting capabilities and alerts on the home page of Connect Plus, Platinum and Prospect Hunter subscribers.

Application Toolbar

The Application Toolbar, located in the upper right area, is a stationary toolbar available throughout Connect.

This toolbar has a greeting and several options available. After the greeting, you will see:

• My Applications: Easily access your ASI applications such as ESP Updates, ESP Web for Suppliers or ESP Websites Admin.
• My Account: Your account settings and logout .
• Tools: Submit feedback to ASI.
• Help: Send suggestions to ASI, access Product Support or read the license agreement.

Distributor Look Up The Distributor Look Up box enables you to search for any distributor by ASI number or company name. Connect’s type-ahead feature searches for matches after a single letter or number is entered.

To display branches of the same distributor, check the Branches box.

When prospecting for future business, you may use Connect’s Advanced Search feature to search for companies who meet the sales, size, pay habit, customer type, location, interest in ESP product lines, etc. criteria of their choosing.

Main Navigation Toolbar This toolbar is also available on every page of Connect. By clicking each button, you can access and modify the information in that section. The availability of sections may vary based on your Connect subscription.

These sections are:

• Monitor List: Distributors are automatically added to the Monitor List when you report on the company. The primary contact can remove distributors from this list or change the information monitored.
• Prospect List: Each licensed user has his or her own Prospect List. Users may add a distributor to their list through the search box on the Prospect List page.
• My Reports: My Reports enables users to upload and view their reports.
• Settings: The Settings tab gives you access to your Monitor and Prospect List settings.

Reporting Overview Beneath the main navigation bar, the month and year of your last transaction report appears. If a report is past due, a convenient reminder appears to the right of the date in orange.

Reporting is your chance to rate your experiences with distributors.

By clicking the green Upload a New Report button (or the My Reports tab), you can easily submit your transaction reports to ASI via API, FTP or our Upload Wizard. You may also report a single transaction by clicking the blue link.

Beneath the report upload options, the average percent of the supplier’s distributor customers past 90+ days for the preceding 12 reported months appears in a graph.

Hovering over any month/dot in the green line shows that month’s percentage. The red line indicates the industry average, which is displayed by default. This comparison can be turned off by unchecking the box in the lower, left corner.

Next, the Average Credit Score From Your Last Report shows the average score of all distributors a supplier reported on in the previous month on a color-coded scale, indicating the credit risk level from high to low.

My Credit Summary assesses the reported distributors’ credit ratings within the past twelve months. The highest and lowest rated distributors appear with clickable red ASI number links which generate each company’s Quick View credit summary. In the event of a tie, both distributors display as the highest or lowest. In the lower part of the My Credit Summary section, you will see the percent of reported distributors in each risk group.

The Monitor Alert (Top 50) shows the fifty most recent alerts for all distributors a supplier has previously reported on and kept in their Monitor List. Only the supplier primary contact can remove a distributor from the list.

You can change your Monitor List settings – including which distributors to display (only those with alerts or all), the time frame to monitor (from 7 to 180 days) and whether they receive the Monitor List email – by clicking the blue Manage My Alerts link in the upper, right corner or by clicking the Settings tab in the main navigation bar. The alert email address can also be changed for each user. This will not change the email address associated with the supplier account.

To view all distributors in the Monitor List, you can click the See all Alerts in this List link. By default, distributors are listed according to the severity of their alerts.

The Daily Credit Alert displays all distributors in the industry with alerts that day in five different categories. You can click on the arrow to expand or collapse the section. The categories are:

• Sent to Collections/Write-Offs
• Collection Payments
• Non-Sufficient Funds (bounced checks)
• Bankruptcy
• Monthly Past Dues

The Expanded View opens every alert section on one easy-to-navigate page. The See Past Daily Alerts link, also accessible on the Expanded View page, gives access to the last 90 days of reported Daily Credit Alerts.

To easily keep track of the distributors whose credit reports a supplier has viewed, you can refer to the most recent listed in the Recently Viewed Distributors box. To see the last 100 distributors in the list, you need only click the See all Recently Viewed link.