What is the Ordering Tab?
The ordering tab is our direct integration of business processes related to media buying, for the sake of full system transparency. It is achieved by API integration with Salesforce and Netsuite, the technologies Symphony Talent uses to track new orders, and invoice our clients appropriately for said orders.
Why is this Ordering Tab built in?
This feature provides our clients and full-service Symphony teams with shared and universal transparency. We don't want you to have to track down emails or to call someone to ask a basic question like how much you were billed last month for media - these things are simple and fast to look up, directly from Media Cloud. Even more critically, the Ordering tab provides us with what we informally call our "gas tank limit." This limit keeps you from inadvertently budgeting and spending more media dollars than you actually have available. If the total of your current orders (and all prior unspent roll-over) totals to $20K, this means you can't budget to spend $22K, the system safety kicks in --- and if you do actually intend to spend more, it's then the simple matter of adding that $2K order to the ordering tab, which then increases your budget spending limit accordingly in your Master Budgets.
How are Orders Different From Budgets?
The sum of your orders creates a maximum limit of what you can budget to spend. This is a safety for the system, so you don't accidentally spend more money you have on these open media marketplaces. We sometimes refer to the sum of Orders like it's a "gas tank limit" so in that analogy, placing your orders is like buying your gas, and budgeting is your daily spending activity that's then like driving your car and using up your gas.