HelpCenter

Bag Consolidation is a separate feature from normal VMS consolidation, and must be enabled by a Parlevel team member. If you would like to utilize Bag Consolidation, please ask your Customer Success representative or a Hero Support member. 

Bag Consolidation is intended for larger vending operations in which money counter entry must be quick and efficient. This article covers how to enter bag consolidations in two ways: manually one by one, or in bulk using the file import tool. 

Instructions for normal Consolidation can be found in this article.

Manual Consolidation

You can access Bag Consolidation by going to Routes > Consolidation > Bag Consolidation in the VMS. Upon loading, the page will look as follows: 

You must open the Parlevel Serial Monitor extension to begin, and also have the Parlevel Autofill extension added to Chrome.

Bags will begin loading into the Consolidation page as you scan and enter bag information into the Serial Monitor. Each bag will generate its own row on the page.

In order to match the Bag numbers entered, the system will look for unconsolidated serviced machines and match them up. Once the bag number is verified as a match, then the Refunds, Change Added, and O/S fields will populate.

Enter all information for bags. For any rows that continue to display No Match Found, you can go to Routes > Consolidation > Unresolved Consolidations. 
Please note that a route will not update as Consolidated until every machine on the route has been matched with a bag.

Here you can find any serviced machine's consolidation information that did not match up with a bag number entered in the previous section. At the top of the page, you can enter a date range if needed, or see the total number of machines, bags, and collected amounts for all information displayed. 

You can click the Select Bag dropdown on the right to find the correct bag. This can be confirmed either by bag number (in cases where perhaps a typo was entered), the collected dollar amount, or the date of both consolidations. 

In the same dropdown, you will have the option to Consolidate as $0. This option can be used when unresolved consolidations are unable to be matched and they must be cleared from the list. This allows for missing or unaccounted-for bags.

Don't forget to hit Save Consolidation after you are done matching bags on this page. 

Bulk Consolidation by File Import

An import tool has been added to the Bag Consolidation feature, allowing you to create or use a properly-formatted file to import bags automatically into the VMS and have their associated machine services consolidated for you. 

On the Bag Consolidation page, you can click Options > Import from file to access the import modal, pictured below. 

You may download a template for the file using the blue button, into which you can enter the bags and their relevant information directly, or use the template as a reference for the columns and  their column headers. 

Please note that the column headers cannot be changed or modified in order for the import process to read the file correctly. 

The file allows for four columns to be entered:

• service_date: This is the date of service, entered as YYYY-MM-DD or MM-DD-YYYY.
• bag_number: This is the custom number for each money bag.
• bills_amount: This is the value of bills recorded as collected and counted in the bag.
• coins_amount: This is the value of coins recorded as collected and counted in the bag.

Once you have prepared the finalized file for import, you may return to the pop-up above and select Choose File to choose the import file from your computer. Click the green button Import to have the file processed. The bags will be created and the associated machine services will be consolidated. Any bags in the import that were unable to be matched with a service will go to the Unmatched Bags tab of the Bag Consolidation page.