Overview


Presto's basic batch settings can be used to set various limits, including:

  • Total number of shops in the batch
  • Number of times each location may be shopped
  • Number of shops each shopper may do
  • Number of times a shopper may shop the same location


It's also possible to add quotas to the shops within a batch.  This is useful in oversampling situations, where you want fewer shops than the total number of locations (for example, you have 10,000 locations and you only want 100 shops).  By using quotas, you can create some additional controls on the locations that are shopped.  For example:


  • A program for a quick-serve restaurant corporation that has multiple brands.  They want 1000 shops completed, but they want to distribute them among their brands (250 shops each for brands A, B, C and D)
  • A program where you want to distribute the shops by region (25% each in the Northeast, Midwest, South and West regions)


When quotas are added to a batch, other batch limits are still enforced and take precedence.  For example, if a batch has a limit of 1 shop per location and you put a quota of 200 shops on a group that has fewer than 200 locations, the locations in that group are still only allowed a single shop each.


Setup


To set up location group quotas for a batch, follow these steps:

  1. Create location groups to use for quotas (and add locations to the groups)
  2. Create a location group type and add it to the quota location groups
  3. Set the quotas for the batch


To show how this works, let's use the following scenario.  A convenience store corporation, Lucky Mart, has many locations.   They wants 65 shops done at their locations across the US, but they want to control how many shops are done in each region as follows:

  • Northeast: 15 shops
  • Midwest: 12 shops
  • South: 18 shops
  • West: 20 shops


Create location groups to use for quotas (and assign location group types)


The location groups that you use for quotas are mostly like other location groups, but they have some special rules:

  • Each location that you want to shop must be a member of the batch group and the quota group
  • All quota groups must have the same location group type
  • The batch group cannot be used for quotas
  • A location may ONLY belong to ONE location group that is of the same location group type


  1. Go to Setup -> Locations and click on Organize Locations.  
  2. Click Create Group to create a new location group for quotas:

  3. Repeat this step until you have created all groups.  
  4. Click the Location Group Types tab and click Add Group Type, then enter a name for the location group type. Use something descriptive so that you will know what this group type is used for.  In this case, we are grouping locations by region.  Each quota group represents one region of locations, and so we will call the group type Region.

    Note: you only need to create the group type once.  If you are setting up new batches that will use the same quota groups, you do not need to create a new type or create the type again, and if you are adding a new quota group (for example, another region), you will just add the same type to the new group (see step 5 below)

     
  5. Once the group type has been created, click Add/Remove Group Types on groups. This lets you add the group type to the groups that you created in step 2. You will see the group type that you created in the previous step.

  6. Paste in the names of the quota groups and click Next. In this example, we have four groups (East, Midwest, South and West).


  7. On the next screen, click Save to assign the group type to the groups:


Once you have finished creating the quota groups and adding a group type to them, add locations to the groups.  You can do this on the Organize Locations tab, by using the checkboxes to select locations and then Add Selected to... to add them to a group.  Don't forget, you need to add each location to one (and ONLY one) quota group, and to the batch group.


You can save time when adding many locations to a group by using the "Add Many Locations" option  For more information., see this article. 



Setting quotas on the batch


Once you have the quota groups set up (and locations and types assigned to them), it's time to add the quotas to the batch.  In this scenario, we want to add the following quotas to our batch: 


  • Northeast: 15 shops
  • Midwest: 12 shops
  • South: 18 shops
  • West: 20 shops


  1. In the batch settings, click Batch Location Group Quotas:

  2. The next page has two tabs.  On the first tab (default), you can click Add New Quota to add one quota at a time. This is the quickest way if you have only a few quotas:

  3. To add a single quota, select the location group from the dropdown (
    1. Select the location group from the dropdown
    2. Enter the quota for that group in this batch
    3. Click Save


  4. If you want to add many quotas at once, first create a spreadsheet with two columns (location group names and quotas).  Then click Add Many Batch Location Group Quotas and paste the contents of your spreadsheet into the window.  Click Next.



  5. On the next page, use the dropdowns to select the column for Location Group and Quota, then click Next:


  6. Click Save to save the location group quotas:



Viewing quotas and batch progress


Once you have successfully set up batch location group quotas, you can view them on the batch stats page.