Sales is the normal front end of a manufacturing company's ERP system. As well as confirming sales to a customer, the sales order lines will drive inventory allocation and trigger the planning for any required purchasing or manufacturing.
Create a sales order
The minimum information for a sales order is a customer and a product together with a quantity, required date and price.
To create a new sales order, go to the Sales menu and click Create New Sales Order
Click the selector button [...] next to the customer field and this will open a selector for a customer. Optionally filter by some value such as the customer partial name and select the correct customer by clicking the arrow in the select column.
Similary select a product by clicking the selector in the line under Item Id. Filter and select a product. (Note that if there are customer codes entered for this customer the popup will default to the Customer code tab, change the tab to All if necessary). It is also possible to type in the item id directly without using the popup selector.
Back on the sales order then enter the quantity and price (if this is not entered automatically via the price list data). There is a default for the number of days forward to confirm, but change the promise date if necessary.
Either click the green tick to save the record or press Enter on the keyboard to do the same.
Add more lines as necessary.
If typing in lines, it is possible to do without the mouse by using the tab key to move forward to the next key and the Enter key to save.
Note that the sales order has a status of "Under Constuction". It is possible to leave this order and come back to it, but it is important to note that the sales order is not released into processing until it is "activated" by pressing the Activate button.
When the order is activated, a number of actions are taken by the system.
- The order is checked to make sure that it is logically correct and has the required minimum data.
- It allocates the next Sales Order Id (if one has not been entered manually)
- Runs the material planning processes on all lines (MRP)
More advanced logic that also runs on a sales order activation
- Credit checks the customer for credit limits and late paid bills. (Xero only)
- Automatically opens work orders if this is set up on the products.
- Triggers web hooks to external system if there are integrations set up for this.
Sales order acknowledgement
Typically the user will send a sales order acknowledgement to the customer. To do this use the drop down list for reports and select "Sales order acknowledgement". This will open the report as a pdf on the screen. To email it to the customer, first click the box next to the envelop. This opens a dialogue for either sending the report to yourself as an attachment or to the customer (assuming that the customer has person with an email address entered).
The sales order acknowledgement clearly indicates that this order is not activated yet.
Further actions
Read more about sales orders and sales order material scheduling
More details about creating a new sales order