Sell Products with a Customer Sales Order
This article provides guidance to users on when to use a customer sales order rather than just an invoice. If your sales process requires that you can only ship parts of an order quantity, for example, because the full quantity is not available at once, then sell those products by making a customer sales order.
If you sell items by delivering directly from your vendor to your customer, as a drop shipment, then you must also use sales orders. For more information, see Make Drop Shipments. In all other aspects, sales orders work the same way as sales invoices. For more information, see Invoice Sales.
When you deliver the products, either fully or partially, you post the sales order as shipped or as shipped and invoiced to create the related item and customer ledger entries in your system. When you post the sales order, you can also email the document as a PDF attachment. You can have the email body prefilled with a summary of the order and payment information, such as a link to PayPal. For more information, see Send Documents by Email.
In business environments where the customer pays immediately, for example by PayPal or cash, payment is recorded immediately when you post the sales order as invoiced, that is, the posted sales invoice is closed as fully applied. You select the relevant method in the Payment Method Code field on the sales order. See under step 8. For electronic payments, such as PayPal, you must also fill in the Payment Service field. For more information, see Enable Customer Payments Through Payment Services.
You can even create directly-paid orders for non-registered customers by first setting up a "cash customer" card, which you point to on the sales order. For more information, see Set Up Cash Customers.
To create a sales order
[!NOTE]
The following procedure assumes that the customer is already set up. For instructions on how to do this, please see Register New Customers.
Choose the
icon, enter Sales Orders, and then choose the related link.Select New to create a new entry.
In the Customer field, enter the name of an existing customer.
Other fields on the Sales Order page are now filled with the standard information of the selected customer.
Fill in the remaining fields on the Sales Order page as necessary. Hover over a field to read a short description.
[!NOTE]
If you allow the customer to pay immediately, for example, by credit card or PayPal, then fill in the Payment Method Code field. The payment is then recorded as soon as you post the sales order as invoiced. If you select CASH, then the payment is recorded in a specified balancing account.You are now ready to fill in the sales order lines with inventory items or services that you want to sell to the customer.
If you have set up recurring sales lines for the customer, such as a monthly replenishment order, then you can insert these lines on the order by choosing the Get Recurring Sales Lines action.
On the Lines FastTab, in the Type field, select what type of product, charge, or transaction that you will post for the customer with the sales line.
In the No. field, enter the number of an inventory item or service.
You leave the No. field empty in the following cases:
- If the line is for a comment. Write the comment in the Description field.
- If the line is for a catalog item. Choose the Select Catalog Items action. For more information, see Work With Catalog Items.
In the Quantity field, enter the number of items to be sold.
[!NOTE]
For items of type Resource or Service, the quantity is a time unit, such as hours, as indicated in the Unit of Measure Code field on the line. For more information, see Set Up Item Units of Measure.The Line Amount field is updated to show the value in the Unit Price field multiplied by the value in the Quantity field.
The price and line amounts are shown with or without sales tax depending on what you selected in the Prices Including Tax field on the customer card.
In the Line Discount % field, enter a percentage if you want to grant the customer a discount on the product. The value in the Line Amount field is updated accordingly.
If you have set up special item prices on the Sales Prices and Sales Line Discounts FastTab on the customer or item card, then the price and amount on the quote line are automatically updated if the agreed price criteria are met. For more information, see Record Sales Price, Discount, and Payment Agreements.
To add a comment about the order line that the customer can see on the printed sales order, write a comment in the Description field on an empty line.
Repeat steps 5 through 9 for every item that you want to sell to the customer.
The totals fields under the lines are automatically updated as you create or modify lines to display the amounts that will be posted to the ledgers.
[!NOTE] In very rare cases, the posted amounts may deviate from what is displayed in the totals fields. This is typically due to rounding calculations in relation to VAT or sales tax.
To check the amounts that will actually be posted, use the Statistics page, which takes into account the rounding calculations. Also, if you choose the Release action, the totals fields will be updated to include rounding calculations.
Optionally, in the Invoice Discount Amount field, enter an amount that should be deducted from the value shown in the Total Incl. Tax field.
If you have set up invoice discounts for the customer, then the specified percentage value is automatically inserted in the Invoice Discount % field if the criteria are met, and the related amount is inserted in the Inv. Discount Amount Excl. Tax field. For more information, see Record Sales Price, Discount, and Payment Agreements.
To only ship a part of the order quantity, enter that quantity in the Qty. to Ship field. The value is copied to the Qty. to Invoice field.
To only invoice a part of the shipped quantity, enter that quantity in the Qty. to Invoice field. The quantity must be lower than the value in the Qty. to Ship field.
When the sales order lines are completed, choose the Post and Send action.
--- author: edupont04
ms.topic: include ms.date: 01/19/2022 ms.author: edupont
[!IMPORTANT]
When you post an order, you create a shipment and an invoice. These documents can be done at the same time or independently. You can also create a partial shipment and a partial invoice by filling in the Qty. to Ship and Qty. to Invoice fields on the individual sales order lines before you post. Note that you cannot create an invoice for something that is not shipped. That is, before you can invoice, you must have recorded a shipment, or you must choose to ship and invoice at the same time.
The Post and Send Confirmation dialog box displays the customer's preferred method of receiving documents. You can change the sending method by choosing the lookup button for the Send Document to field. For more information, see Set Up Document Sending Profiles.
The related item and customer ledger entries are now created in your system, and the sales order is output as a PDF document. When the sales order is fully posted, it is removed from the list of sales orders and replaced with new documents in the list of posted sales invoices and the list of posted sales shipments.
External document number
--- author: edupont04
ms.topic: include ms.date: 05/27/2021 ms.author: edupont
On sales documents and journals, you can specify a document number that refers to the customer's numbering system. Use this field to record the number that the customer assigned to the order, invoice, or credit memo. You can then use the number later if, for some reason, you need to search for the posted entry using this number.
The Ext. Doc. No. Mandatory field on the Sales & Receivables Setup page specifies whether it is mandatory to enter an external document number in the External Document No. field on a sales header and the External Document No. field on a general journal line.
If you select this field, it will not be possible to post an invoice or a general journal line without an external document number.
The external document number is included in posted documents where you can search by the relevant number. You can also search using the external document number when navigating on customer ledger entries.
A different way to handle external document numbers is to use the Your Reference field. If you use the Your Reference field, the number will be included in posted documents, and you can search by it in the same way as for values from External Document No. fields. But the field is not available on journal lines.
See Also
Sales
Setting Up Sales
Print the Picking List
Inventory
Send Documents by Email
Work with Business Central
--- author: edupont04