How to record a confirmed sale order

A sale order records an order the customer has actually confirmed. The price is agreed, and you now owe them goods or work. It is the middle of the chain: a quotation offers, a sale order commits, a delivery order proves goods moved, and the invoice is the bill. A promise is still not a sale, so it posts nothing to the accounts.

1. Press New. The number is drawn with an SO prefix and the title is pre-filled with Sale Order.
2. Pick the Customer, set the Date, and use Valid until if the customer's confirmation only holds for a period.
3. Fill in Person in charge. On an order this is the name that gets chased when the customer rings up asking where it is.
4. Add a line per item ordered: product or description, quantity, unit and unit price. The total is what you have committed to deliver for.
5. Save. The order starts as a Draft.

1. Go to Quotations, open the accepted quotation and press To sale order.
2. The lines, units, tax codes and any SST exemption are copied across, so the order cannot silently disagree with the price the customer accepted.
3. The quotation is stamped Converted and locked. That lock is deliberate: it keeps the record of what was quoted intact next to the order it produced.
4. Check the new order and edit it if the customer trimmed something on the phone. It is a fresh document and is still fully editable.

1. Click the row to open it, then use the status dropdown in the preview bar.
2. Press Edit beside Save PDF in the preview to correct a wrong figure without closing it.
3. A sale order has its own progression: Draft, Sent, Accepted, In progress, Ready, Partly delivered, Completed or Cancelled. These follow the workshop, not the sales conversation.
4. Use the status filter above the list to see everything currently In progress or Ready, which is the daily production view.
5. None of these status changes posts anything. Moving an order to Completed does not create income. Income starts only when the invoice is posted, automatically or through its debtor entry.

1. Press To delivery order when the goods are ready to go out. Use this for anything you actually ship, because that is the document that moves stock.
2. Press To invoice when it is time to bill. The invoice posts to Sales automatically when automatic posting is on, the default for a real company; practice (training) companies default to a manual debtor entry.
3. Use Invoice in instalments for a staged deal. Each stage becomes a separate invoice and follows the same posting setting, so check each posting status before adding anything manually.
4. Remember an order can only be converted once. If you need both a delivery order and an invoice, convert to the delivery order first and raise the invoice from that.