Sales Orders

1. CREATING AN ORDER — STEP BY STEP

1. Customer — pick an existing customer with a searchable lookup, or add a brand-new customer inline without leaving the order screen.
2. Entry Info — order date, reference numbers, sales channel, payment method/term, and (if you use more than one warehouse) which location this order ships from.
3. Items — add products either by browsing your catalog with a search-by-name/SKU picker, or by typing a SKU directly. Each line supports quantity (in your primary and, if used, secondary unit), rate, per-line discount, and tax. If an item is batch- or serial-tracked, a picker appears right on that line so you choose the exact batch/serial being sold.
4. Cost Lines (optional) — add extra costs like freight or handling, and mark each one as billable back to the customer and/or invoiceable, so pass-through costs aren't lost or absorbed by mistake.
5. Extended Details (optional, collapsible) — physical shipment metrics, fulfillment terms, cost intelligence, and a drag-and-drop file attachment area — tucked away so the main form stays clean unless you need them.
6. Order Summary — a live running subtotal, tax, discount, and grand total in the right-hand column as you build the order.
7. Save. Order numbers are assigned safely even if two staff save an order at the exact same second — no duplicate or skipped numbers.
8. Depending on your settings, the order either auto-approves immediately or lands in a pending queue for manual sign-off.

2. THE FULL PIPELINE — ORDER TO CASH, VISUALIZED

Once saved, every order shows a visual progress strip across the top. Each stage lights up as done or active based on its real, live status, so anyone on your team can look at one order and know exactly where it's stuck — without opening four different screens to piece it together.

• Pick & Pack — warehouse staff record exactly which physical stock was pulled and packed, capturing batch/serial numbers right at the point of picking if the item requires it.
• Ship & Delivery — the shipment is recorded as dispatched and later as delivered, tracked as its own distinct status.
• Invoice — the order is converted into a formal invoice.
• Payment — money received is recorded against that invoice.

3. MAKE THE PIPELINE MATCH YOUR BUSINESS, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

This is the part most inventory systems don't offer: you choose, once, in Settings, exactly which of these stages your business uses and in what order — and every Sales Order screen adapts to that choice automatically. A few real examples of what businesses actually pick:

• A warehouse-based distributor: full Order → Pick+Pack → Delivery → Invoice → Payment, with freight costs tracked as billable back to the customer at each stage.
• A retailer that invoices before shipping: Order → Invoice → Delivery → Payment — same stages, different order, because that's how their billing actually works.
• A service or digital-goods business: skip physical fulfillment entirely and go straight Order → Invoice → Payment, or even just Invoice → Payment for the simplest possible flow. There are 20 named flow variants covering combinations like these — so whatever shape your order-to-cash process takes today, there's very likely already a matching configuration, no custom development required and no forcing your team to learn a workflow that doesn't match reality.

4. APPROVAL RULES & ADVANCE PAYMENTS (Settings > Sales)

• Order Approval & Invoice Approval — each can be set to auto-approve everything, or require manual sign-off above a dollar threshold you define (e.g., auto-approve anything under $500, require a manager's okay above that) — set independently for orders and invoices.
• Applied Advance — if a customer has a deposit/advance on file, choose how it gets used against new invoices:

1. Spread proportionally across all their open invoices.
2. Applied in full to their oldest open invoice first.
3. Held and applied to their most recent invoice instead.

• Discounts — choose whether discounts apply per line item, at the order total level, or both.
• Optional sections — Cost Lines, Measurements, COGS display, Attachments, and Advance-payment capture can each be turned on or off, so the order form only shows what your business actually uses.

5. PRINTING & THE DOCUMENT CONFIGURATOR

Every Sales Order (and, from here, every other transactional document in the system — Invoices, Purchase Orders, Bills, Delivery Orders, Payment Receipts, Sales/Purchase Returns, Credit Notes, Material Issues, Quotations, Jobs, Purchase Requisitions, and more) shares one Print configurator rather than each screen having its own print layout:

• Print button on the order screen (Ctrl+P works too), or a Print icon directly on a list row — no need to open the record first.
• Template — Modern (vibrant, logo-forward) or Classic (formal, centered) layout.
• Theme color — pick from a swatch row or a custom color picker.
• Paper size — A4, Letter, or Legal.
• Font size and page padding — fine-tune density with sliders.
• Cost rows — shown as their own line items in the table, or rolled into the totals summary.
• Columns — toggle Rate/Quantity/Tax/Discount columns on or off.
• Signature block — include or omit an "Authorized Signature" line.
• Save — persists your chosen configuration per document type (a Sales Order and an Invoice can each remember their own look), so it's a one-time setup rather than reconfiguring on every print.
• Print Document (browser print/PDF) or Download PDF directly from the configurator; a QR code and the total spelled out in words are included automatically on every printed document.
• Auto-print after save (Sales Order specifically) — a kebab-menu toggle that opens the print preview automatically the moment an order is saved, for businesses that print every order as a matter of course.

Each document type's status stamp on the printed page reflects that document's own real status and color-codes accordingly (e.g. a Rejected Quotation or a Cancelled Job prints showing Rejected/ Cancelled, not a generic "Approved").

6. HOW IT CONNECTS TO THE REST OF THE SYSTEM

• Products & Inventory — every line item reads live pricing, tax, and batch/serial requirements straight from the product record.
• Delivery & Fulfillment — the Pick/Pack and Ship/Delivery stages shown in the pipeline are the same live screens covered in that guide.
• Sales Invoicing & Sales Payments — an order's Invoice and Payment stages carry its data forward automatically into those modules.
• Chart of Accounts / General Ledger — approved orders and invoices post to Accounts Receivable and revenue accounts automatically.

7. WHY IT SCALES FROM SMB TO ENTERPRISE

Quick Reference

  Create/edit an order ..................... Sales > Orders > New/Open Order
  Orders list .............................. Sales > Orders
  Print an order ............................ Print button on the order
                                             screen (or Ctrl+P), or the Print
                                             icon on any Orders list row
  Configure your Sales Flow ................ Settings > Sales > Sales Flow
  Order approval threshold ................. Settings > Sales > Order Approval
  Advance payment strategy ................. Settings > Sales > Applied Advance