When a customer wants to buy goods or services from you but you're not yet ready to invoice them – or they've sent you a purchase order – you can create a sales order for them.
This will detail the selling price, quantity, type of goods or services provided and the date you promise to provide them. Later, when you're ready to ship the items, or you've completed the service, you can invoice the customer.
Why you should use sales orders:
Good customer relations
Avoid losing customer orders. You have a centralised record of your customer orders that you can pull up at any time.
Sales orders ensure that both the customer and the business have a clear understanding of the order. The order details can be referred to in case of any confusion or disputes.
You're able to easily convert a sales order to an invoice and we'll retain the original sales order, so you can see the whole history of the sale with the customer.
Better inventory management
Sales orders help you keep track of orders and manage inventory. When you enter a sales order for inventoried items, they are marked as committed to customers. This helps your purchasing department make informed inventory ordering decisions. The quantity that is committed to customers is indicated in the Items List report:
When you combine sales orders with the other inventory reports in AccountRight, your business gets a clear view on how much of your inventory is committed to customers, how much is on-hand and how much on order.
Suits the way you do business
You can use sales orders in whatever way suits your business.
For example, if you're a service-based business, you can create a sales order to book and itemise the service – handy if you're not sure exactly when you'll deliver the service.
Or, if you have a customer who orders very frequently, you may not want to create an invoice for them every time. You could use a sales order to keep track of their multiple orders, and then send an invoice at the end of the month.
Sales orders are useful for retailers, wholesalers, manufacturers and any other type of business that needs to track customer orders as part of their sales workflow.
Both goods-based and service-based businesses can use sales orders.
Creating and using sales orders
Need to email, print or download a sales order? Your help is here.
Create a sales order
Go to the Sales command centre and click Enter Sales.
For the Sales Type, choose Order.
Choose the Customer. If you've created a quote for the chosen customer, you can choose the quote and click Use Sale to create an order from the quote. Or click New Sale to create the order from scratch.
Enter details of the order. Here are some tips:
Click Terms to check or change the payment terms.
Display relevant columns, depending on whether the order is for items or services, by clicking Layout.
Make your order clearer by adding headings, subtotals and blank lines.
If the customer has given you a purchase order, enter the Customer PO No.
If the customer is paying a deposit against this order, enter it in the Paid Today field. Learn all about customer deposits.
Send the order.
Click Send To if you'd like to email the order or save it as a PDF.
Click Print and choose a form to print the order. You can customise your forms to suit your needs.
If you only want to save the order and send it later, click Record.
Find a sales order
Use the Sales Register to see all your sales orders.
Go to the Sales command centre and click Sales Register.
Click the Orders tab.
[Optional] Filter your search using the Search By and date range fields. The orders that match your search criteria appear in the Sales Register window. You can view a transaction in detail by clicking the zoom arrow next to it.
Change or delete a sales order
Need to change or fix something? Open the sales order and make your changes. You can change anything except the Customer.
If it's easier, you can delete the order and start again.
Go to the Sales command centre and click Sales Register.
Click the Orders tab.
If needed, use the search or date filters to find the order you're after.
Open the sales order.
If you want to:
change a sales order, make your changes and click OK.
delete a sales order, go to the Edit menu and choose Delete Sale.
Changing a quote into a sales order
If a customer accepts a quote, you can turn it into a sales order. When you do this, the quote is retained. But you can delete it if you want.
Go to the Sales command centre and click Sales Register.
Click the Quotes tab and select the required quote.
Click Change to Order.
Make any necessary changes, for example, change the transaction date to today. If you want to retain the quote number, there's a preference you can set for this (Setup menu > Preferences > Sales tab > Retain Original Invoice Number when...).
Click Record to create the new order. The original quote will remain in the Sales Register window unless you've set the preference to delete it automatically (Setup menu > Preferences > Sales tab > Delete Quotes upon Changing to and Recording as an Order or Invoice).
Changing a sales order into an invoice
When you're ready to ship inventory items to a customer (or, if you're a service-based business, you've completed a job), you can convert the sales order to an invoice. You can then send the invoice to the customer to complete the sale and get paid.
Go to the Sales command centre and click Sales Register.
Click the Orders tab and select the required order.
Click Change to Invoice.
Make any necessary changes, for example, change the transaction date to today. If you want to retain the order number, there's a preference you can set for this (Setup menu > Preferences > Sales tab > Retain Original Invoice Number when...).
Click Record to create the new order. The original quote will remain in the Sales Register window unless you've set the preference to delete it automatically (Setup menu > Preferences > Sales tab > Delete Quotes upon Changing to and Recording as an Order or Invoice).
Sales order features in AccountRight browser
Many sales order features in AccountRight desktop are available when you when you access your company file in a web browser, but there are still some coming.
In the browser, you are not yet able to:
put a deposit on a sales order
convert a quote to a sales order
backorder items to fulfil sales.
Terms in sales orders, multiple currencies and adding a salesperson to a sales order are not available in AccountRight browser.
If you need to do these tasks, you can do them in AccountRight desktop.
There are a couple of things you can do with sales orders in AccountRight browser that you can't do in AccountRight desktop:
retain a sales order after converting it to an invoice
create a sales order for the Items & Services layout.
The following table compares the sales order features available in AccountRight desktop versus AccountRight browser:
Feature | AccountRight desktop | AccountRight browser* |
|---|---|---|
Apply a deposit to a sales order | Yes | Not yet available |
Convert quote to sales order | Yes | Not yet available |
Backorder items to fulfil sales | Yes | Not yet available |
See sales order activity | Yes | Yes |
Convert sales order to invoice | Yes | Yes |
Retain original sales order after converting to an invoice |
| Yes |
Create sales order for Items & Service layout |
| Yes |
Print a sales order | Yes | Yes |
Apply freight to a sales order | Yes | Yes |
Create sales order for inventoried and non-inventoried items | Yes | Yes |
Create sales order for service items | Yes | Yes |
Apply terms to a sales order | Yes |
|
Add a salesperson to a sales order | Yes |
|
Create or edit sales orders using multiple currencies | Yes |
* New feature availability is subject to change
FAQs
Who can enter sales orders?
Any user with the following role or permissions can enter purchase orders:
Administrator
Accountant/Bookkeeper
Sales
Find out more about managing user access.
What’s the difference between sales orders and quotes?
A quote is the price you'll charge a customer for a sale of certain goods and services. The quoted price is valid for a specified period.
A sales order is typically generated after the receipt of a customer's purchase order to confirm the sale of goods or services to a customer. It's a promise to provide goods and services for an agreed price by a specified date.
You can use either or both, depending on how do business.
When you enter a sales order for an inventoried item, it's marked as committed to a customer, helping you to make informed stock purchasing decisions. Quotes don’t affect the quantities of inventoried items.
In a future release, you’ll be able to convert quotes to sales orders.