A sales order and its delivery are two records that work together. The sales order is what you have agreed to supply; the delivery is what actually takes the goods out of your warehouse. This article explains how each affects the other, and what happens when quantities change after the order is confirmed.
The statuses below are as a UK English system shows them. If your system is set to US English, "Ready to Process" reads "Ready" and "Processed" reads "Done".
1. Confirming the order creates a Delivery
Pressing Confirm & Dispatch Order on a sales order creates a Delivery for it. Despite the button's name, nothing is dispatched at this point: no stock leaves the warehouse and no stock level changes. The delivery is at Outbound > Items & Deliveries > Deliveries, and you can also open it from the Delivery button at the top right of the order, which counts how many deliveries the order has.
Lines naming a specific item or lot, in the Specific Item or Lot column, are reserved straight away, as long as the item is still available. Asset Type and SKU lines are not: they are reserved later, on the delivery, with Reserve Stock or with View / Assign on its Items Summary tab.
2. What the order shows meanwhile
- Stock Reserved, in the order details, says how much of the whole order is held for this customer: Not Reserved, Partially Reserved, Reserved or Delivered.
- The Reserved badge on each order line says the same for that line.
- While anything on the order is unreserved, a yellow banner reads Some stock on this order is not reserved. Unreserved items can still be sold on another order, so open the delivery and reserve them once they are available.
3. Dispatching
The goods leave when somebody presses Confirm Dispatch on the delivery. That fills in the Delivered figure on each sales order line and leaves Qty Quoted unchanged, so the order always shows both what was agreed and what actually went.
The order's Delivery Status, on its Warehouse, Shipping & Delivery tab, follows its deliveries:
- Not Delivered - no delivery has been processed yet.
- Started - a delivery has been processed but nothing on the order counts as delivered yet. You will rarely see it.
- Partially Delivered - something has gone and another delivery is still open.
- Fully Delivered - every delivery on the order is processed or cancelled.
For what Reserve Stock and Confirm Dispatch do on the delivery itself, and the one thing never to do instead of pressing Confirm Dispatch, see Outbound Sales: Delivering the order and confirming dispatch (opens in a new tab).
4. Sending part of the order
To send part of an order now and the rest later, reserve only what is going now with View / Assign on the delivery's Items Summary tab, press Confirm Dispatch, and choose Create Backorder when asked. The delivery completes for what went and a second delivery, the backorder, is raised for the rest against the same sales order. Part-shipping Orders (opens in a new tab) walks through it with screens.
5. Changing quantities after the order is confirmed
Change the Qty Quoted on the sales order line and save. The open delivery follows the order, so you never change the quantity on the delivery itself. Each case below was tried on a confirmed order, and this is what RecyclyERP does:
- Raising it before anything has gone. The delivery's row now expects the new quantity. The extra is not reserved: the line reads Partially Reserved or Not Reserved, so reserve the rest on the delivery.
- Lowering it before anything has gone. The delivery's row now expects the lower quantity. If that line was already reserved, lowering it releases the reservation, so the line reads Not Reserved: reserve it again on the delivery.
- Raising it after part of the order has gone. The extra is added to the open backorder.
- Lowering it after part of the order has gone. The difference comes off the open backorder.
- Raising it after everything has gone. A new delivery is raised for the extra, at Waiting, and the order's Delivery Status goes back to Partially Delivered.
- Lowering it below what has already been delivered. RecyclyERP refuses: "The ordered quantity of a sale order line cannot be decreased below the amount already delivered. Instead, create a return in your inventory." Use Create Return instead (section 7).
- A line naming a specific item or lot. Its Qty Quoted cannot be changed: that line is for one particular item.
Check the Unit Price after changing a quantity. Changing Qty Quoted can reset the line's Unit Price to the Asset Type's standard price, so a price you had agreed and typed in may change. Put it back before you save if it does.
6. Invoicing
The Delivered figure only drives the invoice when the line's Bill On is Quantity Delivered: the customer is billed for what has actually gone. When Bill On is Quantity Quoted, the invoice is for the quantity on the order, whatever has been sent.
7. Returns
Create Return appears on a delivery once it is Processed, and on the sales order once any of its deliveries is. A return is built from what was actually dispatched, so nothing can be returned that the customer never received.