Sales orders

A sales order records what a customer has committed to buy. Confirming it reserves the stock of the products it contains, recording deliveries ships that stock out of your warehouse, and invoicing it bills the customer. You can create orders by hand or from an accepted quotation.

Where orders fit

Sales orders sit between quotations and invoices:

1. An accepted quotation becomes a sales order with Create the order, or you create the order by hand.
2. Confirm reserves stock in the order's warehouse. See Stock tracking.
3. Deliver ships the goods. Each delivery writes stock movements to the stock ledger.
4. Invoice creates a draft invoice for some or all of the order. You can invoice before, during or after delivery.
5. The customer's payment settles the invoice, and with the Finance modules the invoice and payment are posted to accounts receivable.

Before you begin

• Modules: Sales requires Contacts, Product Catalog, Pricing, Taxes, Opportunities (CRM) and Inventory.
• Permissions: you need sales.order.read to see the Orders tab, sales.order.write to create, confirm and cancel orders, and sales.order.fulfill to record deliveries. Members have all three by default. To invoice an order you need sales.invoice.write, which only administrators have by default.
• Warehouses and stock: stock is reserved and shipped from the order's warehouse. Set up your warehouses and receive stock first. See Stock tracking.

Key concepts

Concept	What it means
Number	Given when the order is created, for example SO-00001. The prefix is a setting.
Warehouse	Where the order's stock is reserved and shipped from. Empty means the organization's default warehouse.
Stocked lines	Lines for products that track inventory. Only these reserve and ship stock. Services, products that do not track inventory, and free-text lines are shown as Not stocked.
Reserved	Stock set aside for the order. Reserved stock is no longer available to other orders, but it is still on hand until delivered.
Delivered	How much of each line has been shipped to the customer.
Invoiced	How much of each line is on invoices, including draft invoices.

Open the orders list

Select Sales in the main menu, then the Orders tab. You can also use the command palette: Open sales orders.

The list shows each order's Number, Customer, Status, Order date, Expected delivery, Total and Owner. Search with Search orders, filter by Status, save views, and show hidden columns such as Quotation, Customer reference and Warehouse.

The Orders tab lists sales orders with their status and expected delivery.

Create a sales order

From an accepted quotation: open the quotation and select Create the order. The order opens as a draft with everything the quotation said: customer, contact, opportunity, currency, customer reference, language, owner, notes, terms, and the lines exactly as accepted. See Quotations.

By hand:

1. On the Orders tab, select New sales order.
2. Choose the Customer and, optionally, the Contact.
3. Check the Currency and Order date (default: the organization's currency and today).
4. Optionally enter the Expected delivery date (on or after the order date), the Customer reference, the Warehouse, the Language, the Owner, Notes and Terms.
5. Select Save. The order opens as a Draft.
6. Select Edit lines on the Lines card and add products or free-text lines, as on a quotation. Prices come from Pricing, discounts are checked against your limit, and taxes come from Taxes for the customer's address. See Add and edit lines.

While the order is a draft you can change anything with Edit and Edit lines, or delete it.

Confirm an order

Open the draft and select Confirm. The order must have at least one line.

• The order becomes Confirmed and can no longer be edited.
• For each stocked line, Modulix reserves the quantity in the order's warehouse, as much as is available.
• If some lines could not be fully reserved, a warning says: "Not enough stock for N lines: reserve again when it arrives." The order is confirmed anyway. The Reserved column shows what each line got.

After confirmation, the Lines card shows Ordered, Delivered, Reserved and Invoiced quantities for each line.

Reserve again

When missing stock arrives (for example, from a purchase order or a stock transfer), open the order and select Reserve again. Modulix tries to reserve what is still left to deliver on each stocked line. You see "Stock reserved" when everything is covered, or the same shortage warning otherwise.

Record a delivery

When goods leave the warehouse, record a delivery. You can deliver an order in one go or in several parts.

1. Open the confirmed order and select Deliver.
2. The Deliver dialog lists every line with something left: its To deliver quantity and a Qty field, prefilled with everything left.
3. Change the quantities to what is actually shipped. Clear a line's quantity, or set it to 0, to leave it out of this delivery.
4. Optionally add a Note (for example, the carrier and tracking number).
5. Select Deliver.

Recording a partial delivery of a sales order.

What happens:

• Stocked items are shipped from the order's warehouse, taking the order's reserved stock first. Each shipment is written to the stock ledger with the order's number as its document. See Stock tracking.
• If there is not enough stock on hand, the delivery is refused, unless your organization allows stock to go below zero (an Inventory setting).
• Lines that are not stocked are simply marked as delivered.
• The order becomes Partially fulfilled, or Fulfilled once every line is fully delivered.

Each delivery is listed on the Deliveries card with its date and time, the number of lines, the stock movement numbers (such as MV-000042) and the note.

A partially fulfilled order: quantities per line and the deliveries made so far.

Invoice an order

Once an order is confirmed, select Invoice to bill it. You choose how much of each line to invoice (by default, everything not invoiced yet), and Modulix creates a draft invoice at the order's prices and discounts. The Invoice button shows while something is left to invoice. See Create an invoice from an order.

Invoicing is independent of delivery: you can invoice in advance, after each delivery, or at the end.

Cancel an order

You can cancel a draft, confirmed or partially fulfilled order.

1. Select Cancel order.
2. Optionally enter a Reason.
3. Select Cancel order to confirm.

What is left to deliver is cancelled and its reserved stock is released, so it becomes available to other orders. Deliveries already made stay as they are. The order becomes Cancelled, and the reason shows at the top of its page. A cancelled order cannot be invoiced further.

Download the order PDF

Select PDF to download the order in its language. It shows your organization's details, the customer, the order date, the expected delivery date, the customer reference, the quotation it comes from, the lines, the totals with each tax, and the notes and terms.

Order statuses

Status	Meaning	What you can do
Draft	Being prepared. No stock is reserved.	Edit, edit lines, confirm, cancel, delete.
Confirmed	Committed. Stock is reserved for stocked lines.	Deliver, reserve again, invoice, cancel.
Partially fulfilled	Some quantities have been delivered.	Deliver, reserve again, invoice, cancel.
Fulfilled	Every line is fully delivered.	Invoice what is not invoiced yet.
Cancelled	What was left was cancelled and its reservations released.	Nothing.

Only draft orders can be changed or deleted. Deleting a draft that came from a quotation lets that quotation become an order again.

Related records

• Customers: a company's page lists its sales orders on the Sales orders card. Companies used on orders cannot be deleted, and merging companies or contacts moves their orders. See Contacts and companies.
• Products and warehouses: products and warehouses used on orders cannot be deleted. See Product catalog and Warehouses.
• Stock: reservations and shipments show on the product's stock card and in the stock movements. See Stock tracking.

Settings

An administrator with sales.manage changes these in Settings, on the Sales tab.

Setting	Default	Effect on orders
Prefix of sales order numbers	SO-	Prefix of new order numbers.
Main color of PDFs (#rrggbb)	#1f2937	Main color of the order PDF.
Your details on PDFs: address, tax number… (one per line)	Empty	Your organization's details on the PDF.
Footer of PDFs	Empty	Text at the bottom of each page.

Whether deliveries may take stock below zero is the Inventory setting Allow stock to go below zero. See Stock tracking.

Permissions

Permissions marked scoped can be granted for your own orders, your team's, or all orders.

Permission	What it allows	Granted by default to
sales.order.read	View sales orders (scoped).	Admin, Member
sales.order.write	Create, edit, confirm and cancel sales orders, and reserve stock again (scoped). Also needed to create an order from a quotation.	Admin, Member
sales.order.delete	Delete draft sales orders (scoped).	Admin
sales.order.fulfill	Record deliveries of sales orders.	Admin, Member
sales.invoice.write	Invoice an order.	Admin
sales.manage	Manage sales settings.	Admin

tip

Warehouse staff who only ship goods need sales.order.read and sales.order.fulfill, without sales.order.write.

Troubleshooting

• "Not enough stock" when delivering: the warehouse does not have the quantity on hand. Receive or transfer stock first, deliver a smaller quantity, or ask an administrator about the Allow stock to go below zero setting.
• The Invoice button is missing: the order is a draft or cancelled, everything is already invoiced (draft invoices count), or you do not have sales.invoice.write.
• "Only draft orders can be changed": confirmed orders are locked. Cancel the order and create a new one if the customer changes their mind.