A Sales Order records what a customer has asked for, at what price, and by when. From it you raise dispatches to send the goods and invoices to charge for them — and it is the document every other part of the orders module either feeds or reads: contracts release them, dispatch planning consolidates them, demand planning counts them, and the Orders Dashboard reports on them.
Where to find it: Sales Orders in the Orders section of the main menu.
Sales Orders are part of the orders and demand planning feature set. If the menu entry is missing, the Orders & Demand Planning account setting is switched off.
The order list
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Order Ref | Generated on save. |
| Customer | Who the goods are going to. |
| Order Date | When the order was taken. |
| Required Date | When the customer wants it. This is the date demand planning buckets the order into. |
| Status | Draft, Confirmed, Partial Fulfilled, Fulfilled, Closed or Cancelled. |
| Source | Where the order came from: Manual, Xero or MYOB. Orders pulled in from an accounting integration are marked so you can tell them from ones keyed here. |
The list is newest first, and can be searched by order reference and filtered by status or source.
The order screen
The header carries the customer, dates, currency and references. Sales Order Lines beneath it is an inline grid — you edit cells directly in the row rather than opening a modal per line.
Line types
Four buttons sit under the grid, and the one you press decides what kind of line you get. This matters: the type controls whether a line can be dispatched, how it is taxed, and whether it adds or subtracts.
| Button | What it adds |
|---|---|
| + Line | A product line — actual goods, which can be dispatched and which draw on stock. |
| + Charge | A charge such as freight or a pallet fee. It is invoiced but never dispatched, because there is nothing to ship. |
| + Discount | A deduction from the order total. Like a charge, it is a money line rather than a goods line. |
| + Kit | A kit product, which explodes into its components when the order is dispatched. |
Because charge and discount lines cannot be dispatched, an order made up only of them has nothing to send. The Create Dispatch action is hidden on such an order rather than offering you an empty dispatch.
The line grid
| Column | Notes |
|---|---|
| Product | Type to search. The list is filtered to what that line type may hold. |
| Description | Defaults from the product and can be overridden per line. |
| Qty / UOM | How much, in which unit. |
| Required | A per-line required date, for orders delivered in stages. |
| Unit Price | Filled in automatically when you pick the product and quantity — see How the price is decided below. You can always overtype it. |
| Disc % | A percentage discount on that line. |
| Tax | Defaults from the product and customer, and can be changed per line. |
| Fulfilled | Read-only. How much of the line has actually been dispatched. |
| Amount | Read-only line total after discount. |
Totals and the tax breakdown are recalculated as you edit, and each row saves on its own — so a problem with one line never costs you the others.
How the price is decided
When you choose a product and quantity, the price is resolved for you, in this order of precedence:
- A customer contract price agreed with that customer for that product
- A promotional price list currently in effect
- The customer’s own price list, including any quantity break the ordered quantity reaches
- The account default price list, for customers without one of their own
- The product’s standard sell price as a fallback
See How prices are decided for the full detail, including supplier-side pricing and quantity breaks. The order line records which of these decided the price, so a query months later can be answered without guesswork. Changing the quantity re-resolves the price, which is how quantity breaks take effect.
Status and actions
Only the actions valid for the order’s current state are offered, and each explains itself before it acts:
| Action | Available when | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Confirm | Draft | Marks the draft confirmed. Once confirmed you can create dispatches and invoices against it, so lines should be finalised first. |
| Create Dispatch | Confirmed or Partial Fulfilled, and the order has goods still to send | Raises the dispatch. See below — it may offer to add to an existing one. |
| Create Invoice | Confirmed, Partial Fulfilled or Fulfilled | Creates a draft invoice pre-filled from the order and opens it for editing. |
| Cancel | Draft or Confirmed, before anything is fulfilled | Cancels the order. It cannot be undone, and it is refused once goods have gone out — at that point the order is a record of something that actually happened. |
| Close | Late in the order’s life | Marks it complete and locks it: no further dispatches or invoices can be created against it. Optional — use it to stop an order with a small unfulfilled remainder sitting open forever. |
Create Dispatch, and the existing-dispatch prompt
If the customer already has an open dispatch, Create Dispatch asks whether to add these lines to it or start a new one. That is deliberate: sending two vehicles to one customer on one day is expensive, and the prompt is the moment you get to avoid it. Where no open dispatch exists, one is created straight away without asking.
Currency and tax
- An order is raised in a currency, defaulting to the customer’s. Where that differs from your base currency an exchange rate applies, and the order records the rate used, so the value is not rewritten by later rate movements.
- Tax is calculated per line from its tax code, and summarised by code on the order. Inclusive and exclusive codes are both handled.
- Discounts are applied before tax, and the tax summary reflects the discounted amounts.
If no exchange rate exists on or before the order date, the order is valued at a rate of 1 rather than refusing to save. Enter your rates before raising foreign-currency orders — see Currencies and exchange rates.
Orders that come from somewhere else
| Origin | How it appears |
|---|---|
| A sales contract | Released automatically ahead of each scheduled delivery, already confirmed. The header shows a badge linking back to the contract. |
| A call-off against a contract | You raise the order; when the product has an open call-off line for that customer, the screen offers to link it and applies the contract price. |
| Xero or MYOB | Imported by the integration and marked in the Source column. |
Things to know
- Lines lock as the order progresses. Once quantities have been dispatched, the lines behind them stop being freely editable — the order has to keep matching what was actually sent.
- Fulfilled is measured from dispatches, not typed in. An order becomes Partial Fulfilled or Fulfilled on the back of what has gone out.
- Kit lines explode at dispatch, not on the order. The order shows the kit; the dispatch shows the components picked to satisfy it.
- Non-inventoried products (kits and miscellaneous items) do not post stock movements, so they can be ordered and invoiced without holding stock.