Sales orders, purchase orders, invoices and bills all use the same line editor. You type into the row itself rather than opening a form for each line, and each row saves on its own as you leave it.
Learning it once covers all four documents.
Where you will meet it: the lines section of any sales order, purchase order, invoice or bill.
Adding a line
The buttons beneath the grid depend on the document, and the one you press decides the line’s type:
| Document | Buttons |
|---|---|
| Sales order | + Line · + Charge · + Discount · + Kit |
| Purchase order | + Line · + Charge · + Misc Line |
| Sales contract | + Cadence · + Call-off |
The type governs which columns apply, so the grid asks only for what that kind of line needs and leaves the rest blank.
Editing in the row
Click a cell to edit it. Cells are typed — a product cell searches as you type, a quantity cell takes numbers, a date cell opens a picker — and read-only cells such as line totals cannot be entered at all.
Keyboard
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tab | Moves to the next editable cell in the same row, saving the cell you are leaving. It follows the row rather than the browser’s own tab order, so you are not thrown onto the drag handle mid-line. |
| Shift + Tab | The same, backwards. |
| Tab on the last cell | Leaves the row and saves it. |
| Enter | Saves the row from wherever you are in it, including the value in the cell you are still typing in. |
Clicking away from the row saves it too. There is no separate save button per line.
Each row saves on its own
Rows are saved individually rather than all together when the document is saved. Two consequences follow, and both are improvements on an all-or-nothing form:
- A problem with one line does not cost you the others. If a row is rejected, that row is flagged and the rest stay saved.
- Totals keep up as you work, because each committed row recalculates the document.
Prices that fill themselves in
On a sales or purchase order, choosing a product and quantity resolves the price for you. The row waits for that answer before saving, so the line is never saved at a stale price and then corrected a moment later.
The resolved price is a starting point — overtype it whenever the situation calls for it. See How prices are decided.
Reordering and deleting
- Drag the handle at the start of a row to reorder lines. The order is saved, so the document prints in the order you arranged.
- Delete removes a line. A row you have not saved yet disappears immediately, since there is nothing to remove at the other end.
Lines that lock
Lines do not stay editable forever. As a document progresses — goods dispatched, stock received, an invoice issued — the lines behind that activity stop being freely editable, so the document keeps matching what actually happened.
Where a field is locked, the grid says why rather than simply refusing. On a sales contract, for instance, cadence terms are “fixed once the contract is activated”, because released orders were created from them.
On a small screen
Below about 768 pixels wide the grid stops being a table and becomes a stack of cards, one per line, with the fields laid out down the card. Everything still works — it is the same editor, laid out for a narrow screen rather than a spreadsheet.
Things to know
- Product pickers are filtered to the context — the line type, and on a purchase order the supplier’s own products.
- The description defaults from the product and can be overridden per line without changing the product record.
- Totals and the tax breakdown come from one calculation, so the figure in the footer always agrees with the breakdown.