A sales order can be used to register both physical and financial transactions and therefore has three posting options: Ship, Invoice, and Ship and Invoice. These options enable you to process the sale at different points in time, such as collecting payment after shipping the goods. If the sales process does not require that the physical transaction be recorded separately, then a sale may be processed in a purchase invoice only or in a G/L journal.

In some environments, goods sold to a customer are delivered directly from the vendor, bypassing the company's own inventory. This special business purpose can be achieved with the use of drop shipment functionality or by creating special orders that link the purchase to the sale.

You can use sales process support, such as tracking the purchase or production order that supplies the sales demand, customer and item statistics, and a work order document to capture basic labor performed to fulfill a sales order.

Other sales process features include simple production planning, warehouse integration, and intercompany sales operations.

The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them. These tasks are listed in the order in which they are generally performed.

ToSee

Get an overview of typical sales processes tasks in the system.

Processing Sales Orders

Sell kits or assemblies that don’t exist in inventory and automatically initiate an assembly order to supply the items by the shipment date.

How to: Sell Items Assembled to Order

Create a special sales order for a specific nonstock item to be shipped to a customer without passing through your inventory.

How to: Create Special Orders

Create a production order directly from a sales order for an item that must be fulfilled through production.

How to: Create Production Orders from Sales Orders

Create a project production order directly from a multi-line sales order representing a production project.

How to: Plan Project Orders

Create and process a sales order that is linked to a purchase order to ensure that the items are shipped directly from the vendor to the customer.

How to: Create Sales Orders for Drop Shipments

Enter an alternative item on a sales line by selecting from predefined substitute items.

Item Substitution

Inform warehouse workers that sold purchased items are ready to put away in the warehouse by making an inventory put-away or a warehouse receipt.

How to: Create Inventory Picks

Print a work order document from a sales order that entails light operations so that workers can record quantities or time used to fulfill the sale.

Work Order

View purchase document statistics, such as how many items are shipped and invoiced or basic information about the customer.

How to: View Purchase Order Statistics

Prepare and send a posted sales document to an affiliated company, such as a mother company, for consolidation.

How to: Fill In and Send Intercompany Sales Documents and Purchase Documents

Post a sale as shipped and/or invoiced.

How to: Post Sales Orders

Undo the quantity posting of a sales shipment where the sales document has not yet been invoiced.

How to: Undo Quantity Postings on Posted Shipments

See Also