Setting up Sales Order Processing

You must choose whether the selling prices of your stock items are inclusive or exclusive of VAT. This is set to exclude VAT by default. If you want to use VAT inclusive pricing, you must choose this in Invoicing Settings, before entering any invoice and sales orders.

Once orders and invoices have been entered, this can't be changed.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Invoice and Order Entry.

See Invoice and order entry (SOP settings / Invoice and order settings)

These are the numbers used for invoices, credit notes, sales orders, quotations, pro formas, returns and despatch notes.

For sales orders and returns, you can choose whether to use automatically generated numbers or to enter your own number each time an order or return is saved. If you want to use alphanumeric numbers for orders, you must choose to enter your own number each time.

Invoice and credit note numbers are always assigned automatically and can only be numbers. Invoice numbers are used by both Invoicing and sales orders, so your invoice numbers are assigned to each one in order. For example, you create invoice for an order so this has invoice number 1, and you then save an invoice using the Invoicing module, this has an invoice number of 2, and so on.

Once you've saved an invoice or sales order, the starting numbers can't be changed.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Document numbering.

See Document numbering (SOP settings / Invoice and order settings).

You can choose which part of the order process updates your stock levels. You can update stock when:

• Goods are despatched, or
• The invoice is posted.

Note: You cannot change this setting once whilst you have orders that require processing.

Stock item lines will post the nominal account set on the customer account by default. You can change this in the SOP Settings.

You can choose to:

• Change this to the post the nominal account set on the stock record, by default.
• You can also choose to combine the nominal account from stock with the cost centre and department set on the customer account.
• Allow all users to change the nominal account when entering item lines.

Note: As long as you've selected Allow amendment of nominal codes (on the Invoice and Order Entry tab), the default nominal account can be changed, per line, when entering orders.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Default Accounts.

See Default accounts (SOP settings / Invoice and order settings).

You can use free text lines to add one-off lines with a value. These can be used for things you don't want to keep track off or don't want to create stock record for. Invoices and sales orders are set to only allow stock items, by default.

If you want to use free text lines, you set this in the SOP Settings. Free text lines can be added to quotes, pro formas and full sales orders.

If you only want to use free text lines on orders, then you can also turn off the use of stock items at the same time.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Invoice and Order Entry.

See Invoice and order entry (SOP settings / Invoice and order settings).

You can record the receipt of a payment at the same time as entering an order. To do this:

• Turn on Allow payments to be recorded during invoicing and full order entry in the SOP Settings. This adds a Payment tab to the order.
• Specify the text to printed on invoices that are paid in full, on the Invoice Printing tab in the SOP Settings.
• Set up payment methods in Maintain Payment Methods. This sets the bank account the payment is taken from and allows you group payments by type, such cash, debit card etc. You can us this to reconcile payments to your sales devices or cash registers.
• If you want to take card payments directly in Sage 200 using Opayo (formerly Sage Pay), turn on Enable card processing in the SOP Settings, then set up an Opayo account.

If you never take payments with orders then you don't need to turn this on.

See Set up payments with invoices and sales orders.

If you process orders and returns in a foreign currency, you choose whether to use the exchange rate set at the time the invoice is printed or the rate from when the order was entered. This is useful as it allows you change the exchange rate if there's a significant amount of time between entering an order and creating the invoice.

You can choose which text is printed on the invoice for EU zero rated sales.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Invoice Printing.

The cash account is a generic account you can use to enter invoices and orders for customers who don't need a customer account. This account can't be used as a regular account so doesn't show on the drop-down list when entering invoices.

You can have only one cash account and this is used for both Invoicing and SOP.

The prospect account is another generic account that you can use to send quotes to potential customers, without having to create a customer account for them.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Default Accounts.

See Default accounts (SOP settings / Invoice and order settings).

You can choose whether to print order acknowledgement, picking lists and despatch notes. Choose the options that relate to the processes your organisation would normally go through when raising and despatching orders. For example, do you need picking lists for each order? Do you need to supply a despatch note with the goods? Does your customer want a copy of the picking list so that they can see what has yet to be sent? Do you want to print batch and serial numbers on picking lists and despatch notes?

Be aware that if each type of document has to be printed before the order can be processed. For example, if you choose to print order acknowledgements, these must be printed for every order before goods can be despatched.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Document Printing.

You can set up Sage 200 so that you can control which users can see or edit certain parts of your invoices and orders. Be default, these permissions are not set for any user.

You don't have to set any of these permissions. If they're not set, the users can't see profit and discounts, override prices, etc. Any permissions you do set apply to both invoice and sales orders.

You can choose to allow users to:

• See the amount of profit made for each invoice and invoice line.

• View details of all discounts that have been used to make up the total for an invoice line.

• Enter orders for customers who have exceeded their credit limit. If this isn't selected, then a new order is put on hold.

• Change the price or discount of a stock item.
• Change the cost prices of a stock item (for items that use the FIFO or Actual costing methods).

This just affects the profitability of the order, and not the cost of sales for the order.

• Change the fulfilment method for stock items.
• Change whether free text or service / labour items need to be recorded as despatched.

• Create a purchase order from the sales orders (back-to-back orders) straight away.

• Set a default warehouse for a user. When this user enters an invoice, they can only choose stock items from the warehouse by default, although they can change this. This is useful if a user needs to select from a specific warehouse or branch first.

Open: SOP Utilities > System Set up > User Permissions.

See Invoice and order user permissions.

You can add charges to invoices for such things such as carriage and insurance. If these are just a one-off cost you can add them to invoices 'on the fly'.

If you have charges that you use regularly you can set up records for these to speed up entering orders and to makes sure charges are applied consistently. These additional charge records are used for both sales orders and invoicing.

Open: SOP Maintenance > Additional Charges.

See Additional charges - invoices and sales orders.

Invoices and credit notes are printed using a layout file. This specifies what information is shown on the invoice, where it's located on the page and how it's displayed, font size and colour etc. If need to, you can use multiple layout files, and you can customise them to suit your organisation.

We provide a number of default layouts that you can use 'out of the box'. You may want to use different layouts for different customers, or set up a layout for printed documents and another for sending documents by email.

If you're happy to use the default layout without any changes, you don't need to anything.

To use a different layout, you must:

• Create the layout you want to use, using Report Designer. We recommend that you make changes to the default layouts.
• Set the new layout as the default for all customers, or set the layout you want to use on each customer account.

See Using document layouts.

Your customers may have delivery addresses that are different to their invoice address. You can enter a delivery address as one-off when you create the order. If your customer always uses the same delivery address, you can create delivery address records and link them to the customer's account. You then choose the address to use on the order.

Delivery addresses are printed on your despatch notes.

Delivery addresses are used for both invoicing and sales orders so you only need to set them up once. There's no limit on the number of delivery addresses you can have for each customer.

Open: Sales Order Processing > SOP Maintenance > Customer Delivery Addresses.

See Set up customer delivery addresses.

Analysis codes are custom fields that you can associate with your sales order documents. You can use them to filter or group orders etc on reports and workspaces. For example, you could use analysis codes to specify which sales person has sold the goods, or to specify which branch or region placed the sales. You use the same analysis codes for SOP and Invoicing.

Each analysis code has two parts. A Code for the type of information and a set of Values that you can choose for each order. For example, a Sales person analysis code could have a set of values; John, Tim and Ben. You choose a Value for each relevant analysis code. If an analysis code is not to be used, leave the value blank.

Analysis codes can be added to:

• Whole order, pro forma, quote or return (header) - Delivery / invoicing tab.

• Individual lines - Analysis Codes button on the line.

To set up analysis codes:

1. Create your analysis codes (ASM > Settings > Maintain Analysis Codes)
2. Choose the analysis codes to use for Invoicing and Sales Orders (Sales Order Processing > SOP Maintenance > Maintain Analysis Codes)
3. Choose whether to allow analysis codes to be changed when entering orders etc. ( SOP Utilities > System Set up > SOP Settings | Invoice and Order Entry)

See Use analysis codes with sales orders and invoices.

Invoice and order items are just records of things you want to sell, but don't want to create a stock record for. You only need to set up invoice and order items if you need to use them.

You would generally use them if you're not using Stock Control. You can use them to keep a record of free text lines you regularly add to invoices and sales orders. These items can't be added to purchase orders.

Each item has a code, price, notional cost, default VAT rate and default nominal code. They are added to invoices and sales orders as stock items.

To use invoice and order items:

1. Make sure you choose to use both standard and free text lines in the SOP settings.

2. Create your invoice and orders items:

   Open: Sales Order Processing > SOP Maintenance > Sales Order Items.

See Create invoice and order items.

Use the Price Book module to set selling prices and discounts for your customers.

Once you have set up all your stock items and customer accounts, you'll need to decide on the price you want to charge for each item. In Sage 200 you do by settings up Price bands. Each price band is essentially a price list. You can set up as many price bands as you need, you just need to decide which customers receive which prices. Once set up, this determines the price that's used when a stock item is added to a sales order or invoice.

You also use the Price Book module to set discounts for stock items and choose which discount individual customers receive.

See Set up the Price Book.

When you enter a full sales order or quotation, you can add other items that the customer might be interested in buying.

• Use Suggested items to see items that are specific to the customer. These include the customer's preferred items (you can think of these as 'favourites'), and items that the customer has recently ordered and frequently ordered.
• Use Cross-selling items to see items that are often sold together with an item you've added to the order or quotation. For example, if you sell a printer, you might want to show print cartridges or cables for that printer.

See Sales Assistance (SOP settings / Invoice and order settings).