Enter sales orders

Sales orders are a contractual agreement between you and the customer for the provision of goods and services for a price. The sales order defines the terms (prices, quantities and times) by which you will deliver products or provide services.

You can create sales orders in the following ways:

  • As a single new order. There are two ways to do this:
    • Full order - allows you to change all the defaults, such as price, discounts, or delivery address.
    • Rapid order - a basic way entering orders which use the defaults set on the stock items and customer account.
  • As quotes that are converted to orders.
  • As a pro formas that are converted to orders.
  • By copying another order and amending the details.
  • From a repeat order template.

You can also create purchase orders on the back of sales orders. These are known as back-to-back orders.

Sales order process

Sales order status

Sales orders can have one of three statuses:

Live - As soon as an order is saved and until it's fully invoiced.

On hold - To stop any further processing of the order, for example if there's a query.

Completed - If the order is fully invoiced or cancelled.

What's in a sales order?

Rapid order

Typically used for entering a batch of sales orders quickly, rapid order entry is for selling standard items only (you can't add free text, items, comment lines or additional charges). You can't record payment with the order or view profit or discount values using this method.

However, once you have created the order using this method, you can convert them to full orders, using the Full Order button on the rapid entry screen. This will then give you all the options you have when using full order entry.

Full order

Information you need to enter for an order.

  • The customer account.

    If you don't have a customer account set up and you are taking online payment over the phone for an order, you can either:

    • Put the order through on the cash account, if you think it is likely to be a one-off order.
    • Create the order as a new quotation and create the customer account as part of this process. When you have saved the quotation, convert the prospect to a sales order.
  • The items or lines required. You can add the following types of lines:

    • Stock item: These can be for products or services.

    • Free text items: Use this for one off items that have a value but don't have stock record.

    • Additional charges: These are added to an order to cover costs, such as delivery or insurance. You can add these as one-off charge or create a record for charges you use regularly.

    • Comment lines: These simply add information. You choose whether they're printed on your documents.

  • The warehouse the stock is to be supplied from.
  • The delivery address if it's different to the customer's main address.
  • For foreign currency customers, the exchange rate to be used.

Entering orders for foreign currency customers

When you are entering orders for foreign currency customers, the exchange rate set on the Currencies and exchange rates screen is displayed on the Order Details tab. This exchange rate is used to calculate the price of any items you add to the order, because prices are stored in base currency. You must check and change the exchange rate, if required, before adding items to the order, otherwise the default exchange rate will be used.

Note: The exchange rate used to post the invoice values to your nominal accounts is set when you print the invoice for the customer.

When you add items to the order, the VAT is set on each line. This means you can use different VAT rates for different items. When you sell products and services to customers in other countries, the VAT rate needs to reflect this. Sage 200 will always use the VAT rate set on the customer's account when the customer's Country Code is set to anything other than GB. When the foreign currency customer is selected on an order, the VAT Rate on the customer account overrides the VAT rate on a stock item.

Taking payment with a sales order

You can enter a payment with an order, if you have selected Allow payments to be recorded during full order entry on the Invoice and Order Settings > Order Entry tab. You can also process a card payment directly if you're using Opayo (formerly Sage Pay).

If you are recording a payment with the order, you can enter a full or part payment. You can choose to create an invoice immediately, showing payment that has been received. This is useful when handling deposits.

Invoicing payments immediately

HMRC rules state that VAT should be recorded on the VAT Return at the time of invoicing or on receipt of the payment, whichever is the first. When a payment is taken at the time of ordering, you need to decide whether the payment should be invoiced at the same time.

Payments with foreign currency orders

You can't record payment with the order for a foreign currency customer. You must raise an invoice separately, and process payment as normal, recording a foreign currency receipt.

Settlement discounts and payments

If the customer qualifies for settlement discount (set on the Payment tab of the customer's account), and you are recording the full payment with the order, you must select Full Payment on the Payment with Order tab, otherwise the payment will be treated as part payment (even if it is the full amount) and the discount won't be applied.

Amend sales orders

What you can amend in a sales order depends on how complete the order is and on your user permissions. You can't change the order number.

Open: Sales Orders > Sales Orders > Amend Order.

Watch a video

Correcting order processing mistakes (video)

Cancel orders

Sometimes orders are cancelled and you need to record the fact that the order is not to be processed. This may be because the customer no longer wants to buy the goods, or services.

When you cancel an order, it cancels any lines on the order that are still waiting to be despatched. When you cancel an order:

  • Any outstanding stock allocated to the order is removed.
  • Order lines where no stock was despatched are removed from the order.
  • Details of the cancelled lines are recorded. You can see these on the Cancelled order lines report.
  • If a payment was invoiced with the order, a credit note and payment are generated. these are allocated to each other and posted to customers account and nominal accounts.

    If the customer paid by card (via Opayo), their card is refunded.

  • If the payment was not invoiced immediately, then the payment is deleted and you must record any refund manually.

    If the customer paid by card (via Opayo), their card is refunded and payment is posted to their account and your nominal accounts.

Put orders on hold

You can manually put orders on hold when you want to prevent an order being processed. This may be because you have a query or need to resolve a dispute. If the customer's balance is more than their credit limit, any new orders are put on hold automatically. You can only override this, if you user permissions have been set for this. See Invoice and order user permissions.

Once an order is put On Hold, no further processing can take place.

What do you want to do?

Enter full sales orders

Enter a rapid order

Enter repeat order templates

Note - information

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