How do you manage deliveries of product from Sales Order?

Most of the time I am setting up direct retail systems where the Sales Invoice is used and the Sales Order step is skipped. The customer walks away with the final sales invoice moments after initial contact.

Other times I am setting up Manufacturing systems that also were not concerned with Sales Orders.

Now I am trying to understand how the Sales Order process works and most specifically the chain of recorded possession involved in the delivery of products to the customer when it comes to selling large items that require delivery. For example major appliances, furniture, or possibly farm equipment.

The process (as I understand it):

  • Sales Order is created for customers order
  • Sales Invoice is created so Customer can pay for the order
  • Deliver Note is created when product is delivered

What part of the process closes the Sales Order and completes the transaction?

Is the completing of the transaction an automatic function or do I have to do it manually?

How do I account for the product being moved from the source warehouse to the delivery truck?

Is there a step the delivery drivers need to do to complete the transaction?

I guess what I would like is to hear from others that are using the Sales Order process to see how they have their process mapped out. Since I have not had to setup this type of transaction before, I am curious about what might be the best way to handle the sale and the chain of possession.

Any advice from experienced users will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

BKM

1 Like

Hi. Mostly you are on the dot. Few things you need to do before adding any inventory.

Stock Setting: Default Valuation Method. Choose the right one as you wont be able to change once you start adding inventory.
Allow Negative Stock: Dont check this. Usually it leads to inventory issues at later date.

Selling Setting: Delivery Note Required. Set it to Yes.
Sales Order Required. You can set it to No if you want to Make Sales Invoice. Directly. Else your Quotation or Sales Order becomes your starting point.

Item once set as Maintain Stock cannot be made as Non Stock Once inventory has been added. New item would need to be made for this.

Flow is simple. Sales Order =>> Delivery Note or Invoice. Either can be made first.

When Delivery Note is made it will deduct the items from the source warehouse. Delivery Note can have a different print format to print only Item Name, Description and Units. Price is usually not mentioned. Terms and conditions are also usually different on delivery note.

When Sales Order is made the Status will be To Deliver and Bill. Delivery Date becomes mandatory. Fill date of possible delivery. Two activities pending.

When Delivery Note is made then status will be To Bill. Stock Entry and Financial Entries will be passed.

When Invoice is made status will be Complete. Financial Entry is Passed.

You can make payment entry to clear part of full outstanding.

Appliances will be having Serial numbers so the warehouse staff would need to make delivery note of the item based on serial number. Helps later when customer brings back the item during Warrantee period and you verify if this item was actually sold by you. Same item can be sold by the neighboring shop and you are fixing their broken product.

Item Master has these two that maybe needed in the INSPECTION CRITERIA

Inspection Required before Purchase

Inspection Required before Delivery

Ticking either will lead to making a template that needs to filled by user for either of the activities. Something similar to PDI (Pre Delivery Inspection) used by vehicles dealership,

Other aspect is credit facility you would like to give customer. Use Payment Terms Template.

If you have multiple warehouse then take a look at the Cost Centre settings. Cost Centre needs to linked to the correct Warehouse.

It is not the delivery driver responsibility to make any document. It is usually handled by the Inventory Controller. If you move the item from source to truck (if made as warehouse) then the inventory is still in your company. If you follow this route then delivery driver needs to make delivery note upon physically delivering the item. I would suggest you add Driver Name and Vehicle No in the Delivery Note to track which driver has taken which item. Fields are there in V11 in the TRANSPORTER INFO section.

A bit of practice will help you quickly understand the flow. Best of luck

3 Likes

Wow, good detailed view. Thank you!

I do have one or two sticking points I would like to run past you to see how you might handle them.

Scenario #1 - In the case of selling something like major appliances or furniture to consumer type customers, the sale is make usually at a store and the delivery is then scheduled right then with the buyer.

In this case, can the Sales Order be bypassed and go directly to the Sales Invoice? Would the Sales Invoice still work with delivery note?

Ultimately I still want a record of the delivery, but I do not want to have to re-engauge the customer for the Sales Invoice if they are giving their credit card at time of purchase in the store. It seems the Sales Order in this case may be an extra step that forces the next 2 steps of Sales Invoice and Delivery Note.

Maybe I am over-thinking the process. Could it be just a simple matter of using the completed Sales Order to immediately make the Sales Invoice while the customer is standing there and then let the Deliver Note be the final action?

Scenario #2 - Regardless of how the transaction above is created, when the customer starts the process with the sales rep and we find that 3 out of 4 Items for the sale are in the local warehouse and the 4th Item is in a warehouse across town, how would that be handled? For example a sofa, 2 chairs and an ottoman but the ottoman is across town.

I would not be able to complete the transaction if all Items sold MUST be in the same warehouse. How do you manage that?

Ultimately I would want to transfer the Item in the across town warehouse to my local warehouse so the delivery can all be bundled into one trip to the customer. This is where I get lost in the Sales Order, Sales Invoice, Delivery Note process.

If I am selling from a specific warehouse and yet one of the Items is still within reach but it is located across town, how do I get the sales process to NOT lock up because of a piece of the order being in a different warehouse?

This process of managing sales from multiple warehouses at the same time on the same transaction is where I am having the most trouble. I stared some trial and error testing of this and only confused myself even more. I mean I don’t want the sales reps to be able to sell something if it is not “somewhere” in the business so I don’t allow negative stock, but if Items are in multiple locations how do I get past that in the sales process? I am hopeful there is a way to do this in the system I just cant seem to get a handle on that yet.

Again, any help here is greatly appreciated.

BKM

1 Like

Thanks a lot man. This was helpful

I realized this is an old question and may a lot of new features made these scenarios easy beasy but I was searching and find this question so maybe others have the same questions
For the first scenario YES you can jumping the sales order and release a sales invoice without update stock option directly and you still able to release a delivery note
For the second scenario you can ask the far warehouse to send you the material or you and he transfer it to you or you can create multi delivery note for items

hope this answer help others