Understanding Sales Orders
A sales order records a customer’s commitment to buy before the goods go out the door. It’s the hub of the selling flow: it tracks what was ordered, where the goods will come from, what has shipped, and what has been invoiced, all on one document.
When to use a sales order
Use a sales order whenever there’s a gap between the customer ordering and you supplying: goods to pick, items to buy in or manufacture, multiple deliveries, or staged invoicing. If you’re selling something on the spot with nothing to track, you can skip straight to an invoice.
Creating a sales order
- From scratch: create a new sales order, pick the client, and add lines.
- From a quote: on an accepted quote, click Create Sales Order. The quote’s lines carry over and the two documents stay linked.
You can also generate a quote from a sales order if you need to send formal pricing after the fact.
The header
Alongside the automatically assigned sales order number, the header records:
- Order date and due date
- Customer purchase order number: the customer’s own PO reference. Fast2Task warns you if the same customer PO number is already used on another order, so duplicates get caught early.
- Reference fields for anything else you track
- Currency and exchange rate, for foreign-currency orders
- Tax type and whether prices are tax inclusive
- Billing and shipping addresses: filled from the client’s saved locations, editable per order
- Sales rep
Lines
Sales order lines use the standard line editor; see Working with Document Lines. On sales orders each line also shows its unit cost and margin, and carries its own fulfillment state.
The lifecycle
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New | Created, not yet confirmed |
| Approved | Confirmed and ready to action |
| Scheduled / In progress / On hold | Optional working states |
| Fulfilled | Every line has a fulfillment source |
| Packaged | Goods are packed on shipments |
| Invoiced | The order has been invoiced |
| Cancelled | No longer proceeding |
The three stages on the page
Below the lines, the sales order walks you through supply:
- Fulfill: choose where each line’s goods come from (stock, a purchase order, a work order, a kit, or non-stock). See Fulfilling Sales Orders.
- Dispatch: pack fulfilled items onto shipments, print packing slips, and mark them dispatched.
- Invoice: invoice whole shipments or selected lines, including progressive invoicing across multiple deliveries.
Dispatch and invoicing are covered together in Dispatch, Shipments and Invoicing.
Printing and sending
Use the document actions to generate a PDF of the sales order for printing or emailing to your customer, using your configured document template.