Sales orders
The central order for selling products to a customer, driving fulfillment from creation through payment.
A sales order is the central order for selling products to a customer, driving the fulfillment process from creation through payment. It brings together customer context, commercial terms, fulfillment setup, and line items into a single operational document.
What a sales order includes
Every sales order combines five areas:
- Customer context: customer identity, customer PO number, type group, and contacts
- Commercial terms: payment terms, shipping terms, pricing, and discount codes
- Fulfillment setup: ship-to and bill-to addresses, carrier and service option, priority
- Line items: products, quantities, unit prices, and extended totals
- Operational status: where the order sits in the lifecycle
Why sales orders matter
Sales orders are the source of truth for downstream work:
- Picking: order lines and quantities drive warehouse work
- Shipping: addresses, carrier, and service level determine how products are delivered
- Invoicing: customer, terms, bill-to, and line values generate invoices
- Payments: reconcile against invoiced order value
- Reporting: sales, fulfillment, and customer analytics all flow from order data
Customer defaults auto-fill
When you select a customer, the order is automatically populated with their defaults:
| Default | Source |
|---|---|
| Payment terms | Customer payment terms |
| Shipping terms | Customer shipping terms |
| Carrier and carrier option | Customer default carrier |
| Priority | Customer priority |
| Sales rep | Customer default sales rep |
| Bill-to address | Customer billing address |
| Ship-to address | Customer shipping address |
All defaults can be overridden per order.
Pricing on lines
Each order line's unit price is resolved through a pricing stack:
- Base product price: the product's default sell price
- Customer price: overrides the base price if a matching customer price exists
- Volume discount: percentage reduction based on order quantity and tier thresholds
- Discount code: order-level percentage or fixed-amount reduction
Line prices can also be manually overridden by unlocking the price on individual lines.
Lifecycle
A sales order moves through a defined lifecycle:
- Create: select customer, confirm terms and addresses, add line items. Order starts as an Estimate.
- Review: confirm pricing, discounts, promised date, notes, and contacts
- Generate production run (optional): create production work for manufactured items while the order is still in Estimate
- Issue: commit the order to operations; creates a pick, allocates inventory, and optionally sends an acknowledgement email
- Pick, pack, ship: warehouse fulfills the order
- Invoice: invoices are generated from shipped/processed order value
- Pay and close: payments are applied; order reaches completed state
A fulfilled order can be re-opened (returned to issued status) to make corrections before closing.
Editing rules
A sales order can be edited as long as:
- It has not been fully fulfilled
- No shipments have been sent
- It is not in a completed state
also affect the order: hold all blocks issuance, and hold shipment blocks shipping activity.
Getting started
Next: Create a sales order