Creating a Sales Order

A Sales Order records an order received from a customer. It is the document that commits you to supplying agreed goods, at agreed prices, by an agreed date — and it is the starting point for delivery, invoicing and collection.

This page is the reference walkthrough for the manual. It is longer than most, because it covers the whole task end to end and shows every pattern the other pages use.

Overview

A Sales Order sits between the quotation (an offer, binding on nobody) and the delivery note (goods actually leaving). Raising one does three things:

• it records what the customer has committed to buy, at what price;
• it reserves stock, so the same goods are not promised twice;
• it creates the pending quantity that delivery and invoicing work against.

A Sales Order has no accounting effect. Nothing reaches the ledger until a Sales Invoice is confirmed. That is why an order can be cancelled cleanly, and why the order book never agrees with the sales figure in your accounts.

Where the Sales Order sits in the order-to-cash cycle

Step	Action	Who	Result
1	Sales Quotation	Sales Executive	Prices offered. No commitment either way.
2	Sales Order	Sales Executive	Customer commits. Stock reserved.
3	Delivery Note	Store Keeper	Goods dispatched. Stock reduced.
4	Sales Invoice	Accounts Clerk	Receivable created. Ledger posted.
5	Receipt	Accounts Clerk	Payment collected and allocated.

Where the Sales Order sits in the order-to-cash cycle

Order statuses

Order status as it appears in the list

DraftConfirmedPart DeliveredDeliveredClosedCancelled

A status is never set by hand — it follows from what has been delivered and invoiced.

Quotation or order — which should you raise?

Aspect	Sales Quotation	Sales Order
Customer has committed	No — it is an offer	Yes
Reserves stock	No	Yes
Accounting effect	None	None
Can be revised freely	Yes, any time	Only while in Draft
Expires	On its validity date	No — stays open until delivered or cancelled
Appears in the order book	No	Yes

Prerequisites

Before you begin

Sales Executive5 min

• The customer exists in the Customer Master and is Active
• The products you are ordering exist with a unit of measure
• A price list covers those products for this customer on the order date
• Your role has the Create permission for Sales Order
• The financial period of the order date is open

Important

Check that the customer is Active and not blocked before you start. A blocked customer can be selected but the order will refuse to save, and you will have typed the whole order for nothing.

Opening the Sales Order screen

Navigate to

1. Sales
2. Transactions
3. Sales Order

The list opens showing orders for the current month, newest first. Use it to check whether the order has already been entered — duplicate orders are the most common data-entry error on this screen.

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The Sales Order list, filtered to open orders.

Click New Order to open a blank order.

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The Sales Order screen: header fields above, line items below, totals on the right.

Tip

Ctrl+N opens a new order from anywhere in the Sales module, and Ctrl+S saves it. Experienced users enter an entire order without touching the mouse.

Procedure

Create a sales order

BeginnerSales Executive5 min

Set the order date

The date defaults to today. Change it only if the order was genuinely received on a different day — the date determines which price list applies and which period reports count it in.

Order DateDateRequired

The date the customer placed the order.

Default

Today

Example

03-10-2026

Validation

Must fall inside an open financial period. Cannot be more than 30 days in the future without the Forward Dating permission.

Select the customer

Start typing the customer name or code. The lookup shows active customers only, with each one’s credit limit and current outstanding balance so you can see the credit position before you commit.

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The customer lookup, showing credit status alongside each customer.

CustomerDropdownRequired

Select the customer for this transaction.

Validation

Active customers only. A blocked customer can be selected but the order will not save.

Selecting the customer fills in the billing address, price list, payment terms and tax treatment from the Customer Master. Each of those can be overridden on this order if your role permits it.

Tip

The applicable price list is selected automatically from the customer’s configuration. You do not need to choose it, and in most roles you cannot.

Confirm the delivery address and date

The billing address is used for tax; the shipping address is where the goods go. If the customer has several shipping addresses, pick the right one now — changing it after the delivery note has been raised means cancelling the delivery.

Sales Order header fields

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description	Notes
Order No.	Auto	Read-only	—	Allocated from the Sales Order series when the order is saved.	Gap-free. Cancel rather than delete.
Order Date	Date	Yes	Today	Date the order was received. Drives price list selection.
Customer	Dropdown	Yes	—	The customer placing the order. Active customers only.
Billing Address	Dropdown	Yes	—	Registered address. Sets the place of supply and the tax split.	Defaults from the Customer Master.
Shipping Address	Dropdown	Yes	—	Where the goods are to be delivered.	Defaults to the customer’s default shipping address.
Reference	Text	No	—	The customer’s own purchase order number.	Printed on the invoice. Enter it — customers reconcile on it.
Delivery Date	Date	No	—	Date the customer expects the goods.	Drives the dispatch worklist.
Price List	Dropdown	Read-only	—	Resolved from the customer and the order date.	Editable only with the Override Pricing permission.
Salesperson	Dropdown	No	You	Credited with the order for commission and reporting.
Narration	Text area	No	—	Notes carried through to the delivery note and invoice.

Sales Order header fields

Add the products

Add one row per product. Enter the product, then the quantity; the rate, discount and tax come from the price list and the product master. Press Tab at the end of a row to start the next one.

Sales Order line item fields

Field	Type	Required	Default	Description	Notes
Product	Lookup	Yes	—	The product being ordered. Active products only.	Search on code or description.
Description	Text	No	—	Defaults from the product. Editable for this order only.	Printed on the delivery note and invoice.
UOM	Dropdown	Yes	Base UOM	Unit the quantity is expressed in.	Alternate units convert automatically.
Quantity	Number	Yes	—	How much the customer is ordering.	Must be greater than zero. Decimals allowed per the UOM.
Rate	Amount	Yes	—	Price per unit, resolved from the price list.	Editable only with the Override Pricing permission.
Discount %	Percent	No	0	Line discount, applied before tax.	Capped by the maximum discount on your role.
Tax	Dropdown	Read-only	—	Derived from the product’s tax code and the place of supply.
Amount	Amount	Read-only	—	Quantity × rate, less discount, plus tax.

Sales Order line item fields

Note

Rate and Tax are read-only for most roles. That is deliberate: a rate typed by hand bypasses the price list, and the difference only surfaces when the customer queries the invoice.

Check the totals

The summary panel on the right breaks the order down. Compare the grand total against the customer’s purchase order before going further.

Totals panel

Field	Type	Description	Notes
Taxable value	Computed	Sum of line amounts after discount, before tax.
CGST / SGST / IGST	Computed	Tax by component. Which components appear depends on the place of supply.
Round off	Computed	Adjustment to the nearest unit, posted to the round-off account.
Grand total	Computed	What the customer will be invoiced.

Totals panel

Save the Sales Order

Click Save to create the Sales Order. The order number is allocated and the status becomes Confirmed.

If the order takes the customer past their credit limit, you will see this:

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The credit limit warning. With Credit Check set to Block, Save is refused instead.

Warning

Whether you can continue depends on the customer’s Credit Check setting: Warn lets you override, Block refuses the save outright. Overriding a warning is recorded against your user ID.

Expected result

The order is saved with a number such as SO/2026/00142 and a status of Confirmed. It appears in the Sales Order list, the ordered quantity is reserved against stock, and the order shows on the dispatch worklist for its delivery date.

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The saved order. The number is allocated, the status is Confirmed, and Create Invoice is now available.

What to do next

1

Deliver the goods

Raise a delivery note against the order to dispatch the stock.

Open

2

Raise the invoice

Invoice the delivered quantity and create the receivable.

Open

3

Collect payment

Record the receipt and allocate it against the invoice.

Open

Platform notes

Desktop browserTabletMobile app

The full line-item grid, keyboard navigation and the totals panel are all available. This is the supported way to enter orders.

Order entry works, but the line-item grid scrolls horizontally below 1280px. Usable for one or two lines; awkward for twenty.

Field staff can raise an order with up to five lines and no discount override. Anything more complex has to be entered on a desktop. The app queues orders raised offline and submits them on reconnect.

Important notes

Note

A Sales Order has no accounting effect. Your sales figures will not change until a Sales Invoice is confirmed, which is why the order book and the ledger never agree — and should not.

Tip

Enter the customer’s own purchase order number in Reference. It is printed on the invoice, and it is what the customer’s accounts team reconciles against. Leaving it blank generates a query almost every time.

Important

Stock is reserved when the order is confirmed, not when it is delivered. A long-dated order holds stock that cannot be promised to anyone else, so close or cancel orders the customer has walked away from.

Warning

Once an order is part delivered it can no longer be cancelled, only short-closed. Short-closing releases the undelivered balance and leaves the delivered part intact.

Danger

Cancelling a confirmed order releases its stock reservation immediately. If a delivery note was being prepared against it, the picker may already have the goods on a trolley. Tell the store before you cancel.

Common problems

Problems raising a sales order

The rate comes in as zero

No price list resolves for that product, customer and order date. Open Masters → Pricing → Price List and check the validity window and the scope. An expired price list is the usual cause, and it fails silently at month boundaries.

The customer is not in the lookup

The lookup shows active customers only. Open the Customer Master and check Status, and that the customer’s group is one your role may transact with.

Save is refused with a credit limit message

The customer’s Credit Check is set to Block and this order would take them past their limit. Either collect against the outstanding invoices first, or ask a manager to raise the limit on the Customer Master.

The quantity will not accept decimals

The unit of measure is configured as whole-number only. Switch to an alternate UOM that allows decimals, or change the order to a whole quantity.

The tax is zero on every line

Either the customer’s tax category is Exempt or Unregistered, or the products have no tax code. Check the Tax tab on the customer first, then the HSN code on the product.

The order will not save and no message appears

Scroll up — the first invalid field is outlined in red at the top of the form, and on a long order it can be above the visible area.

Practice

Work through these before taking live orders

• Raise an order for an existing customer with three line items
• Add a line, then delete it, and confirm the totals recalculate
• Apply a line discount and check the effect on the tax figure
• Raise an order that breaches the credit limit, and read the warning
• Save the order and find it again from the Sales Order list
• Open the saved order and raise a delivery note against it

Creating a sales order end to end

Walks through the full procedure on this page, including the credit limit override.

6:42

Play videoLoads YouTubeCreating a sales order end to end

Frequently asked questions

Sales Order FAQ

QCan I edit a Sales Order after saving it?

While the order is in Draft, every field is editable. Once it is Confirmed, you can change the delivery date, the narration and the reference, but not the customer, the products or the rates. For those, cancel the order and raise a new one — or amend it, if your role has the Amend Order permission, which keeps the number and records a revision.

QHow do I part deliver an order?

Raise a delivery note against the order and enter the quantity actually being dispatched on each line. The order stays open with the balance showing as pending, and its status becomes Part Delivered. Repeat until the order is fully delivered or you short-close the balance.

QWhy can I not change the rate?

Rates come from the price list, and overriding them needs the Override Pricing permission — which most sales roles do not have. If a customer has genuinely negotiated a different price, the right fix is a customer-specific price list, so the next order gets it automatically. See Price List.

QWhat happens to the stock reservation if I cancel?

It is released immediately and the stock becomes available to other orders. Nothing is posted to the ledger, because a Sales Order never posted anything in the first place.

QCan I create an invoice directly from the order?

Yes — Create Invoice on a confirmed order copies the lines straight through. That skips the delivery note, so stock is reduced by the invoice instead. It is the right route for services and for goods collected from your counter; for anything dispatched, raise the delivery note.

QHow do I find orders a customer has not collected?

Run the Sales Order list with status Confirmed and a delivery date in the past. Those are orders that were committed to and never dispatched.

Related documentation

• Customer MasterCreate the customer, and set their credit limit and price list.
• Product MasterDefine the products, units of measure and tax codes.
• Price ListControl the rates that resolve onto an order.
• DeliveryDispatch goods against this order.
• Sales InvoiceInvoice the order and create the receivable.
• ReceiptCollect payment and allocate it against the invoice.
• Sales ReportAnalyse what has been sold.
• Sales Order (SuperMandi)SuperMandiThe slot-based equivalent in the SuperMandi platform.