There are a number of potential routes through a sales order in Merchanter.  Below is the basic flow of sales orders:

• Basket - the Basket is used to pull together products that a customer may be interested and can be used to add those products to a Retail Sale, Draft Order, Quote or Purchase Order.
• Draft Order - a draft order is an initial way to build an order before making any commitment to quote or place the order.  It has no affect on customer credit, stock allocations, etc. and can be voided if not required.  No documents are generated from a Draft Order
• Retail Sale - a retail sale is a sales order that defaults to using a generic cash customer record (Trade Counter Sales), with a supply type of Supply Now.  If a credit customer is selected the order can be added to their account.  The Retail Sale does not visit the order lines for editing.
• Quote - A quote order is generated when a quote is issued to a customer.  This can go through a number of quote sub statuses
  • Draft Quote - building the quote up prior to issuing a quote
  • Live Quote - once the quote has been issued to the customer and is not a multiple orders quote
  • Active Quote - once the quote has been issued to the customer but is a multiple orders quote.  Will stay Active until it expires.
  • Fulfilled Quote - once the quote has been accepted by the customer and converted to an order
  • Expired Quote - the quote has passed the expiry date, or been manually set to expired
  • Cancelled Quote - customer no longer interested in these items
• Bulk Order - A bulk order is an optional feature to handle larger sales orders that are likely to have multiple call offs against the bulk order over time.
• Allocated Order - This is when the customer places the order and the stock is allocated to that order
• Picking Sub Statuses - the optional picking sub statuses can be used to allocate pickers and pick orders prior to supply
  • To Pick - Allocated order in need of picking
  • Picking - an order out with a picker for picking
  • Picked - an order that the items have been picked/milled, but the order has not been supplied
• Dispatch - the point of either sending a vehicle to deliver the items, or collection by the customer
• Supplied - this is an optional stage to confirm that the customer has accepted delivery/collection of the goods and enter any items that were rejected
• Audits & Invoicing - the stages of issuing invoices to customers
  • Cash Sale Invoices - these are generated automatically at the point a cash sale is fully supplied and fully paid.  (Prior to full payment a Proforma invoice can be generated)
  • Audit Checks - prior to generating an invoice all credit orders at a status of dispatch or supplied are checked by management
  • Checked - orders ready for invoicing
  • Invoiced (issued) - Generating a credit account invoice and issuing to the customer via email or print (post) and automatically sending to the sales ledger on the financials
  • Invoiced (complete) - once an invoice has been paid and reconciled on the sales ledger of the financials software it is marked as Complete