Isn;t a Sales Order number for a Sales Order. And a Purchase Order Number for a Purchase Order?
Where in the screenshots does he say that he entered ABC575757 ?
it is a basic understanding that the the reference number you enter on a form is the reference number for that document.
when you enter a reference number for the Sales Order, no matter what you enter, the reference number is for the sales order. not the received purchase order.
and when you copy the sales order to a sales invoice, the reference number of the sales order is copied over. why would anyone expect some other reference number to be copied over?
where do you have such restriction?
you actually have many options.
- you can enter the purchase order number as the sales order number.
- you could mention the purchase order number anywhere on the form like Description, Notes, etc.
- you could create custom fields.
@compuit your topic is quite long and confusing, so originally I didnāt see what the problem was either.
So I just want to confirm that I have understood the problem, which I believe is a problem that I have already raised with Lubos some time back.
Customer A sends you their purchase order which has purchase order number ABC0001
You create a sales order 125, which is automatically created by Manager. You put on the order details and the customer it applies to.
Then you convert that sales order to a sales invoice, which will carry over sales order number 125 to the field called āorderā and create an invoice number called 43. The client pays the invoice. You will then see both the invoice and the sales order will be marked as complete.
Which is exactly what should happen in terms of status of orders and invoices. So this part is working absolutely correctly.
But you currently have nowhere to put the customer Aās Purchase order number ABC0001 which is actually what should be showing on the Sales Invoice. Order number 125 (my sales order) is of no relevance to the customer in linking up invoice 43 to their purchase order ABC0001.
If I have understood you correctly, this is the crux of the problem correct? You are absolutely right. The internal sales order number 125 should not be showing on invoice 43 and when you change it to the customerās actual purchase order number everything breaks in terms of sales order status.
@lubos himself added my topic below to the ideas category. Could somebody change this to the bugs category, because this is more a bug than an idea and is the reason why I am still to date not using sales orders. Because itās not in the bugs category, I think he has forgotten about it. Sales order number should not be on the sales invoice. Even he himself agrees on this point.
Without the ability to include the customerās purchase order details on the sales invoice, it breaks the whole workflow which for me is as follows:
Sales Quote-client sends their Purchase order-my Sales Order-my sales invoice
Why not? It makes little sense to track internal transactions with external numbers from multiple sources, which could easily be duplicates. If you also want the customerās PO number, there are many places it can be included. But you cannot expect a status monitoring system to work with someone elseās numbers.
Lubos understands this and this is not what he is proposing. I believe (and I speak under correction), is that order number 125 will remain on sales order and link up to sales invoice. What he is doing is agreeing that the end customer has no interest in the sales order 125 reference as this reference is meaningless to them. If they have a query, they would use the sales invoice reference number. So the sales order number is redundant for the client.
This is why he added my topic to the ideas category as he wants to review the issue of having sales order number appear on sales invoice.
I am unclear as to whether Lubos is intending to create a new field on sales order called Customer PO, but this would make sense. Because the customer PO on the sales order needs to be carried over to the Sales Invoice - so when the client receives the invoice they can match that invoice up with their internal purchase order which they have already raised. Hence the need for the customer purchase order to be on both sales order and sales invoice.
I donāt believe that either Lubos, myself or Compuit is suggesting removing/replacing the sales order number. That needs to remain. The problem is that it serves no useful purpose to the end client and there is no linkage of customer purchase order number.
In short, there are two separate issues that myself and Compuit are trying to resolve. Linked but not necessarily directly related.
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Remove Sales Order reference from Sales invoice. Lubos has added this to the ideas category
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Have the ability to add customer purchase order number on sales order and carry this over to sales invoice.Then there is linkage between the customerās order form and the sales order form. I am hoping that Lubos will implement another reference field to add this as this is actually more important to the customer than the sales invoice or sales order number.
I think this is what should happen (reference to @delacor). This allows purchaser to track there purchase orders to what was delivered, invoiced and raised GRN on. Also, this is useful even when there is no sales order raised prior to invoicing. This requirement is required all the time where owner himself does not do all the activities of the business.
Maybe system can avoid printing Sales Order reference in the printed version of invoice as it is less/ not useful to customer.
This same requirement should be there for GDN because it can be issued prior to invoicing.
I agree with your suggestions: but input field for customers PO on Sales Order should not only carried over to Sales Invoice, but also to Delivery Note and Credit Note. No more custom fields necessary for this purpose.
Please add to your ideas discussion with the developers.
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The insistence by several forum members that sales order numbers have no place on sales invoices seems ridiculous to me. Customers constantly refer to sales quote numbers, sales invoice numbers, receipt numbers, and delivery note numbers, all generated by the seller. Anything that helps track down the transaction of interest. Why the opposition to sales orders?
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Sales order is issued to acknowledge the purchase order of the customer and to facilitate the allocation of internal resources to satisfy the customers order. Purchase order links documents and purchasing process for the buyer in the similar way as sales order does for the seller. Sales Order is more important for seller than the buyer.
Also, sales quote number will be stated in buyerās purchase order. By looking at this seller can easily identify which quote should be converted to sales order. Hope this is clear. @Tut
Idk if my opinion here adds any value to whatās already been said but It doesnāt hurt to hear one more opinion.
I think it would be nice to be able to carry over PO information from SO to invoice automatically as @compuit suggested BUT I think itās a bad idea to drop the SO for being just an āinternalā reference.
Businesses of all sorts and sizes exchange SO numbers with customers ranging from big tech giants like google and amazon to shipping agencies to car dealers to even the smallest fast food joints.
I think the reference number has no preference to how it should be used but itās the users who determine how to use it.
I also think that allowing the two references to coexist is the solution here, they can be called PO and SO, or alternatively ā¦
and keep the āOrderā label for the manual field. The user can then suppress one or both of them using Themes, Extensions or whatever.
I just remembered this:
Which is true.
And this:
Which is false.
Since the SO is āinternalā then you should use it internally to link your documents. The custom fields would then carry over automatically.
So the only remaining part is not wanting the SO number to show in the final document. Itās a valid request for your case @compuit, but many businesses share their Order # with customers. What should they do then? Whose preference has priority?
Create a custom theme or simply call your custom field something really obvious like āCustomer Orderā or āCustomer reference.ā I would also settle for renaming the default order field like @AJD suggested.
@Tut is also right about this:
Because if the default field is switched off, thereās no way to show the SO # without manually typing it in ā which is redundant since itās already there to begin with, whereas the PO# would be typed in once any which way ā preferably when the PO is received and SO is created and not in the invoice stage.
I think this post started with the wrong interpretation of the descriptor " Order Number " on the Invoice Form.
In the program, Order Number has the meaning of SO Number and PO Number. That is, because there is only 1 Segment used for the descriptors for SO Number and PO Number. Why not have 2 Segments for the descriptors of SO Number and PO Number. If the Order Number Field on the Invoice will show the description as Sales Order Number or just SO Number, it shouldnāt hurt anybody.
As for the Customers PO, a Custom Field can hold any information of any length and it can be carried over from Sales Order to Delivery Note, Invoice and Credit Note. It might be difficult to use an additional input field for a Customer PO that consists of some 30 to 50 characters in the area on the form where other important information like issue date, reference etc are placed right now.
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I see the issue as different client basis.
Amazon, fast food joints etc are usually dealing with the general public.
Whereas many companies like mine only provide services to business, not consumers. In my world (and a lot of other companies), dealing with business to business can be very different from dealing with business to member of the public as it were.
My clients have absolutely no use for my sales order number. They have my quote reference number if they have any questions about an order that they have placed and when they get the sales invoice, they have the invoice number which they can use to query me about any aspect of the order - along with the sales quote reference number.
What my clients do is create a purchase order which they send to me to as official authorisation of the order. This needs to be put on my sales order and show up on my sales invoice. Then when they get the invoice, they can look up the purchase order number on that invoice to find their purchase order on their system and convert their purchase order to their purchase invoice. That is the main use of having the customer purchase order number on sales order and invoice.
Nowhere is the sales order form or reference number required for my clients and judging by other people posting, they also regard the sales order as an internal form not meant for customers. I could send them a sales order as confirmation that the order is being processed which is probably what Amazon etc are doing. But in my line of work, a simple email reply to say that I am on it, is sufficient as I am not a retailer dealing with thousands of clients.
I think that the sales order/sales invoice form should accommodate the needs of both types of companies.It would seem that there is a 50/50 split on companies that actually send sales orders to customers and companies that donāt. So Manager should be able to accommodate this requirement instead of only pleasing 50% of users. So there should be an option to include/exclude sales order reference on the sales invoice.
More importantly, the customer purchase order number is actually essential to link their orders with my sales orders in the manner I suggested above. I donāt want a custom field. I want this built into the program and linked up the way the other reference fields are as it is actually a very important and necessary field. It is the single biggest reason why I am still not using the sales order feature yet. For those business that donāt need this feature, it has no effect on them as a field that is empty doesnāt show on the form, so there is no impact. But it has a huge impact for businesses like mine where there is a proper process to follow for the ordering process.
Dalacor refreshing to find someone who appears to grasp the issue. Guys please the purchase order number referred to is one received from customers. This is the relevant purchase order to appear on the customers Sales Invoices (The External document). I digress, just to explain - The customer Order number is external to the manager system and for the customer their purchase order must appear on their Sales Invoices we generate, otherwise they refuse to pay the invoice saying āwhat authority do we haveā to charge them.
This process is generally with larger businesses operating in a similar way we do where we too do not pay accounts from suppliers if they do not have our Manager generated PO on their Purchase Invoices sent to us.
OK all this can be accomplished but it changes the status of the Sales Order back to uninvoiced.
Please follow the demonstration ālet us resort to picturesā. Just for the record the demo Customer Purchase Order / Order number ABC575757 is a bit long so only the 75757 part shows in the screen shot but fully in the Sales Invoice.
I feel like I am just repeating myself but In a nutshell for us to achieve the desired outcome for our customers it reverts the SO back to uninvoiced state which is the reason for this post.
The finance people check up on the crew that sales orders are being processed the crew say āyes it is all doneā the manager says āno, it is notā and we have a staff problem on our hands to defuse.
I have question. If you only had to put 1 number on a receipt or payment, which number would that be? In our case we would use the Invoice number. Similar your client or supplier would do the same. The numbers that are floating around here are for internal tracking to what happened from quote, via order, to invoice. These would thus be for the business to consider similar the customer (or client in business to business). Internal tracking numbers for each do not need replicating as they are of no use to any other party than those wanting to track what happened internally.
So it works as advertised. I create for example a Sales Order in Manager and let it assign a ref number, then I copy the Sales Order to Sales Invoice and the existing reference number is copied to the appropriate and is referred to as Sales Order number (for internal tracking). The Sales Invoice now also gets assigned an Invoice Number for purposes of external tracking. Checking the Sales Order status now also indicates rightly that it is invoiced.
Likewise, the customer (client) may have first put in a Purchase Order and assigned a reference for internal tracking. The company (above) will send an Invoice and that could show their Order Number but more importantly the Invoice Number (if complicated I agree that it better be labeled Our ref, or even better delete it as can be confused with Invoice Number or own Sales Order number). Important is that the customer (client) enters the Invoice number for external tracking.
In a nutshell, Manager follows the right process but it would indeed be better if the own reference numbers are not displayed to the customers (clients) or named in such a way that no confusion can occur.
Eko please read post just ahead of your post.
I have read all posts in this thread. So not sure why you come to a conclusion I didnāt.
Do you understand the problem? - OK all this can be accomplished but it changes the status of the Sales Order back to uninvoiced.
We not saying things are working as advertised but there is a problem where some internal referencing stuff.
Is where the problem lies as it mixes internal and external processes.
- issue Sales Quote. will have internal ref for the Business
- receive Purchase Order. will have Internal ref for the Client
- enter Sales Order. will have internal ref for the Business
- issue Sales Invoice. will have Invoice Number xternal to the Business nd can be used by Client for payment reference
@dalacor a day ago answered quite extensively but in my view is mistaken in below assumption.
But you currently have nowhere to put the customer Aās Purchase order number ABC0001 which is actually what should be showing on the Sales Invoice. Order number 125 (my sales order) is of no relevance to the customer in linking up invoice 43 to their purchase order ABC0001.
There is no need for the business to put the customer purchase order number on the sales invoice.