Why not edit the sales order outright? If customer changes order, then I think editing original sales order is fine if you accept the changes.
Yes, this is what I’m thinking. For many, it would basically eliminate need for tracking codes.
I cam a cross other software where it is capable to handle Sales Oder in line items for all the Voucher except Sales invoice which is valid point
it could be in voucher base also but having this will give big flexibility for cost allocation especially in Payments and Purchase Invoices
I think starting point can be Sales Order and also Purchase Order. Sales Quotes and Purchase Quotes should be optional, especially as it would only result in a yes/no situation to proceed which is implicit when one starts with SO and PO. We never use quotes but we use PO and SO.
Tracking Code has to be in the system could be consider as sub Sales Order should be allocated to Tracking Code.
this will fulfil the idea for Subgroup Tracking Code partially
@lubos very excited to see we are looking into addressing this issue.
Let’s break this down otherwise it becomes too complicated.
Quote
Sales Quotes - I like the idea of having either lost/won or open/closed as the status. There are arguments in favour of both options.
Open/Closed would mean more to marketing and sales people to know which quotes are current and which need to be chased up with clients.
Lost/Won on the other hand would help businesses to identify their quote success. However, I can only see the quote success feature being at all useful if there is somewhere to explain why the quote was not accepted and for a report to show the percentage outcomes of each status. I don’t know if this could be done programmatically. as there might be too many variables.
For example, I can think of price, speed of response, client staying with current provider or what we quoted was not what the client felt was best for them and they went with another provider. So that’s already four variables.
I like what @Abeiku shows in his graph there. He has open, closed, cancelled and past due and overdue.
This is possibly a better option than a yes/no option as I think that there is a clear difference between a cancelled quote where the client has just not got around to ordering anything as opposed to losing the business to a competitor.
Sales Orders
I think that @Abeiku is also on the right track with regards to sales orders. I think converting a sales order to an invoice is not enough as you may only be invoicing a part of the sales order. Fully agree with this. There needs to be a progress chart similar to the picture he posted. So we need to be able to part invoice from a sales order.
I don’t know if this logic could be or even should be applied to sales quotes. Technically the client could only order part of the quote. But I believe that recommended practice is for the business to cancel the first quote and issue a new quote with the client’s latest request?
I think that this progress bar is something that we didn’t even realise that we were missing in Manager. There is no way currently to keep track of what has been delivered and what is still to be ordered etc.
So I am in full agreement. Having the ability to track the progress of an order from company purchasing goods, to company delivering goods and then invoicing goods needs to be factored in. @lubos I did not fully understand what you were saying about projects until I reread abeiku’s post. - I think progress of an order is perhaps more relevant.
I will explain in an example that I currently have in real world use.
My client requests a quote for network cabling, installation of five projectors and five pull down screens.
I will order the screens from my cabling contractor and he will supply those pull down screens, plus do all the cabling. I will order the projectors from another supplier.
So my client pays me, I pay one supplier for the projectors and my cabling company for both the pull down screens and the network cabling. So talking about projects here is slightly different from the sales order process that I am talking about above. The above is more about tracking where I am with the sales process - what needs to be ordered, delivered etc. The Project management here would be more about me being able to see what profit I am making on that particular project.
So I am not seeing sales progress as being the same thing as project profit calculation?
Would it not make more sense to link certain purchase invoices to a sales order? In my example above of my cabling company, I would create a purchase invoice for him for the work done for that client.
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No the starting point needs to be sales Quotes. You may not use them, but many companies, myself included use Sales Quotes to er quote the client. This is the starting point as quotes need to be converted to sales orders. I don’t think that this represents a problem. The bulk of the complexity of this topic will come with the sales and purchase orders not the quotes. The quotes largely will not link with anything other than the sales order.
My understanding of tracking codes was that Lubos was intending to make tracking codes handle divisions such as New York and London and implement something separate for project management. I don’t think that tracking codes should be used for project management. Keep it for divisions such as Cabling or Computers or New York and London scenario not specific customer orders.
I would say when both delivery and invoices are 100% complete.
Would this topic tie in with this topic. Item Serial Number
I can see the point of including the serial numbers factor for inventory if there is going to be a link between ordering equipment from supplier to deliver to client. Serial Numbers would be particularly relevant here.
The first step is to adjust data entry forms so sales orders, sales quotes, sales invoices and delivery notes can be properly linked up. Right now it is controlled by free form fields which is not enough.
So the latest version (21.4.45) changes Order number field so instead of entering arbirtary text, there is dropdown to select an actual sales order which invoice relates to.
Once you link sales order to sales invoice, under Sales Orders tab there will be new column called Invoiced
Invoiced represents total sales invoices linked to specific sales order. So you can see at glance which orders have been invoiced and how much.
This is just the first step but eventually this will lead to automatic Status column which can give definitive answer which orders are fulfilled and which have pending tasks (e.g. deliver goods to customer, make invoice etc.)
We can also add another column called Costs which can represent expenses incurred on sales order. This would allow to show profit etc. So sales orders could be good mechanism for job-costing as well.
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I think that this is a good direction to go down. the “costs” column and the invoiced columns represents two very different things and probably will be used by different departments. The first is about assessing profit per project and the second is partially about managing the sales funnel in that you can see what has been invoiced and by how much.
I am assuming that you will be using the Manager green, orange and red to dictate closed, current open and overdue open statuses. Perhaps cancelled can be grey. It needs to be colour coded making it easy to see what is open and closed similar to how invoices in Manager work.
I was thinking that you would do quotes first, but thinking about it, i suspect that it would be easier to work with orders first and essentially work backwards to quotes as the order is probably central to the linking.
I will upgrade my live version when I have fully tested this on my test version. One question I can see cropping up. If the Sales orders are currently free text, what will happen to all the data in that field in previous years?
This is probably something for the future, but now that that invoicing against orders (both sales and purchase) is being addressed, are there any plans to introduce a record of commitments (owing and receivable - from sales/purchase order outstandings) to allow reporting commitments in a column in the P&L report?
I assume so. That would be the logical conclusion of the progress chart that will come into play with the status column. That data has to be stored somewhere.
Yeah, that data will yield total commitments, but will it yield commitment amounts itemised against each income/expense account?
Great, thanks! Can you please also do the same for Purchase Order and Purchase Invoice.
It will be done, this is just the start.
When I originally requested this idea - status of quotes and orders, I was thinking more of simple statuses, not realising the need for a progress sales funnel and the fact that it could be used to manage project profit calculation. Your little chart is actually solving three different problems and possibly more because the sales funnel being advocated here would potentially allow serial numbers to be linked between my supplier and end client. So actually four problems would be solved!
Thank you 
The latest version (21.4.49) is adding automatic Status column under Sales Quotes tab.
When new quote is created, the status is set to Active.
There are 4 possible statuses:
- Active
- Expired
- Accepted
- Cancelled
If expiry date is set up on sales quote…
Then if quote is not accepted or cancelled by the expiry date, the status will change to Expired.
To make sales quote accepted, simply copy sales quote to New Sales Order. There is new field on Sales Order called Quote number which will automatically contain sales quote you are copying.
If sales quote has any linked sales order, then status for sales quote will be Accepted.
If sales quote has been declined, then edit sales quote and check the Cancelled checkbox.
This will set sales quote status to Cancelled.
On the list of sales quotes, to make it better for management purposes, sales quotes reaching status Accepted or Cancelled become gray and move to the bottom of the list.
This way Active and Expired sales quotes are more visible because they are both current and need resolution (either by converting them to sales order or cancelling them).
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