So, I’m new to the system and I think my process logic might be wrong.
I have customers and I often times prepare quotes. So, I send them a quotation and they approve it and send me a check/payment. I then convert the quote into a Sales Order. Next, I apply the payments to the Sale Order or Sales Order(s). From here, I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or not.
I then need to order the products from my supplier, so I go and create a materials request from the sales order. I then take that and create a purchase order.
Is this the right process? Or am I overdoing it. Can I just do quote → invoice → purchase order?
Also, for some reason, having followed my previous steps, my client now shows a negative amount balance in the exact amount of the sales order/quote. I only applied one payment, and it was to the sales order, not the quote, so I believe their balance should be zero. Any thoughts?
Hi Matt,
Here’s the flow chart for the… flow.
You should apply a Payment Entry to a Sales Invoice.
Often a Sales Order will match the Sales Invoice exactly, especially in service type industries. It’s there because sometimes you can’t satisfy what a customer wants with one [delivery note + sales order], so this allows for one-to-one, many-to-one and one-to-many (but not really many-to-many transparently), whatever it takes to get the customer satisfied.
If you want to keep it simple, start with the Sales Invoice - that’s how I do it in my consulting practice - if you’re keeping track of physical products, you should be using more doctypes.
So in theory, I could just create Sales Invoices, like you do, instead of Sales Orders first. My “practice” for most customers situations would be…
Customer wants a quote, I create a quote for them. They accept the quote and send in payment. I process the payment and then order equipment. When equipment arrives I set up the task to deliver/install/etc.
So for me, I think the process would be:
Quote, to Sales Invoice. Sales Invoice, Apply Payment
Sales Invoice > Material Request (can that be done?). Material Request to Purchase Order. Purchase Order to Receipt upon receipt. Purchase Invoice to pay for items.
And of course, if I need any stock items to be created (they don’t exist yet), I would create the items before creating the quote.
