This chapter lists seven basic guidelines that should be followed for sales orders to work properly and provide good results.
1. Never maintain standing sales orders that never get closed
Never maintain standing sales orders that never get closed to which lines are added as new orders are received. Standing sales orders get increasingly cluttered and unmanageable over time with accumulated lines that greatly complicate forms printing, order picking, and order tracking and reporting. Instead, always enter each new order on its own sales order that gets closed when the order is fully shipped and invoiced.
2. Do not mix multiple shipping addresses in a single sales order
When a customer order includes multiple shipping destinations where various lines are to be shipped to different addresses, split the customer order into a separate sales order for each shipping address. This is the only way to properly manage the shipping process, to print the correct shipping address on invoices, and to avoid potential errors with sales tax codes and invoice reversals.
3. Do not change line item required dates except for blanket orders
Always leave the calculated line item Required Date as is because it is an internal target date that drives MRP generation and reflects your company's Time to Shipment strategy. The Required Date also determines job and picking priority. The only exception is when the customer places a blanket order with a set of future shipments, in which case you will enter a line for each shipment and override the calculated Required Date with the requested ship date.
4. Use the Late Supply screen to update expected ship dates
Use the Late Supply screen to update line item Estimated Ship dates for sales order line items that will not meet their Required Date due to late supply from jobs or purchase orders of insufficient stock on hand. The Expected Ship date is for customer communications and can be freely updated as needed without affecting job or picking priority.
5. Use the Picking Manager to manage the order picking process
Use the Picking Manager screen as a front-end to Order Picking because it manages the picking process by allocating stock on hand to sales orders in earliest required date order. Color coding indicates which orders can be fully or partially picked for shipment.
6. Never reverse a customer invoice to adjust costs
Never reverse and repost a customer invoice for the purpose of adjusting line item costs. From a costing stanpoint, inventory transacton costs in DBA are never corrected after the fact because items get immediately issued and incorporated into other items. From an accounting standpoint, once an invoice is sent to a customer, it cannot be tampered with unless the customer receives an explanatory credit memo and corrected invoice.
7. Never use sales orders as pseudo-jobs
Never use sales orders as pseudo-jobs because the sales order lacks the planning, costing, prioritization, and tracking capabilities that can only be achieved with an actual job. In particular, do not use sales kits as a substitute for bills of manufacturing.
