How to read your wholesale order book

The order book is the answer to "what have we actually got on". It is Wholesale › Orders, a page titled Wholesale orders, with every open order from every account in one table. See What is wholesale? for the ideas behind the columns.

The header has three buttons: Short on stock, Accounts and New order. Your workspace may use its own word for orders; Settings › Terminology shows both.

What is in the table?

One row per open order, with these columns: Account, Order #, Order date, Ship window, Order status, Fulfilment, Payment, Aging and Total.

Ship window shows the ship window start and the cancel date together, or the start alone when there is no cancel date. With no open orders, the page reads No open orders yet. and offers Write one.

What order are the rows in?

Nearest ship window first, so the orders about to need stock are at the top. Orders with no ship window yet sit at the bottom, and orders that share a ship window show the newest order date first.

That is the order a production or picking conversation wants, so work the table from the top.

Which orders are on the book?

Open ones. An order leaves the book once it is both shipped and paid, or when it is cancelled. That is what keeps it a working list rather than an archive.

For an account's full history, closed orders included, open the account from Wholesale › Accounts and read its Order history. See How to add an account and set payment terms.

An order's Season sits on its own page. The book answers "what is coming up" rather than "what did we sell last spring".

How do you read the three statuses together?

Left to right they tell a story, and reading them as a set is the skill.

• Confirmed, Unfulfilled, near ship window: production or picking needs to know now.
• Confirmed, Shipped, Not invoiced: goods have gone and nobody has billed. This is the most expensive row on the screen.
• Confirmed, Partly shipped, near cancel date: the buyer can walk away from the balance.
• Submitted, old order date: you are waiting on the buyer, not the other way round.

What does the Aging column tell you?

How late the money is, one chip per order: Not invoiced, No terms agreed, Current, 1 to 30 days, 31 to 60 days, 60+ days or Paid. An order with several invoices is aged by the earliest due date still unpaid.

Not invoiced shows on every order with no issued invoice, shipped or not. Read it beside Fulfilment: only a shipped or partly shipped order with no invoice is money you have not asked for. See How to invoice a wholesale order and record payment for what each bucket means.

To work the late money itself, use the Overdue filter on Wholesale › Invoices. See How to find overdue invoices and quiet accounts.

How should you work it?

Weekly, top down, because the order already puts the urgent things first.

Everything near its ship window that is still unfulfilled needs a stock answer, and Short on stock lists the confirmed lines that could not get all their units set aside. See How to find dealer orders that are short on stock. Everything shipped and not invoiced needs billing today, and everything past sixty days needs a call.

Then check which accounts are not on the book at all and should be. An account that has gone quiet has no open orders, so it never appears here.

What is on an order's own page?

Click a row to open it. Every change you make on it saves as you go.

• The three chips at the top. Order is the one you change. Fulfilment follows the shipments you record and Payment follows the invoices you issue.
• The order's details: Buyer PO, Order type, Season, Order date, Ship window, Cancel date, and the read-only Invoiced and Due dates.
• The lines, then the Shipments panel, where you record what went out. See How to record a wholesale shipment and invoice it.
• The Invoices panel, which raises invoices and lists every one against the order. Each opens on its own page under Wholesale › Invoices.
• Internal notes (team only), Notes to buyer, and the Related, Decisions and Activity sections.

Choosing Confirmed from the Order chip asks first, because it holds stock in your Shopify store. Writing a new order and confirming it are covered in How to write and confirm a wholesale order.