How to read your wholesale order book

The order book is the answer to "what have we actually got on". Every open commitment from every door, in one table. See What is wholesale? for the concepts behind the columns.

What is in the table?

The account, order number, order date, ship window, order status, fulfilment, payment, aging bucket and total.

It is sorted by ship window, nearest first, so the orders about to need stock are at the top. That is the ordering a production conversation wants.

What is the book showing, and what is it not?

Open commitments only. Finished orders drop off, which is what keeps it a working list rather than an archive.

For an account's full history including everything closed, open that account's own page. See How to add an account and set payment terms.

Season is captured on each order but is deliberately not a column here, because 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, with a near ship window means production or picking needs to know now.
• Confirmed, Shipped, Not invoiced means goods have gone and nobody has billed. That is the most expensive row on the screen.
• Confirmed, Partly shipped, approaching cancel date means the buyer can walk on the balance.
• Submitted with an old order date means you are waiting on the buyer, not the other way round.

What does the aging column tell you?

How overdue the money is: Not invoiced, No terms agreed, Current, 1 to 30 days, 31 to 60 days, 60 or more days, or Paid.

It is the collections view built into the same table as the operational one, which is the point: the person chasing stock and the person chasing money are looking at the same book.

See How to invoice a wholesale order and track payment for what each bucket means.

How should you work it?

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

Everything with a near ship window that is still unfulfilled needs a stock answer. Everything shipped and not invoiced needs billing today. Everything past sixty days needs a call.

Then, separately, check which accounts are not on this book at all and should be. An account that has gone quiet never appears here, because it has no open commitments, which is exactly what makes it easy to miss. See How to find overdue invoices and quiet accounts.

How do you open and edit an order?

Click through to it. Everything on it saves as you leave each field, and the order's own page is where lines, statuses, invoicing and notes live.

Writing a new one is How to write and confirm a wholesale order.