How to write and confirm a wholesale order

An order starts as a draft, gets its lines, and is confirmed once the buyer has agreed it. Confirming is the gate that unlocks shipping and invoicing. See What is wholesale? for the three statuses.

Before you start

Every write here needs the wholesale order update permission.

The account should exist first, with its payment terms recorded, because those terms are what produce a due date when you invoice. See How to add an account and set payment terms.

How do you create one?

New order, picking the Account, an Order number and the dates. You land straight on the order to add lines.

You can also start from an account's own page, which pre-selects the account.

What do you fill in on the order?

Each of these saves when you leave the field:

• Buyer PO number, the buyer's own reference. Put it in: it is what they will quote back at you, and what an accounts-payable department matches an invoice against.
• Order type, prebook or at once, pre-filled from the account's default.
• Season, captured on the order for your own records.
• Order date, Ship window start and Cancel date.
• Internal notes and notes to the buyer, which are separate on purpose.

What are the ship window and cancel date?

Ship window start is the earliest the order can go. Cancel date is the date the buyer can walk away if it has not shipped.

The cancel date is the one that matters commercially, and it is why the order book sorts by ship window nearest first. An order approaching its cancel date with nothing shipped is a cancelled order waiting to happen.

How do you add lines?

Add each line with a product, a quantity and a unit price. A running subtotal sits underneath.

Enter the price you are actually charging. An account's standing discount is reference only and is never applied to a line, per How to add an account and set payment terms.

Two behaviours worth knowing. The subtotal comes from the saved order rather than being added up in your browser, so it is always the real number. And clearing a quantity box reverts to the last saved quantity rather than writing zero, so an accidental delete does not empty a line.

How do you move the order forward?

Draft → Submitted → Confirmed, in order. Cancelled is available from anywhere.

• Draft is yours, still being built.
• Submitted means it has gone to the buyer.
• Confirmed means they have agreed it. This is the one that counts.

Confirming is what unlocks fulfilment and payment. Until then those controls are locked with the reason shown next to them, telling you to confirm the order first.

That gate exists because shipping against an unconfirmed order is how brands end up making stock nobody agreed to buy.

What happens if you cancel?

The order can no longer be shipped or invoiced, and there is no un-cancel.

If a cancelled order comes back to life, write a new one. That keeps the cancelled order as an honest record of what happened rather than something quietly reused.

How do you mark it shipped?

Set fulfilment to Unfulfilled, Partly shipped or Shipped, once the order is confirmed.

Partly shipped is worth using accurately rather than rounding up to shipped, because it is what tells you an order is still open against a cancel date.

What is on the order besides the lines?

Comments, related records and a decision. Recording why you agreed unusual terms takes a minute at the time and is the only way anybody knows later. See What are decisions and track records?.

Once the order ships, the next step is the money, per How to invoice a wholesale order and track payment.