How to write and confirm a wholesale order

A wholesale order starts as a draft on Wholesale › Orders, gets its lines, and is confirmed once the buyer has agreed it. Confirming sets the units aside in your Shopify store and opens the way to shipping and invoicing. See What is wholesale? for how the three statuses fit together.

Before you start

Writing and changing orders needs Edit wholesale orders on Settings › Permissions, and opening Wholesale › Orders needs View wholesale orders. Both start at lead. Your workspace may use its own word for orders; Settings › Terminology shows both.

Add the account first, with its payment terms, because those terms are what give an invoice its due date. See How to add an account and set payment terms.

How do you create an order?

From Wholesale › Orders, with the account already set up.

1. Press New order.
2. Pick the Account, and fill in Order number and Order date. These three are required.
3. Set Order type to Prebook for a future season. The form starts on At once for every account.
4. Add what you know of the rest: Buyer PO number, Season (optional), Ship window start, Cancel date, Internal notes (team only) and Notes visible to the buyer.
5. Press Create order. The order opens, ready for its lines.

Check the account and order number before you press Create order: the order keeps both for good. An account page with no orders yet also offers Write one, which opens the same form with the account already picked.

What can you change on the order afterwards?

Everything in the strip across the top: Buyer PO, Order type, Season, Order date, Ship window and Cancel date. Below the lines sit Internal notes (team only) and Notes to buyer. Each change saves on its own.

Put the Buyer PO in. It prints on the invoice as Your PO, so the buyer's accounts team can match your invoice to their order. The order also takes the account's currency when you create it.

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. An order approaching its cancel date with nothing shipped is a cancelled order waiting to happen, which is why the order book lists orders by ship window, nearest first.

How do you add lines?

Two ways, and you can mix them on one order.

• Add products searches your Shopify catalogue (Search products or SKUs…) and shows how many of each variant are on hand. Click each one you need, so a tick shows, and press Add. Each arrives at a quantity of 1 with no price, so set Qty and Unit price on each line.
• Add a product…, the row at the foot of the lines, takes a typed name, a quantity and a price. Press Enter or the + button to add it.

Pick products through Add products whenever they are in Shopify, because only those lines can have stock set aside. Use a typed line for something that is not in Shopify yet.

How do you change or remove a line?

Click into Qty or Unit price and type; the change saves when you click away. Clearing a quantity box puts back the last saved quantity rather than writing zero.

The bin at the end of a line removes it. Subtotal under the lines updates as you go.

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

How do you move the order forward?

Click the Order chip at the top right and pick the next step. Orders go from Draft to Submitted to Confirmed, and Cancelled is on the menu at every step.

• 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 holds stock and lets you ship and invoice.

What happens when you confirm?

Picking Confirmed opens Confirm this order and hold the stock?. It lists each line as "N held", or "N not held" for a line with no Shopify product. Press Yes, confirm and hold stock to go ahead.

Within about five minutes the units are set aside in your live Shopify store, and the website stops offering them. Each product line then reads "N set aside", or "N set aside, M short" when there was not enough stock. Every short line also appears on How to find dealer orders that are short on stock.

A Prebook with a ship window start holds nothing until that date arrives, then holds on its own. Make sure before you confirm: a confirmed order cannot go back to Submitted. If it was wrong, cancel it and enter it again.

What happens if you cancel?

The order can no longer be shipped or invoiced, and any units it was holding go back on sale. Cancel only when the order is truly finished: a cancelled order stays cancelled.

If the buyer comes back, write a new order. That keeps the cancelled one as an honest record of what happened.

How do you ship and invoice it?

From the order's own panels, once it is confirmed. The Fulfilment and Payment chips at the top update themselves from what you record there, so there is nothing to set by hand.

• Shipments: record what went out, line by line, with the date, carrier and tracking. See How to record a wholesale shipment and invoice it. Shipping the whole order gives back any units still held for it.
• Invoices: Invoice everything not yet billed, or Invoice this shipment on a recorded shipment. Either creates a draft invoice and opens it. See How to invoice a wholesale order and record payment.

Until the order is confirmed, both panels and both chips show Confirm the order first.

What else is on the order?

Below the panels sit Related, Decisions and Activity. Link the order to other records, record a decision about it with Record a decision, and comment on it.

Record why you agreed unusual terms while you still remember, so the next person to open the order can read it. See What are decisions and track records?.