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Create sales orders

How to create sales orders in inFlow

Web

Sales orders in inFlow let you track items that you sell to your customers.

Even if you don’t need to track sales or sell any product, completed sales orders deduct inventory and can be used to record outgoing stock or rentals.

To create a sales order

  1. Click on the Sales Orders tab to begin, then click New sales order. (Main Menu->New Sales Order)
  2. Begin typing into the Customer field; you should see your customer’s name appear, or hit the + button to add the new customer.
  3. Click the + Add product button and select a product from your list. Continue as necessary until you’ve selected all the products your customer wants to buy.
  4. Click Save when done. inFlow will automatically assign an order number the first time you save the order.

If your team will be shipping items to your customers, toggle the Include shipping button on the right side so your warehouse staff will know where to ship this order when they’re working on the desktop app. Once toggled, you’ll be able to edit additional fields like PO#, Payment Terms, Freight, and Due Date.

You can enter an amount into the Paid field if you’ve received payment from your customer, or just click the Mark Paid button.

Clicking on the Paid button will bring up the Payment Details window if you need to enter more detailed information (e.g., payment method, multiple payments).

Did you know you can buy barcodes with inFlow? We’ve teamed up with GS1 to be an official partner. This means can create UPC barcodes that will be recognized by retailers such as Amazon and Walmart. For more details, check out the GS1 Barcode Shop.

To remove products from an unfulfilled order

  1. Hover over the row containing the product you want to remove.
  2. Click the x button beside the row to remove it.

To complete a sales order

If your customer has paid for part of the order, you can put that amount into the “Paid” field to keep track. If they’ve paid the full amount, click Mark Paid to complete the payment. You can also click the “Paid” field to record more detailed information like a reference or cheque number.

Click Fulfill when your customer has received the items on the order. This will move the items out of your inventory.

If your customer has not yet paid you, you can click the arrow button beside Mark Paid and select Mark invoiced. This will move the order to an Invoiced status. Printing an Invoice document will automatically mark the order as Invoiced.

Sales order list view

You can view all your open and in-progress sales orders from the sales order list. 

At the top of the screen, you’ll see pre-made lists to help you view Open, Unpaid, or All orders. You’ll view Open by default. 

Below the main order statuses are additional filters you can use to find the orders you’re looking for. To change which filters are on the screen, click on All filters.

Hover over the headings: the ones with two arrows next to them mean you can sort the sales orders by that heading. You can sort by Order number and status, customer name, and more. 

For best results, we suggest a minimum screen resolution of 1280 x 720.

Sales order prioritization

You can click on the star icon to mark sales orders as prioritized.

  • Prioritized orders will show up at the top of the sales order Open list view.
  • You can click on the grab handles to drag and rearrange the sales orders to set the prioritization order (when the sales order list is sorted by Priority.)

The sales order at the top of the list will be considered the first priority for processing. You can learn more about the importance of the order placement Stock availability & sales order prioritization section of this article.

If you’ve changed the sorting of the sales order list by clicking on another column heading, the priority orders may not stay at the top of the sales list. However, you can still identify prioritized orders because they’ll have an orange bar and star next to them.

If you’d like to restore the original sorting with priority at the top, click on the Priority column heading.

The sales order list shows orders marked as priority and rearranged by clicking and dragging the grab handles.

You can set team member access rights for sales order prioritization to View only or Full access. Take a look at this guide for how to restrict team member access rights

Noticing priority list changes

Unlike other order list screens in inFlow, the changes to priority orders on the Open list can be seen in real time. If you notice any changes to the priority list while viewing the sales order list, keep this in mind. 

Stock availability & sales order prioritization

While viewing the Open list, you’ll notice there are stock availability statuses on all the orders. These are listed based on how much inventory you have to fulfill the sales order. 

inFlow will reserve stock on the prioritized orders first. Within the priority list, inFlow will reserve stock from the sales order at the top to the bottom of the list. 

Rearranging the priority list will cause inFlow to recalculate the stock levels based on where each sales order is placed on the list. 

All other orders without a priority will be sorted by the Open list default:

  1. Requested ship date
  2. Order date (oldest to newest)

Stock availability statuses

See the table below for a breakdown of the sales order list statutes.

AvailableThis status means you have enough stock to fulfill the sales order.
Waiting on stockThis status is also known as Quantity on order. It means there isn’t enough stock to fulfill the sales order. This status shows when you’ve ordered more from your vendor, are waiting on a stock transfer, or are waiting on more to be made from a manufacture order. 
Not enough stockThis status means you don’t have enough products in stock to fulfill your order. You should create a purchase order, transfer stock from another location, or create more with a work order if applicable. 


inFlow quantities 

inFlow breaks down quantities in a few ways to help you organize your inventory. You might be wondering what the difference is between quantity on hand versus quantity available. For more on that, take a look at this guide on how inFlow calculates different quantities.

Can the sales order list view be saved?

At the moment, only the priority sales orders view will be saved when you look at the sales order list.  This means any sorting and filtering of the list will need to be set every time you’re on the sales order list.  

I can’t find some of my sales orders!

If you’ve noticed that some of your sales orders that were showing on the inFlow Inventory for Web app aren’t listed anymore, don’t worry. Your orders are still in inFlow! 

They’re probably not displaying on the default Open list view because the Open list shows only orders that have been assigned locations. If you have sales orders without locations, they will be shown in the All view. 

To learn more about how to add a location to your sales order and how the views work, take a look at this guide

What are the default sales order list settings?

You might be wondering about the logic of how the order list is sorted. Take a look at the table below. 

OpenIn this view, you’ll see all sales orders where fulfillment isn’t complete.

As mentioned, orders that have been starred will be at the top of the screen. 

After the priority sales orders (or if there are no priority orders), the sales order will be shown from oldest to newest first. This will help you focus on fulfilling orders for the customers who’ve been waiting the longest for their orders. 

Orders will be sorted by requested ship date, and if that isn’t filled out, then by order date. 
UnpaidIn this view, you’ll see all sales orders that have the payment status as not paid.

Similar to Open, the Unpaid list will sort the oldest unpaid orders first, based on the order date.

This will also help you keep track of older unpaid orders.
AllIn this view, you’ll see all sales orders. This includes sales quotes, unconfirmed, and canceled sales orders.

This will show all orders. You’ll see the newest sales orders at the top of the list and the oldest at the bottom.

Receiving payments from emailed orders

If your business is located/registered in the United States or Canada, you can sign up for inFlow Pay to accept credit card payments from orders you email from inFlow! For complete details on this, take a look at our inFlow Pay article here.

Windows

Sales orders in inFlow Inventory let you track items that you sell to your customers. inFlow will automatically assign an order number the first time you save the order.

Even if you don’t need to track sales or sell any product, completed sales orders deduct inventory and can be used to record outgoing stock.

To create a sales order:

  1. Click Main Menu > Sales > New Sales Order.
  2. Begin by adding your customer information at the top of the order:
    • If your customer is already in the system, you’ll see them highlighted as you type their name into the Customer field
    • If your customer is not in your system yet, continue typing out the full customer name and click Add New to create a new record for them. As you fill out their contact information, inFlow will automatically save it to their product record.
  3. The location will automatically be set. Change the location as needed. If there are multiple locations the items are being sold from, you can simply delete them and leave the field blank. (it’ll pick the item based on the picking options that you set)
  4. Add items to your order by clicking into the Item column and entering your product name.

Did you know you can buy barcodes with inFlow? We’ve teamed up with GS1 to be an official partner. This means can create UPC barcodes that will be recognized by retailers such as Amazon and Walmart. For more details, check out the GS1 Barcode Shop.

When adding items to your order, you can filter your product selection by clicking Show Search in the product table. This allows you to quickly search for your products by vendor, category, price, and other fields — right from the order!

To complete a sales order

  • Click Fulfill when your customer has received the items on the order. This will move the items out of your inventory.
  • If your customer has not yet paid you, you can click the arrow button beside Mark Paid and select Mark invoiced. This will move the order to an Invoiced status. Printing an Invoice document will automatically mark the order as Invoiced.
  • If your customer has paid for part of the order, you can put that amount into the “Paid” field to keep track. If they’ve paid the full amount, click Mark Paid to complete the payment. You can also click the “Paid” field to record more detailed information like a reference or cheque number.

To view your order profit

You can easily view the total estimated profit of a Sales Order by clicking the drop-down on the Sub-Total heading in your Sales Order. This will quickly show you the Sub-Total, Estimated Cost of Goods Sold, and Estimated Profit in this Sales Order.

The profit is calculated by taking the cost of each item as well as any non-customer costs and subtracting them from the sub-total to get your profit.

NOTE: Since this is only an estimate, inFlow uses the applicable costing layer to calculate your profit on the order (this is especially applicable to those using FIFO or LIFO costing). Once the order is complete, inFlow will calculate the actual profit using the true costs on the order.

You can learn more about how to pick, pack and ship your sales orders from this guide.

What else can I do on the sales order screen?

There are other advanced things you can do from the sales order screen as well. You can:

Receiving payments from emailed orders

If your business is located/registered in the United States or Canada, you can sign up for inFlow Pay to accept credit card payments from orders you email from inFlow! For complete details on this, take a look at our inFlow Pay article here.

Mobile

If you’d like to create sales orders on the go, you can use the inFlow mobile app! 

How to create and complete a sales order

The following are the basics – we’ve packed a lot of functionality into mobile sales orders, so be sure to check out the other sections in this guide to learn more about specific actions and screens. 

  1. Open the inFlow Inventory app on your mobile phone, tap on the Main Menu button (the 3 horizontal lines at the top left of the screen), and select Sales Orders (or directly tap on Sales orders on the homepage).
  2. On the sales order list, tap the ‘+’ symbol on the top right of the screen to create a new sales order.
  3. Select a new or existing customer to add to your order.
    • If you create a new customer, the only required field is Customer Name – you can edit their information later by tapping the Main Menu button > Customers.
  4. Tap Add product to add products to your sales order (or scan your product barcode instead by tapping Scan product). You can tap on the product you want to add to the order, then tap Add at the bottom of the screen.
    • You can search your item list by tapping the search bar at the top.
    • Once you’ve chosen all the items you want to add, tap Done to return to your sales order.
  5. Tap or swipe left to the Details tab to edit the order details, including customer information and shipping, edit inventory details (where inFlow should remove inventory from), add payment terms, remarks, etc. 

  1. When you’re ready to pick the order, tap the yellow Fulfillment button (or Pick order if you have shipping turned on). Here you can select which items to pick to fulfill your order. The sales order will become fulfilled once all products are selected.
  2. Add any payments to the order by tapping or swiping right to the Order tab and tapping into the Paid field. 
  3. Finally, tap Save on the top right to save your order.

Adding products by scanning their barcodes

If your products have barcodes, you can quickly add them to your order using your phone’s camera!

  1. On the Order tab, tap on Scan products.
  2. Position the barcode within the frame. When the camera detects a barcode, the Scan item button will turn orange.
  3. Tap the Scan products button or the camera view to scan the barcode:
    • Scanning the same barcode more than once will increase that product’s quantity by 1 for each additional scan. 
    • You can scan different items all at once from the barcode scanning screen!
  4. When you’re done scanning your items, tap Done to add these items to the order. 

Editing products

Tapping on an item on the sales order will take you to the Product details screen, where you’ll be able to edit the following:

  • Quantity: you can tap into the field directly and type in a value or use the ‘+’ and ‘–’ buttons instead.
  • Unit of measure (UoM)
  • Unit price
  • Item discount
  • Taxing scheme 

To save your changes, make sure to tap the yellow Done button. Going back using the ‘<‘ button on the top left will close the window and discard your changes instead!

Removing products

Did you add a product to an order that you’d like to remove? Here’s how to do it:

Note: If you’d like to return an item that was previously purchased, see here for steps!

  1. Tap on the Edit button above the item list on the Order tab. 
  2. Tap the X symbol on the top left corner of the product/s you’d like to remove. 

Fulfilling/Picking products

Once you’ve added your products to the order, you can start fulfilling/picking it!

Click the yellow Fulfillment button on the bottom right when shipping is turned off.

Click the yellow Pick Order button on the bottom right when shipping is turned on.

How to fulfill/pick items on your order

  • To auto-fulfill/pick all items on the order, tap on the picking progress button on the bottom right and select Autofill
  • To mark an entire item line as fulfilled/picked, tap on the empty checkbox on the left side.
  • You can also fulfill/pick your items by scanning them! Tap on the barcode icon on the top right to open the camera barcode scanner.
Mobile picking | inFlow Smart Barcode Scanner

To unfulfill/unpick an item:

  • To auto-unfulfill/unpick all items on the order, tap on the picking progress button on the bottom right and select Unpick all.
  • Tap on the gray checkmark on the left side of the item line OR the ellipsis (three dots) on the right side to open the actions menu and select Unfulfill/Unpick or Partial fulfill/pick to adjust the number of fulfilled/picked items.

More actions menu 

Next to each item line on the Fulfill/Picking screen, tapping the ellipsis (three dots) on the right side will open the More actions menu. Here you’ll be able to:

  • Edit the location where the product will be fulfilled/picked from.
  • Edit the fulfilled/picked date for products that have been fulfilled/picked.
  • Partially fulfill/pick items. 
  • Unfulfill/unpick items.

Shipping 

To include shipping an order, swipe left to get to the Details tab. When the shipping toggle is ON, the shipping address, required ship date, and the PO number will appear. 

In the mobile app, all picked and unshipped items on an order will be shipped in the same box. The box number and the contents of the box cannot be edited from the mobile app. However, you can remove an item from a shipment.

Ship all items on an order

When all items are picked on the order, a Ship order button will appear on the bottom right: 

  1. Tap the Ship order button to open the Shipping details screen. 
  2. Enter your shipping details and tap Complete shipment to mark the items as shipped.   

Remove items from a shipment

In the mobile app, it isn’t possible to see what items were shipped in a specific shipment. To remove an item that has been shipped on an order (without deleting the entire shipment), you can unpick the item from the order. 

Edit/remove a shipment

You can edit your shipments in the Shipping details screen:

Note: it’s not possible to see what items were shipped in a specific shipment in the mobile app. 

  1. Tap on the + Actions button on the bottom right corner and select Ship
  2. In the Shipments screen, tap on the shipment you’d like to edit to open the Shipping details screen.
  3. Here, you can edit the shipped date, add shipping remarks, carrier, and a reference number or delete the shipment.

Returning products

Similar to the desktop app, a returned item in the mobile app will appear as a separate line item.

There are a couple of ways to return items in the mobile app:

Returning an existing item on an order: 

  1. Tap on the item on the order you’d like to return.
  2. On the Product details screen, tap the ellipsis on the top right and select Return product.
  3. In the Return product screen, enter the quantity you’d like to return and tap Return on the top right to complete the transaction. 

Returning an item that is not on an order

Sometimes, you may need to return an item from a customer that wasn’t on an order to begin with. You can do this on the mobile by adding the item as a returned item:

  1. On the Order screen, tap Add product and select it from your product list (or scan its barcode by tapping Scan products).
  2. In the Add product screen, set the quantity to a negative amount to mark that this item will be a return (e.g., if you want to return 2 items, you’ll add a “-2” quantity). 
  3. Tap Return on the top right to complete the transaction. 

Invoicing and payments

At the bottom of the Order tab, you’ll find the subtotal, tax amounts, freight, the order total, the paid amount, and the order balance. 

  • To mark the order as invoiced, use the + Actions menu on the bottom left and select Invoice. 
  • If you’d like to mark the entire order as paid, you can use the + Actions menu on the bottom left and select Mark paid.  
  • To record a partial payment, tap into the Paid field and enter the amount paid. 
  • You can also add payment via the Payment History screen (see below). 

Payment history

You can tap on History next to the Paid text to access the payment history for the order. 

  • Tapping Add payment will open a Payment details screen where you can enter a new payment. 
  • Tapping on an existing payment will open the Payment details screen.

Payment details

The Payment details screen allows you to edit the details of a specific payment, such as:

  • The amount applied (this will be negative when making a refund)
  • The refund toggle – this will mark the amount applied as a refund. 
  • Payment method
  • Date
  • Reference number
  • Remarks (per payment) 

Pricing, currency, taxing scheme, and non-customer costs

You can edit which pricing scheme, currency, and tax to apply to the order, as well as add non-customer costs from the Pricing screen. Swipe to the very bottom of the Order tab and tap on Edit pricing

It is not possible to create a new pricing scheme or taxing scheme from the mobile app.

Remarks 

In the mobile app, all your sales order remarks can be added from the Details tab. You’ll be able to edit:

  • Sales remarks (in the desktop app, these would be found in the Sales tab).
  • Pick remarks (Windows app: these would be found in the Pick tab).
  • Ship remarks (iWindows app: these would be found in the Ship tab).
  • Return remarks (Windows app: these would be found in the Return tab).
  • Restock remarks (Windows app: these would be found in the Restock tab).

To add a remark:

  1. Swipe left or tap on the Details tab from the Sales Order details screen. 
  2. Scroll to the Remarks section at the bottom and tap into the remark field you’d like to edit. 
  3. Tap Save on the top right to save your changes.

Receiving payments from emailed orders

If your business is located/registered in the United States or Canada, you can sign up for inFlow Pay to accept credit card payments from orders you email from inFlow! For complete details on this, take a look at our inFlow Pay article here.

If you’d like to know more about the inFlow Inventory Companion App, check the full guide here!

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1 Comment

  1. Greg Ward

    How do you sort the invoice by product name?

    Reply

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In this tab
  • To create a sales order
  • To remove products from an unfulfilled order
  • To complete a sales order
  • Sales order list view
  • Sales order prioritization
  • Stock availability & sales order prioritization
  • Stock availability statuses
  • Can the sales order list view be saved?
  • I can't find some of my sales orders!
  • What are the default sales order list settings?
  • Receiving payments from emailed orders
  • To complete a sales order
  • To view your order profit
  • What else can I do on the sales order screen?
  • Receiving payments from emailed orders
  • How to create and complete a sales order
  • Adding products by scanning their barcodes
  • Editing products
  • Removing products
  • Fulfilling/Picking products
  • Shipping
  • Returning products
  • Invoicing and payments
  • Remarks
  • Receiving payments from emailed orders
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