Once the items are - or are just about to be - physically shipped from an Inventory Location of the premises of the company/organization, the user may click the Ship option. That brings up a dialog window where the user may choose the quantities to ship and the shipping document (Shipment -or- Shipment & Sales Invoice document) that will be created against the Sales Order. The choice of the shipping document will define whether the Sales Order will get an Invoiced status.
In case the Quantity to ship is less than the Ordered quantity, the Sales Order will get a Partially Shipped -or- Partially Shipped and Invoiced status (according to the Document Template chosen to ship the goods. If the Quantity to ship is equal to the Ordered quantity then the Sales Order will get a Fully Shipped or Fully Invoiced status (again, according to the Document Template chosen to ship the goods). The Product Availability column shows the available quantity per Product in all the Inventory Locations that are defined in the account. The value inside the parentheses refers to the non-shipped quantity for each Product in Sales Orders (excluding the present Sales Order).
The user can insert a Quantity to Ship value that is higher than the Ordered quantity. In such a case the Ordered quantity of the Sales Order will be increased accordingly.
In the Product Availability column, if the value inside the parentheses is greater than the value outside the parentheses (physical quantity), then, this practically means that the quantity which is in Sales Orders and is expected to be shipped is greater than the physical quantity. In such a case, it is up to the user to decide whether one or more Products should be shipped against the present Sales Order or give priority to other Sales Orders.
Shipping Products against a Sales Order will reduce the quantity of those Products in the respective Inventory Location.
All the related shipping & invoicing documents that are issued against the Sales Order will appear under the Related Documents tab of the Sales Order.
A Sales Order may get back to the Approved status if and only if all the Related Documents that are issued against the Sales Order are cancelled.
In case the Sales Order is shipped with a Shipment document then, the Shipped quantity will be less than the Invoiced Quantity. In such a case, the Invoice option of the Sales Order may be clicked. This will bring up a dialog window where the Quantity to Invoice may be set. If the Quantity to Invoice equals both the Shipped quantity and the Ordered quantity, then, the Sales Order will get a Fully Invoiced status. If the Shipped quantity equals the Ordered quantity but the Quantity to Invoice is less than the Shipped quantity then the Sales Order will get a Partially Invoiced status.
Note: If the item being shipped is serialized (i.e. is associated with a serial number) it is necessary to add the serial numbers being shipped out. It is possible to add the serial numbers in bulk by means of a typical barcode scanner.
To conclude all the actions related to the Sales Order, the user may mark it as Closed. This action makes all the Sales Order fields non-editable and is the final step in the workflow of the Sales Order.
Closing a Sales Order is an irreversible action unless you have been assigned special permissions to open Sales Orders.
Closing a Sales Order automatically closes any non-closed Related Documents (shipping or invoicing documents) that were issued against the Sales Order.