Define Sales Order Workflow

Sales orders are the driving force of your business, consuming your inventory and recording revenue and COGs. The sales order process within Finale for most workflows is automated as Finale requests and sends information to your marketplaces and shipping platform.

Finale does, however, support the manual order creation process, too. This is really helpful for B2B orders that may not exist on a website. This workflow would require you to create the order in Finale, and then manually walk-through the steps unless you sync the order from Finale to ShipStation to complete your shipping process.

Before we dive into the sales order specifics, it is important to first understand the different stock levels and order statuses.

List Screen Overview

The list screen is filtered by your open orders, draft and committed order statuses, by default. This screen is your master sales order database listing your sales orders using the filters displayed on the list screen.

Please keep in mind you can edit this screen, adding or removing columns to fit your business needs with your sales order screen view.

Stock Overview

The stock flow is triggered by a committed stock transaction or shipment. Once an order is received or shipped then the units will be added or decremented from your on-hand inventory levels. Until the stock transaction is triggered, Finale has other stock identifying columns to help users track and manage their inventory.

• On-Hand Units - Quantity on-hand is the true physical stock level of an item in your warehouse or storage sublocation. 
• On-Order Units - Quantity on committed Purchase orders to suppliers that haven’t been received yet.
• Reservation Units - These units are a result of committed sales orders. This includes any units on a committed sales order that haven’t been shipped to a customer yet.
• Remaining Units - Calculated: Qoh - Reservations - This is the true remaining units available to sell right now. This is usually the stock level category that is pushed back to your marketplace to prevent over-selling.
• Available Units - Calculated: Qoh - Reservations + On-Order Units - All units available to promise to a potential sale. May contain units not shippable now because they are On Order and have not been received yet.

Order Statuses

• Draft - The draft status is the editable state of an order. If you need to make changes or adjustments then you will need the order to be in the draft state. Consequently, any order in the draft status has no impact on stock levels unless it has already been received.
• Committed - The committed status signals Finale that the order has been placed. This is the default order status for most orders that import into Finale through an integration, too. Any item listed on a committed sales order will hold reservation units, impacting your remaining units. These units will not be removed from your on-hand units until the units are shipped with a shipment.
• Completed - The completed status is used by users to signal that the order requires no more further action. This process is usually automated for orders that imported into Finale from your marketplace or shipping platform. Once the order is fulfilled, Finale records the shipment and moves the order to the completed status. For manual orders, you would have to perform these actions yourself. Please keep in mind that If you move an order to the completed status without recording the shipment, you will lose the reservation units, and stock will not be decremented.
• Canceled - Once an order is marked canceled, every part of the sales order is canceled. Any shipment or invoice attached to the sales order would also be canceled. Any transaction built from the order is canceled and removed from default views.

Typical Sales Order Workflow with Order Import from Marketplace/Shipping Platform

Orders populate into Finale from your marketplace(s) or shipping platform. Most of these orders will be in the committed status, reserving the stock against the order and awaiting for your team to ship the order to the customer.

Once you ship the order, Finale will record the fulfillment trigger from your marketplace or shipping platform, marking the order shipped in Finale and moving the order to the completed status.

The stock impact for your orders can be defined in your pull sales settings.

Create Manual Sales Order in Finale

Users can also create orders within Finale. This is extremely useful for B2B orders that you want to capture that may not exist on a website.

Please keep in mind that orders can only be edited in the draft status. You will need to change the status to draft to make edits in the future after you commit the order.

Often times user sync these manual orders to ShipStation to print their shipping labels and complete the order process. This action can be performed from the actions-drop down menu, just be sure to have address information entered prior to syncing.

Again, most customers do not create manual orders within Finale for a typical e-commerce workflow. This is specific to your needs, only applying to specific workflows.

Shipments

The shipment of the order is the stock transaction. Once an order is marked shipped the reservation units fall off and inventory is decremented from your on-hand units. The stock transaction is also the trigger for the COGs post.

Without a shipment recorded for an order, inventory will not be decremented, and COGs will not be logged. This is a mandatory step for proper stock flow in most workflows.

Invoices

Invoices are generated from a sales order to provide a financial record for the order. This is more commonly used if you are connected to QuickBooks Online, looking for a way to sync your invoice to QuickBoooks. This helps create one entry point, eliminating double work, while allowing your accounting team to send the invoice from QBO for the customer to submit payment.

Invoices do not impact your valuation, COGs, or inventory levels. They are strictly a financial record used to wash out the shipment record in the sales clearing account.