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Fulfil and Ship an Order

Fulfilment is three documents in Inventory and one in Sales: pick the stock, pack it, ship it, invoice it.

Only the shipment moves stock, and only the invoice moves money, which is the pair of facts that makes the rest of this article obvious.

A confirmed sales order, SO-00018 for Alleghany Rail Components. A Convert to Invoice button sits in the header, and two status tiles below read Fulfillment: Fulfilled and Invoice: Not Invoiced. Order details show an expected ship date and Net 60 Days terms.
Fulfilment and invoicing are tracked separately, so an order can be shipped and still unbilled.

The four steps

  1. PicklistWhat to pull, and from where
  2. PackageWhat went in which box
  3. ShipmentStock leaves, tracking recorded
  4. InvoiceCustomer billed

Small operations skip the picklist and the package and go straight from a confirmed order to a shipment. That is entirely valid. The intermediate documents exist for warehouses where the person pulling stock is not the person boxing it.

Ship in full

  1. Open the confirmed order

    Choose Ship, or create a picklist first if your warehouse works from one.

  2. Confirm the quantities

    Defaults to everything outstanding. Reduce a line here to ship part of it.

  3. Record the carrier and tracking

    Optional, but it is what the customer will email you about, so it saves a lookup later.

  4. Save the shipment

    Stock leaves at this point. Not at confirmation, not at packing.

  5. Invoice from the order

    Choose Create Invoice. Only shipped quantities are proposed, which is usually what you want.

Partial fulfilment

Ship what you have. Each shipment records which lines and what quantities went out, and the order tracks the remainder automatically. You can invoice per shipment or wait and invoice once at the end.

SituationWhat to doOrder status after
Everything is in stockShip in full, then invoiceClosed
Half is in stockShip what you have, invoice itPartially shipped
Rest arrives next weekSecond shipment against the same orderClosed once complete
Customer cancels the restClose the order shortClosed
Customer adds to the orderEdit the open lines, or raise a second orderConfirmed

Invoicing against the order

Invoicing is independent of shipping. The order proposes shipped quantities because that is the common case, but you can invoice more or less than has shipped, up to the ordered quantity. Deposits, staged billing and bill-on-order arrangements all work by overriding that proposal.

  • One order can produce several invoices, each covering part of it.
  • The order line shows ordered, shipped and invoiced side by side, so the gaps are visible.
  • An order is only Closed when every line is both fully shipped and fully invoiced.
  • Invoicing before shipping is allowed and is the normal pattern for prepayment.

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