# Introduction - Sales Orders

A sales order is a confirmed commitment to supply.

**Video coming soon:** A sales order through fulfilment: picklist, package, shipment, invoice.

It sits between agreement and billing, and it is the document that fulfilment works from. If you sell physical goods, this is where your warehouse and your accounts finally talk to each other.

![The Sales Orders screen. A table lists orders with columns for Sales Order Date, Sales Order Number, Reference Number, Purchase Order, Customer, Salesperson, Status and Amount. Status badges read Confirmed, Draft and Open.](https://www.sorviai.com/help/sales-orders/sales-order-list.png)

*Draft, Open and Confirmed are the three states a fulfilment queue gets filtered by.*

## Why bother with a sales order

Because delivery and billing rarely happen at the same moment. A sales order lets you ship half an order today, invoice for what shipped, and keep the remainder open without losing track of what was promised. Skip it and you are managing that split in your head.

1. **Confirm**: Order committed
2. **Picklist**: Warehouse pulls stock
3. **Package**: Boxed and labelled
4. **Shipment**: Stock leaves
5. **Invoice**: Customer billed

## What it does and does not do

- **Records the commitment** (yes): What you agreed to supply, at what price, to which address, by when.
- **Shows demand to Inventory** (yes): Confirmed orders appear in the fulfilment queue and against stock as demand.
- **Reserves stock** (no): Nothing is held. Two confirmed orders can both be waiting for the same unit.
- **Posts to your books** (no): Your profit and loss does not move until an invoice is raised.

> **Note:**
>
> **Confirming is a commitment, not a sale**
>
> A confirmed sales order changes nothing in Accountant and nothing in your stock figures. It changes what your warehouse can see, which is its entire job.

## How an order closes

An order closes on its own once every line is shipped and invoiced. Close it manually when the customer walks away from the balance, so it stops appearing in your open fulfilment queue. Closing short does not credit anything, because nothing was billed for the undelivered part.