Sales Operations Overview
If you work in sales admin, this page is the map of your day: which document to raise for which customer, what each one does (and does not do) behind the scenes, and where to look at the end of the day to know it all went through. It is an orientation page, not a procedure — each task has its own guide, linked as we go.
Meet GadgetSphere
GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd sells consumer electronics through 22 branches. On any given day the sales desk handles walk-ins paying at the counter, corporate accounts buying on 30-day terms, scheduled deliveries out of the fulfilment centre, and the occasional return. All four are below.
The one thing that explains everything else
Nothing in the sales chain posts to your accounts until the sale itself — a Sales Invoice, a POS Cash Bill, or a Sales GIN Stock Out if goods are issued on one through the API — and nothing takes stock out before it except a customer consignment Transfer Out, which moves stock you still own to the customer’s location.
Everything else in the sales chain — the quotation, the sales order, the goods delivery note, the outbound delivery order — records intent and controls process. They are genuinely useful; they close each other off, they drive picking, they give the customer paperwork. But none of them moves money or stock: that waits for one of those three to be finalised.
There is one qualification, and it matters day to day: an open sales order reduces the quantity BigLedger shows as available, even though it does not reduce the stock balance. That is how the same unit does not get promised twice.
| Document | Stock | Ledger | What it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sales Quotation | — | — | A price the customer can accept |
| Sales Order | Reduces available only | — | A commitment; drives picking and delivery |
| Goods Delivery Note / Outbound Delivery Order | — | — | Fulfilment paperwork |
| Sales Invoice | Out | Posts | The document that counts |
| POS Cash Bill | Out | Posts | The counter equivalent |
| Sales Return | In | Reverses | Goods coming back |
| Sales Credit Note | — | Reverses | Money off, without goods |
| Receipt Voucher | — | Posts cash | Money in, applied to invoices |
Which route for which customer
A walk-in paying at the counter. POS cash bill. One document: it takes the payment, takes the stock out and posts, all at once. → Cash sales workflow
A customer ordering for later delivery. Sales order, then a delivery document, then a sales invoice. → Creating a sales order · Standard sales workflow
A corporate account on terms. Same as above, but the money comes later as a receipt voucher applied against the invoice. → Credit sales workflow · Recording a customer payment
Only some of the order is in stock. Deliver and invoice what you have; the order line stays open for the rest. → Partial delivery workflow
The customer wants to return something. A sales return brings the goods back in; a credit note reduces what they owe without goods moving. Which one you need depends on whether anything is physically coming back. → Returns and exchanges workflow
The product needs installing. The delivery and installation applets carry the scheduling. → Installation scheduling workflow
The shape of a sales day
Morning. Look at what is due to go out. The Sales Order applet’s Pick Pack Queue shows the order lines that have been sent for fulfilment and not yet handed on, and Delivery Items is the line-level list with batch and bin detail. A line reaches the Pick Pack Queue only when somebody opens the finalised order’s Delivery Details panel and clicks Send To Queue — the applet refuses to send a draft, and finalising alone sends nothing. From the queue a line goes one of two ways, depending on how your branch works: Create Delivery Job hands it to dispatch, or Send To Warehouse Picking Queue hands it to the Warehouse Management applet for a picking list. Either way the line leaves the queue once all of it is handed on, so what is still there is what nobody has planned yet. A branch that runs neither stops at the delivery fields on the order and picks from the printout. An order that was finalised and never sent is the single most common reason something did not get picked. Delivery scheduling lives in trip listing.
During the day. New orders get raised, existing ones get amended while they are still drafts, and goods go out against delivery orders. Deposits taken on an order post through the receipt-voucher path against the cashbook behind the settlement method.
Invoicing. Raise the invoice from the order rather than typing it. That is what closes the order line off and what lets accounts match quantities later. Where you invoice many orders for the same customer together, the SO Consolidation applet turns the finalised orders you select — filtered by company, branch, customer and sales agent — into one invoice per customer.
End of day. The counter reconciles in Daily Cashier Reports — Cashier Collection for every settlement taken, and the Z Report for the branch’s day. Payments that came in against invoices are receipt vouchers; their cashbook lines are what bank reconciliation will match tomorrow.
Situations that come up
“The customer wants credit terms.” Terms live on the customer record, and the sales order picks them up. There is no document-level approval on a sales order — the only approval the applet has is a line-level one for selling below the minimum price. If your business wants sign-off on the order itself, that happens off-system and gets noted in Remarks.
“BigLedger will not let me finalise this order.” If the message is ENTITY_BLACKLISTED, the customer has been flagged by the Blacklist Overdue Customer job. That job does one thing today: it flags every customer whose outstanding balance in a company is over their limit there: the company-level limit for that company where there is one, otherwise their default credit limit. It is meant to flag overdue accounts too, but that half of it does not work in the current build, so an account that is merely late is never blocked by it. It is not recalculated as you type; it runs when your tenant’s job schedule (or an administrator, on demand) runs it, and nothing in the product fixes that to “overnight”. The flag is cleared on the customer’s Main tab, not on the order — and every run of the job clears all the flags first and re-evaluates, so a flag you set by hand lapses at the next run. The block covers sales orders, sales invoices, cash bills and outbound delivery orders, and nothing else.
“The item is out of stock.” Check whether the shortfall is real or is open orders eating into availability. Stock Availability inside the line shows both. If it is real: partial delivery, a substitute, or a date.
“The customer wants to cancel.” A draft order is discarded. A finalised order is voided, with a reason — which releases its document links and reservations. Whether it also clears the order’s lines from the Pick Pack Queue depends on a background job your company may not have switched on (few do): where it is on, the lines and any picking list not yet sent for packing are removed; where it is off, they stay and can still be turned into a delivery job. After voiding an order you had sent, look at the Pick Pack Queue. If an invoice has already been raised, that is a return or a credit note, not a cancellation.
“The customer changed the order.” While it is a draft, edit it. Once it is FINAL, either pull it back to draft (if your company enables that button and you hold the permission) or void it and raise a new one.
“The payment does not match the invoice.” Record what actually arrived as the settlement amount and put bank charges on the Expenses tab. Applying less than the full amount is a partial payment, and the rest stays outstanding — that is normal and needs no special handling.
What success looks like
At the end of the day, three checks, two minutes:
- The Pick Pack Queue is empty of today’s orders — everything has been handed to dispatch or the warehouse, or you know why it has not. And every order finalised today that needs delivering has been sent to the queue.
- The Z Report for the branch balances against the cash and card settlements actually taken.
- No invoice raised today is still showing its full amount outstanding for a customer who paid — if one is, a receipt voucher was finalised without a contra.
Common mistakes
| What goes wrong | What you see | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Leaving an order in DRAFT, or finalising it and never sending it to the queue | Nobody can make a delivery job or a picking list from it | Finalise, then Send To Queue on the Delivery Details panel |
| Reconciling stock against sales orders | A shortfall that is not real | Orders reduce available; the balance moves on the invoice, the cash bill or a Sales GIN Stock Out |
| Typing an invoice instead of raising it from the order | The order stays open; quantities drift | Use the knock-off; check SO Line with SI KO monthly |
| Finalising a receipt voucher without a contra | The customer’s total is right, the invoice still shows outstanding | Apply the receipt on the Contra tab |
| Assuming the credit limit blocks orders | A customer well over their limit keeps ordering | Nothing checks it at save. Picking the customer on a new sales invoice warns, with the amount, when they are already over their limit, but no back-office screen shows the credit left while there is some (a trade buyer on your online store sees their own available credit at checkout and on My Orders, where the store shows it). The optional credit check on the order and invoice screens refuses FINAL once this company’s share is used up, if somebody switched it on, and its message gives the available credit. The stop on every route is the blacklist flag, and only when the Blacklist Overdue Customer job has run since the limit was breached |
| Abandoned order lines never closed | Available stock permanently below the balance | Close them in SO Line with SI KO, or void the order |