Partial Delivery Workflow

Can I invoice part of an order and leave the rest open? Partial delivery workflow

“Can I invoice part of an order and leave the rest open?” Yes, and there is no mode to switch on: in the invoice’s KO For tab you set a knock-off quantity lower than the order line’s balance, and the rest stays open on the order until a later invoice knocks it off or you close the remainder by hand.

This guide is for whoever does the billing in a company that often accepts an order ahead of the stock to fill it. By the end of it you will have billed and shipped what you have, kept the rest of the order visibly open across a month-end, billed the second drop, and closed the part that will never come — knowing at each step what the order, the stock, the books and the e-invoice show, and why. Each drop takes the same few minutes as an ordinary invoice; the skill is in the tracking between them.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Distribution Sdn Bhd (GSD), the group’s wholesale arm, takes an order on 20 October from a corporate customer for 40 ultraportable laptops at RM 3,800: RM 152,000, plus RM 9,120 SST at 6%, RM 161,120. Warehouse GSD-WH-01 holds 25. The distributor promises the other 15 in early November. The customer is opening a new office and would rather have 25 laptops this month than 40 next month.

What actually happens is the shape this guide follows, because it is the common one, not the tidy one:

Date	What happens	Laptops
20 Oct	Order finalised for 40	25 on the shelf
27 Oct	Invoice 1 — RM 100,700 — and delivery	25 go out
31 Oct	October closes with 15 still owed	—
6 Nov	The distributor delivers 12 and discontinues the model; the customer takes the 12 and cancels the last 3	12 arrive
6 Nov	Invoice 2 — RM 48,336 — and delivery; the 3 are closed	12 go out, 3 never will

Billed in total: RM 149,036 — the order’s RM 161,120 less the RM 12,084 for three laptops nobody will ship.

Splitting an order, at a glance

Keep the order whole, for the full quantity the customer asked for (Step 1), after the checks in Before you start: the Knock Off Configuration row, the stock, and the credit decision.
Invoice what you can ship by lowering To Knockoff on the invoice’s KO For tab, then SAVE and FINAL the same day. The balance falls at SAVE, so a draft left overnight shows the next person a balance of 15 with 25 still on the shelf, and Available overstates what you can promise (Step 2).
Give the customer paperwork from the invoice, not a goods delivery note knocked off the same order, which would wipe the balance (Step 3).
Watch the balance on SO Line with SI KO every week and at month-end (Step 4).
Invoice the next drop the same way (Step 5).
Close what will never ship on the same screen. Never try to void a part-shipped order (Step 6).

The table of what each moment changes is on the first sibling. The work runs across three pages: Step 1 is on this one, Steps 2 to 4 are on Invoice the first drop and give the customer paperwork, and Steps 5 and 6 on Ship the balance or close it.

How BigLedger actually splits an order

There is no “partial delivery” mode to switch on, and no backorder document. The mechanism is simpler than that, and it lives in one place:

A sales invoice knocks off a quantity from a sales order line, not the whole line. When you knock off the order in the invoice’s KO For tab, the grid shows, for each line, Base Qty. (what was ordered), Bal. Qty. (what is still un-invoiced, as stored on the order’s open queue), and an editable To Knockoff, which starts at the full balance and accepts any figure up to it. Set it to 25, and the order line keeps a balance of 15.

That is the whole feature. Everything else in this guide is bookkeeping around it — but three things behind the screen decide whether that bookkeeping comes out right.

The balance is a stored row, not a sum worked out as you look. When the order is finalised, a follow-on job (seconds later, not part of the FINAL itself) writes one open-queue row per order line for each pair your company enables in its Knock Off Configuration — Sales Order → Sales Invoice for this guide. Bal. Qty. is that row. Stock Availability reads the same row, which is why an open order holds stock back.

It falls when the invoice is saved, not when it is finalised. Saving the invoice writes its knock-off links, and the same request rewrites the order’s balance from them. So a draft invoice for 25 already holds those 25: the next invoice is offered 15, while the laptops are still on the shelf and nothing has posted. The stock leaves, and the sale posts, only at the invoice’s FINAL.

Each downstream document type has its own row, but each rewrite counts every knock-off on the line. The invoice’s knock-off rewrites only the invoice row, so a goods delivery note raised from the same order is still offered the full 40. But when the delivery note is saved, its row is recalculated from all the knock-offs on that line — the invoice’s 25 as well as its own — and the next invoice’s recalculation counts the delivery note’s. Step 3 is written around that.

Before you start

A FINAL sales order for the full quantity — from the quotation, if there was one. Do not shrink the order to what you can ship: the order is the customer’s commitment, and shrinking it loses the record of what they actually asked for.
An enabled Sales Order → Sales Invoice row in your company’s Knock Off Configuration (Organisation > Company > Knock Off Configuration). This is what makes the order’s lines appear in the invoice’s KO For tab at all — and, as it happens, what makes an open order count against available stock. If the row is missing, the order finalises normally and the invoice simply cannot find it. Each company in a group keeps its own rows: GSD having them says nothing about GS.
Stock at the line’s location for the quantity you are about to invoice. The invoice refuses to finalise otherwise, with Not Enough Stock for item … — unless your tenant has switched the stock check off, in which case it lets you go negative and says nothing.
A decision that part-shipping is the right call. For a customer close to their credit limit, part-shipping is one of four answers, and it is the credit controller’s to give — see Deciding on credit. The invoice screen does not ask.
An agreement with the customer about delivery charges. Two deliveries usually cost more than one, and that is a commercial conversation to have before the first van leaves, not after the second invoice.

Step 1: Keep the order whole

Sales > Sales Order (Internal) > Sales Order > (your order)

The outcome: a single order for 40 that everyone can see is not finished.

Raise the order for all 40 laptops and finalise it as normal. A few seconds later its follow-on job writes the balance, and Available at GSD-WH-01 drops to −15: the 25 on the shelf are spoken for, and nobody else’s order can be promised them from that figure. That is the protection you get from keeping the order at full quantity.

Then use the two fields that exist for exactly this:

Sales Order Status — your tenant’s own list, configured under Settings → Sales Order Status. A value like Part-shipped is how your team finds these orders without reading every one.
Remarks — one plain sentence, updated at each drop: “25 delivered 27 Oct; balance 15 expected from distributor first week of Nov.” This is what the person covering for you on a Friday afternoon will read.

Keep the customer’s purchase order number to hand and put it on both invoices. A corporate customer’s accounts team matches each invoice — and each e-invoice — to their purchase order, and two partial invoices against one purchase order are exactly what they will query.

Next: Steps 2 to 4, invoice the part you can ship.

Steps 2 to 6, in brief

Step 2: Invoice the part you can ship

On the invoice’s KO For tab, lower To Knockoff to what you can ship, then SAVE and FINAL the same day (Step 2).

Step 3: Give the customer paperwork for this drop

The simplest paperwork is the invoice itself. If the customer wants a separate document to sign, raise a delivery order from the invoice, not a goods delivery note knocked off the same order (Step 3).

Step 4: Watch the balance

SO Line with SI KO lists each order line against what has been invoiced, so you can see what you still owe your customers; run it every Monday and at every month-end (Step 4).

Step 5: Ship the balance

Invoice the next drop the same way, knocking off the same sales order (Step 5).

Step 6: Close what will never ship

Close the line on SO Line with SI KO once the customer has agreed the rest will not ship. Never try to void a part-shipped order (Step 6).

What success looks like

Run these four after the last drop:

SO Line with SI KO for this order shows Qty Ordered 40, Qty Received (invoiced) 37, Qty Outstanding 0, Qty Closed 3 and Closed — or, if everything shipped, 40 received and 0 outstanding with no Close button.
Stock Balance for the item at GSD-WH-01 fell by 25 on 27 October and by 12 on 6 November — two movements, matching the two vans, each dated on its invoice.
The customer’s Statement of Account shows two invoices totalling RM 149,036: the order’s RM 161,120 less the RM 12,084 you closed.
The order’s remarks tell the story: two dates, two quantities, one reason for the three. Someone auditing this in six months has everything they need without opening another screen.

Common mistakes

Shrinking the order to what you can ship today. You lose the record of what the customer asked for, the available-stock reservation for the balance, and any chance of tracking the outstanding commitment. Keep the order whole and knock off partially.

Raising a second order for the balance. Now you have two orders, two histories, and a customer purchase order number on both. The balance already lives on the first order; use it.

Leaving an invoice in draft. The order’s balance fell at SAVE, so the next invoice is offered less, Available reads higher than the shelf, and SO Line with SI KO counts the draft as invoiced. Finalise the same day, or discard the draft, which gives the order its quantity back. If a balance looks too small, look for a draft invoice against the order before anything else.

Knocking the same order line off on both an invoice and a goods delivery note. Each save recalculates its balance from every knock-off on the line, so the delivery note’s balance disappears after the first drop and the invoice’s can follow it. Use a delivery order raised from the invoice for the paperwork (Step 3).

Finalising and waiting for dispatch to see it. Nothing reaches the Pick Pack Queue until someone clicks Send To Queue on the invoice’s Delivery Details tab, and that button waits for FINAL. If dispatch says the invoice is not in their list, that is the first place to look — and if they say the quantity is doubled, someone clicked it twice, or sent the drop from both the invoice and a delivery order.

Invoicing all 40 and shipping 25. The system is perfectly happy to do this and the customer will not be. Forty units of stock leave, forty units of revenue post, and fifteen laptops sit in your warehouse recorded as sold. Every stock count after that is wrong.

Reading the SO Detailed Report for what is still owed. Its Outstanding Qty column shows what each invoice took. Use SO Line with SI KO.

Voiding a part-shipped order to “reset” it. The invoices already posted stand. Close the outstanding line instead.

Forgetting the second delivery charge. Two drops, two costs. Add the delivery item to the second invoice if that is the deal, or absorb it knowingly — but decide, rather than discovering it at month end.