Ship the balance of a sales order, or close what will never ship

Steps 5 and 6 of a partial delivery: bill the next drop from the same order, and close what will never ship. It follows Steps 2 to 4, where the first drop was invoiced and the balance watched. In the running example the distributor delivers 12 of the 15 laptops still owed and discontinues the model, and the customer takes the 12 and cancels the last 3 (Meet GadgetSphere). Decide before the second invoice whether it carries a second delivery charge: two drops, two costs (Common mistakes).

1. Step 5: ship the balance.
2. Step 6: close what will never ship.
3. What one split order touches elsewhere.

Step 5: Ship the balance

Finance > Sales Invoice (Internal) > Sales Invoice > Create > KO For > Sales Order

The outcome: the second drop billed, and the order showing what is left.

On 6 November the distributor delivers 12 and says the model is discontinued. Once the goods receipt for the 12 is final, create a second invoice, knock off the same sales order, and this time the grid shows Base Qty. 40 and Bal. Qty. 15. Set To Knockoff to 12.

Serial numbers, dates, e-Invoice tab, SAVE, FINAL. 12 more laptops leave stock dated 6 November, and RM 48,336 (RM 45,600 plus RM 2,736 SST) is added to the customer’s account as a second invoice. The customer’s statement now shows two invoices, each with its own date and its own open amount for their payment to settle. Invoice 2 is a second e-invoice and, if a commission scheme applies, November’s commission. Send this drop to the queue from its own Delivery Details tab, as in Step 3.

SO Line with SI KO now reads 40 ordered, 37 received, 3 outstanding, and Available at GSD-WH-01 reads −3. Had the 15 all arrived, you would have taken 15, the balance would be 0, and the Close button would be gone because there would be nothing left to close.

Step 6: Close what will never ship

Sales > Sales Order (Internal) > SO Line with SI KO > close the line

Sometimes the balance is never going to ship: the customer cancelled the rest, the item was discontinued, as here, or some of the forty turned out to be the wrong specification. Leaving the line open is not harmless — it holds available stock that could be sold to someone else, it keeps a commitment on your outstanding list that nobody is going to act on, and one of BigLedger’s two available-credit figures goes on counting it against the customer.

Closing is a decision about the order, so it belongs to whoever owns the order — usually the branch or sales administrator — and it rests on something from the customer: here, their e-mail accepting 12 instead of 15. Before pressing Close, check two things on the row: Qty Received equals what you invoiced (37, both invoices final, no draft among them), and there is nothing more you intend to invoice. Write the reason in the order’s remarks first, because the closed line will not explain itself. Close needs a login allowed to delete open-queue entries, so who can press it is set in the role, not on this screen.

Then press Close at the end of the row. What it does is precise and small. BigLedger copies the line’s open-queue row into a closed queue and deletes the open one. Three things follow: the invoice’s KO For tab stops offering the line; the 3 stop counting against available stock, and Available at GSD-WH-01 returns to 0; and the row on SO Line with SI KO now shows Qty Closed 3 and Queue Closed Status Closed, highlighted red. The order itself is untouched — still FINAL, still 40 on the face of it, still linked to both invoices. Close acts on the invoice balance only. The order’s own CLOSE button, on the order itself, is the sibling to use when every balance on the order should end at once, delivery balances included.

What one split order touches elsewhere

Nothing on the invoice screen shows these, and each is what somebody else in the group will ask you about.

• Upstream. The order must exist and be FINAL, and the Sales Order → Sales Invoice row must exist in the company’s Knock Off Configuration before you can split anything; stock must be at the line’s location before each invoice. A quotation, if there was one, became the order — from then on the order is the record.
• Downstream. Each invoice is its own sale on its own date, its own stock movement, its own receivable on the customer’s statement, its own e-invoice, and — where a commission scheme runs — its own commission line. Splitting the order once lets you bill in the month you deliver, which is what makes the cut-off right.
• Sibling routes. Deliver first and invoice later through delivery orders when the goods must leave before the bill; use this guide’s route when each drop is billed as it goes. Close a line rather than void an order; use the order’s CLOSE rather than closing line by line when the customer cancels everything left.
• Blast radius. While a balance is open, the main Available figure at that location is lower by it, the outstanding list carries it, and one credit figure counts it at the line price — while the figure the FINAL credit check uses counts nothing for an order invoiced straight from the order (Deciding on credit, Step 3). A balance nobody closes keeps all three wrong for every month it survives. A goods delivery note against the same line breaks the balance itself (Step 3).
• Pairing. In practice this guide is used alongside Deciding on credit (part-shipping as the answer to a customer near their limit), the stock receipt that brings the balance in, and the delivery scheduling that gets each drop onto a van.

What success looks like for this part

Invoice 2 is FINAL for 12 laptops, the last 3 are closed on SO Line with SI KO, resting on the customer’s e-mail accepting 12 instead of 15, and SO Line with SI KO shows nothing outstanding on the order’s line. Then run the whole order’s success check; its common mistakes cover every part.

Related documentation

• Partial Delivery Workflow: the whole order, with its success check and the common mistakes.
• Sales Order (Internal): SO Line with SI KO, Close, and where an order’s balance is read.
• The order still shows a quantity outstanding after I invoiced it all: when the stored balance and the invoices disagree.