Keep Track of Those Sales That Are Just Waiting to Happen!

The decision to track inventory in QuickBooks is a BIG one. Once the decision is made, you will need to track every purchase and every sale of every item.

And what do you do when a customer orders an item that is out of stock? The Sales Order feature in QuickBooks is just what you need!

Sales Orders can only be created using QuickBooks Premier or Enterprise Solutions editions. In QuickBooks Basic and Pro, you can work with existing sales orders but you cannot create new ones.

To Activate Sales Orders:

1. Choose Preferences from the Edit menu.
2. In the Preference window, select Sales & Customers from the scroll box.
3. Click the Company Preferences tab.
4. Place a checkmark next to Enable Sales Orders.
5. Click OK.

When taking orders from customers, you can initially create a sales order and, if not all inventory items are found in stock, you can use the sales order to track the out-of-stock, backordered items. To create a new sales order, choose Create Sales Orders from the Customers menu.

The number of items that you have in your physical inventory, minus the items that are on all sales orders and/or reserved for assemblies, will equal the number of items available for sale. A warning message will be displayed if you attempt to sell inventory which is not available.

• To create a report that lists all open sales orders by customer or item, choose Sales from the Reports menu. Then choose Open Sales Orders by Customer (or by Item).
• To create a report that lists inventory item quantities on hand, on order and availability, choose Inventory from the Reports menu. Then choose Inventory Stock Status by Item.

When your inventory comes in, simply create your customer invoice against the original sales order and QuickBooks will automatically select only the remaining backordered items. If desired, you can even hand-select which backordered items to invoice. The Sales Order will remain open until all items have been invoiced. If necessary you can select to close out a particular line item (by clicking in the CLSD column or all remaining items by clicking the Mark As Closed button).