Sales Orders why are they important?

October 24, 2012 at 6:34 PMIan Benoliel

Sales orders are fundamental to any inventory and order management system. When a customer sends you a purchase order or clicks buy on your web site your company becomes obligated to fullfill the order. Therefore a sales order should be entered into your system as soon as possible.  

I have seen some companies that instead of entering a customer PO as a sales order, they enter it as an invoice even though they have not yet shipped the product.    This is not advisable for a number of reasons:

1. A sale is not yet made: Generally accepted accounting principles require that you ship the product before you record a sale.   Since you have created an invoice you have incorrectly recognized revenue in your accounting records.

2. You may not have the inventory to ship:  You may have generated the invoice but you make actually be in backorder.  This is especially possible if your system allows you to go into negative inventory (like QuickBooks does).  Now you have an invoice and the only way for you do determine what is in back order and what needs to be ordered from your suppliers is to painstakingly go through each product that shows negative inventory.  Ouch!

So the correct procedure would be to enter a sales order and a minimum the following data should be captured:

  • -Customer's legal name
  • -Billing to address
  • -Shipping Address
  • -Order date
  • -Expected shipping date
  • -Customer PO #
  • -Terms of payment
  • -Each product that was ordered (SKU and Description)
  • -Quantity ordered of each product
  • -Price per for each product
  • -Shipping method

Once a sales order is in the system you can use to answer a variety of questions like:

  • -When do I need to ship products?
  • -Which products do I need to order from my suppliers and how much do I need to order?
  • -Which sales orders do I ship first?

If you are not using an inventory and order management system things are probably slipping through the cracks. Here are some points to consider:

  • -Paper gets lost or destroyed.
  • -Excel needs to be manually updated.
  • -Without a system it's hard to share data within your organization.
  • -You have limited visibility as to open orders, backorders, available inventory and such.

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O Canada - QuickBooks Inventory Software for Canadian Companies

October 15, 2012 at 12:11 PMIan Benoliel

Canadian companies, who are more export oriented than their U.S. brethren, have specific needs when it comes down to inventory and order management. NumberCruncher addresses those needs in its flagship product All Orders. How you may ask does a U.S. based company have so much knowledge of Canada. Well that is because its founder and president, Ian Benoliel, is from Canada. Born in Montreal, Ian grew up working in his father's manufacturing business. Ian's familiy moved to Toronto there he started his career as a Charted Accountant. Although he now lives in South Florida, his mother, brothers and sister live in Canada.

So when selecting an inventory software that is integrated with QuickBooks Canada, make sure you select one that have those features required by Canadian companies like those contained in All Orders by NumberCruncher.

Support for GST, HST and PST

U.S. and Canadian sales tax a coniderably different. U.S. taxes are generally exigible on the sales of goods whereas Canadian sales tax is exigible on both goods and services. The tax authority in the U.S. is on the state, county and city level and in Canada the tax authority on the federal and provincial levels. Finally, and most importantly, the U.S. system is not a value added tax therefore for taxes are whereas in Canada, companies received an input tax credit for taxes paid to suppliers and other vendors.

Foreign Currencies

Its rare that U.S. companies have anything but U.S. dollar bank accounts. In fact you would be hard pressed to find a bank that can offer a Canadian currency bank account. (By the way you may want to try Harris Bank which is a subsidiary of the Bank of Montreal). Conversely I would be hard pressed to find a Canadian manufacturer, wholesaler or distributor that does not have both Candian and U.S. dollar bank accounts. Canadian companies need foreign currency because they export to the U.S., Canada largest trading partner and when importing from Asia.

Multiple locations

Many Canadian, particularly manufacturers, have many customers in the U.S. as such they may have third party logistics holding inventory so lead times can be minimized.

Other features

All Orders by NumberCruncher contains an array of features designed for manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors using QuickBooks like bills of materials, work orders, vendor management, reorder point forecasting, sales orders and shipping automation, lot and serial number tracking and barcode printing and scanning.

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