Sales Order
Encyclopedia
The sales order, sometimes abbreviated as SO, is an order
Order (business)
In business or commerce, an order is a stated intention, either spoken or written, to engage in a commercial transaction for specific products or services. From a buyer's point of view it expresses the intention to buy and is called a purchase order. From a seller's point of view it expresses the...

 issued by a business to a customer. A sales order may be for products and/or services. Given the wide variety of businesses, this means that the orders can be fulfilled in several ways. Broadly, the fulfillment modes, based on the relationship between the order receipt and production, are as follows:
  • Digital Copy
    Digital copy
    Digital Copy provides consumers who purchase a film on DVD or Blu-ray Disc with an additional, digital copy of the movie for devices capable of operating with a file in contrast to a DVD.-Features:...

     - Where products are digital and inventory is maintained with a single digital master
    Digital master
    A digital master is an image, PDF file or another digital asset created for the purpose of reuse and re-expression. For images it is the digital analogue to a photographic negative. It is the master from which variations for specific uses can be derived....

    . Copies are made on demand in real time and instantly delivered to customers.
  • Build to Stock
    Build to stock
    Build to stock, or make to stock, often abbreviated as BTS or MTS, is a build-ahead production approach in which production plans may be based upon sales forecasts and/or historical demand...

     - Where products are built and stocked in anticipation of demand. Most products for the consumer would fall into this category
  • Build to Order
    Build to order
    Build to order and sometimes referred to as make to order , is a production approach where once a confirmed order for products is received, products are built...

     - Where products are built based on orders received. This is most prevalent for custom parts where the designs are known beforehand.
  • Configure to Order - Where products are configured or assembled to meet unique customer requirements e.g. Computers
  • Engineer to Order - Where some amount of product design work is done after receiving the order


A sales order is an internal document of the company, meaning it is generated by the company itself. A sales order should record the customer's originating purchase order
Purchase order
A purchase order is a commercial document issued by a buyer to a seller, indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller will provide to the buyer. Sending a purchase order to a supplier constitutes a legal offer to buy products or services...

 which is an external document. Rather than using the customer's purchase order document, an internal sales order form allows the internal audit control of completeness to be monitored as a sequential sales order number can be used by the company for its sales order documents. The customer's PO is the originating document which triggers the creation of the sales order. A sales order, being an internal document, can therefore contain many customer purchase orders under it. In a manufacturing environment, a sales order can be converted into a work order to show that work is about to begin to manufacture, build or engineer the products the customer wants.

Electronic Sales Order

Many Sales Order are no longer paper-based, but rather transmitted electronically over a corporate Intranet. These Sales Orders may be communicated across different Enterprise Business Applications.

Open Application Group Integration Specification (OAGIS) from OAGi

Use of XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 message format for electronic Sales Order have occurred since the inception of XML in 1998. OAGIS has included a Sales Order since its inception in 1996. Implementations of Sales Orders based on OAGIS are common, including support by major enterprise business software vendors, as well as implementations by many of the worlds Fortune 500 companies.

OAGi has a working relationship with UN/CEFACT where OAGi and its members participate in defining many of the Technology and Methodology specifications. OAGi also includes support for these Technology and Methodology specifications within OAGIS.

While providing a Cross Industry representation of Sales Order, OAGIS specifies industry specific requirements for the Industries that work with OAGi to identify these requirements.

More information about OAGi, its members, Use Cases, access to OAGIS and more can be found on the OAGi Website http://www.oagi.org.

Common order types

  • Quote
  • Spot order
  • Sales contract
  • Intra-company order
  • Pull order
  • Service order
  • Return order
  • Product Number

Customer order fulfillment

The steps involved in fulfilling the demands made in a sales order make up the order fulfillment
Order fulfillment
Order fulfillment is in the most general sense the complete process from point of sales inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer...

 process.

See also

  • Distribution
    Distribution (business)
    Product distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. An organization or set of organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by a consumer or business user.The other three parts of the marketing mix are product, pricing,...

  • Marketing
    Marketing
    Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

  • Supply chain management
    Supply chain management
    Supply chain management is the management of a network of interconnected businesses involved in the ultimate provision of product and service packages required by end customers...

  • Order management system
    Order management system
    An order management system, or OMS, is a computer software system used in a number of industries for order entry and processing.- Electronic commerce and catalogers :...

  • Purchase order
    Purchase order
    A purchase order is a commercial document issued by a buyer to a seller, indicating types, quantities, and agreed prices for products or services the seller will provide to the buyer. Sending a purchase order to a supplier constitutes a legal offer to buy products or services...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK