Sales Process
Although selling can take many forms, every sale follows approximately the same established pattern, from offering goods or services for sale to invoicing customers. The pattern suggested by Codejig ERP is a typical and widely recognized sales process which involves 4 distinct steps from issuing a sales quotation to creating a sales order to delivering goods or services to sending a customer an invoice for goods or services sold. Each stage in the process is represented by a separate sales document, such as a sales quotation or a sales order. In Codejig ERP sales process, suggested document flow is the following:
Sales quotation ⇒ Sales order ⇒ Delivery ⇒ Invoice
It is easy to move along the sales process as Codejig ERP can copy and transfer all the appropriate information from one sales document to the next document in the flow.
However, it is not obligatory to take each step in a sequential order. If necessary, you can create an invoice directly in response to a purchase order from your customer without creating the preceding three sales documents. Or, you can skip certain documents in the sales process and, for example, create a delivery document based on a sales quotation without creating a sales order prior to that.
Note: Sales process is a one-way process. You can only create higher-level documents based on lower-level documents.For example, you cannot create an invoice, and after that create a delivery document for the invoice. However, if you have created a sales quotation and an invoice based on it skipping a sales order and a delivery, you can return to the skipped documents and create them from the sales quotation but not from the invoice.
In Codejig ERP, the sales process is conveniently visualized with the help of the documents flow line located at the top of each sales process document. The line also enhances the creation of sales documents based on the preceding documents in the flow as well as facilitates the management of and navigation through created sales process documents.
For more information about the documents flow line, see Document Flow Line.
Note: You can tailor Codejig ERP sales process to fit your company’s business needs. Although the sales documents occupy fixed positions in the sequential sales flow, they are relatively independent documents, and you can start implementing your sales model with any of them. Also, you can modify the sales document created from other sales documents. You can change data in any fields, add new items, delete transferred items or alter item details. Documents from which you have created the subsequent sales documents can be modified or deleted as well without distorting the sales process or causing any errors in the system.
Sales Process Documents
The following documents comprise the sales process in Codejig ERP:
1.Sales quotation
A sales quotation is a document that offers to sell goods or services to a customer at a certain price and under specified conditions. It allows a customer to review prices and other details before making a purchase. The document and its postings do not have any inventory or accounting impact.
2.Sales order
A sales order is a document that confirms the sale of certain items or provision of specific services at approved prices, quantities and dates. The document results in a posting that makes stock reservation on specified products in the inventory and adjusts the quantity available for sale.
3.Delivery
A delivery document indicates that goods have been shipped to a customer or services have been provided. It does not regulate or oversee the transportation of goods. It just reflects the fact that a customer received the goods or services or that goods were shipped from a warehouse. The document cancels the reservation of goods made by the sales order. It alters the total quantity of items in stock by the number of goods reserved and indicates that the goods were delivered to a customer without an invoice. It also impacts the transaction journal and the inventory journal.
4.Invoice
An invoice is a document sent by a seller to a customer indicating the costs and quantities of the products or services provided by the seller. The invoice is the request for payment from the customer. It affects the transaction journal, the profitability journal, the VAT journal, the sales journal, and the inventory journal.
Note: In the sales process, it is only compulsory to create the invoice. You do not have to first create the three preceding documents.
Document Creation Approaches
There are four approaches on how to create sales process documents.
- You can manually create a sales document as a standalone document.
For information about the manual approach to the creation of sales documents, see Create Sales Process Documents.
Note: When you create a sales document as a standalone document that is not based on any other documents, it commences a new sales process.
- You can clone sales process documents and create identical sales documents of the same document type through the use of the standard cloning functionality.
For more details on this approach, see Clone Sales Documents.
- You can create sales process documents based on the preceding sales documents using the standard copying functions in Codejig ERP.
For more details on this approach, see Copy Sales Documents.
Note: Through the use of the standard copying functions, you can create multiple documents based on one sales process document. However, only the first document created will continue the original sales process following the document with reference to which it was created. All other documents, will not explicitly refer to the base document and will form other sales process flows in which they will be treated as the base documents commencing the process.
- You can create sales process documents based on the preceding documents in the sales flow using the Document flow line.
For information about the Document flow line, see Document Flow Line.
Note: Even if you create documents using the standard copying functions and not the Document flow line, such documents will also be displayed in the line representing the flow formed for a specific base document. However, the line will not display all documents created based on specific sales process document. Only the first higher-level document created will be shown in the line.
Sales-related Documents
Besides the main documents that constitute the described sales process, there are the following sales-related documents in Codejig ERP:
- Price list - enables you to define prices for goods and services in price lists and monitor price fluctuations over specific periods of time. The price list makes a posting entry to the Sales pricing journal.
- Receive payment - a receive payment document finalizes your sales process and is a sign of closing a sale. Although the document belongs to the Banking module, it can be created directly from an invoice to clear its liability once a payment is received for it from a customer. The document results in postings that close the open invoice which was paid affecting the Transaction journal, the Sales journal and the Banking journal.
- Credit note - is issued by a seller to reduce the amount that a customer owes from a previously issued invoice. It is created in the event of a product return, an invoice error, damaged products, and so on. The credit note partially or completely reverses the transactions triggered by the invoice making posting entries to the journals that were originally affected by the invoice. Posting entries made by the credit note are opposite to postings induced by the invoice.
Sales-related Directories
The sales module includes the following directories:
- Invoice generator - enables you to batch generate invoices for open sales orders or delivery documents.
- Invoice export - allows you to convert invoices generated in Codejig ERP into e-invoices in the XML or EDI formats that can be sent electronically to your customers via a forwarding service.
- Customers - allows you to add new customers and keep track of all your existing and top customers as well as receivables associated with them.
More information
Sales Quotation
Sales Order
Delivery
Invoice
Update Sales Documents
Delete Sales Documents
Post and Unpost Sales Documents
Transactions Triggered by Sales Process Documents