This is an outline of the workflow for taking and fulfilling customer orders. The entire process is tracked within a single entity in inFlow Inventory, the Sales Order, making it easy for you to keep track of the order status and what needs to be done.

1.    (Optional) Customer asks for a Sales Quotation

A customer might ask you to give them a price for a certain order before committing to actually placing that order. We call this a Sales Quotation or Quote. inFlow can help you issue printed Quotes and allow you to convert them into Sales Orders if the customer later decides to place the order.

Details of Sales Quotations

2.    Customer Places an Order

When a Customer places an order, you can use inFlow to keep track of products, quantities, and prices for that order. Once you have entered the order into inFlow, you can print out a copy of the order for your records or to issue to the customer.

Details of Taking Sales Orders

3.    Products are Picked from storage for the order

In this step, products are picked out of storage locations for order fulfillment. inFlow can help suggest where to pick the products from, and then should be updated with the actual picked locations so that inventory counts can be updated accordingly.

Details of Picking

4.    Products are Packed into containers

Once products have been picked out of storage, the next step is to pack the products into containers to get ready to ship to the customer. The containers may be boxes or pallets depending on your business. Some orders may require multiple containers. In this step, you tell inFlow what goes into which container, and can then print out Container Labels with the shipping address and contents of each container.

Details of Packing

5.    Shipping out to the customer

Once products have been packed, then they need to be shipped out to the customer. InFlow can help you keep track of when you shipped each box and the associated tracking numbers.

Details of Shipping

Steps 3-5 can be done multiple times. For example, you might process and ship part of the order while waiting for goods before shipping the rest of the order.

6.    Invoicing Customer and Receiving Payment

Once you have shipped out the order, then an invoice should be sent to the customer. The invoice may be different than the original order placed, if perhaps you were short on stock and shipped slightly less than what the customer originally ordered.

Once the invoice has been sent, then you need to wait for the customer to pay you. You can use inFlow to track the payment status along with the invoice.

Details of Invoicing and Receiving Payment

7.    (Optional) Customer returns some products

If you allow customer returns, inFlow can help you track when customers return products to you and any credit or refund you give them.

Details of Customer Returns

8.    (Optional) Returned products may be restocked

If the products that the customer returned are not damaged, then you can restock them back into your inventory storage to be resold later.

Details of restocking

Order Cancellation

You may choose to cancel an order once it has been opened. To cancel an order, click the Cancel Order button from the Order tab of Sales Order. If this is done after any items have been shipped or payments received, then the inventory movements and payments will be reversed. Any picking done for this order will also be automatically reversed, moving the products back to their original locations. Once an order has been cancelled, it should not be processed further. However, you can choose to re-open a cancelled order by clicking the Re-open Order button, which replaces the Cancel Order button once the order is cancelled.

Quotations

Usually, the workflow will begin with the customer placing an order. If you choose to do a New Quote from the Tasks Box in the Sales Module, then the workflow will start at step one.

Standalone Invoices

You may want to issue an invoice without updating inventory or going through the rest of the normal Sales workflow, e.g. if you're consolidating two or more orders into a single invoice. You can create a standalone invoice by clicking “New Invoice w/o Order” from the Tasks Box in the Sales Module. Please note that inventory will not be updated when you create a Standalone Invoice. If you do want your inventory to be updated, please use the full Sales workflow.

Workflow Flexibility

The workflow is designed to provide a common structure for your order handling but also allow you the flexibility to do things in different orders when it makes sense to do so. For example, you can also choose to invoice for an order first before picking if this is more convenient for your business.

Order Status

inFlow Inventory uses a detailed Order Status to quickly describe the state of an order. The following are the possible status values for sales orders:

• Quote – when a Sales Quote has been created but not yet converted into an order.
• Open – when a Sales Order has been placed but no picking has taken place.
• In Progress – when order processing (picking, packing, and shipping) have begun for an order, but before the order has been marked Fully Shipped.
• Fully Shipped – when an order has been marked Fully Shipped but not yet invoiced.
• Invoiced – when an order has been marked Fully Shipped, has been invoiced, but has not yet been fully paid by the customer or had any items returned.
• Paid – when an order has been invoiced and fully paid by the customer.
• Cancelled – when an order has been marked Cancelled.

For Standalone invoices, the Order Status can be:

• Invoiced – when the invoice has not yet been fully paid.
• Paid – when the invoice has been fully paid.
• Cancelled – when the standalone invoice has been marked Cancelled.