Your customers make sales orders to you if they want to buy something from you (unless you have a shop where they can get their goods right away). Sales orders to you are initially work orders – you must fill, ship and invoice them. 

Filling a sales order is something you must first off keep track of in terms of materials or goods needed to meet the order (if you’re buying them elsewhere to resell to your customers) – there are transport times, which you cannot control a lot (distances need to be covered etc.), and there are also contractual obligations you’ve agreed on with your customers, i.e. you will ship the goods always in 2 weeks time. This “always” is something you must ensure you’re in the position to do and act accordingly once you get the order to ensure you can meet that deadline.

Shipping is something that’s easy, but it needs to be done – once the goods are ready for the order, make sure you also make the shipping and don’t delay with it unnecessarily. Invoicing goes into the same category. Invoicing is easy, it gets you money at the end and should be done obviously, but make sure the invoices meet the agreed conditions – payment terms etc.

For all of this you need to have an overview of your sales orders – depending on your business type and volumes the overview can be in many forms, but make sure it meets all your needs.