Order Maintenance

Sales order file maintenance and quote order file maintenance can be performed manually or automatically by the system.  The manual sales order file maintenance feature allows information on a sales order to be changed until the order line is shipped and billed.  The manual quote order file maintenance feature allows information on a quote to be changed until the order is realized.  Automatic file maintenance allows information to be updated until the order is closed and removed from the sales order files.

Order Maintenance Conversations

Manual updating is primarily performed in the Sales Order Maintenance conversation, Quote Order Maintenance conversation and, on a limited basis, and Open Order Shipping and Billing conversations.

The Sales Order Maintenance conversation enables users to maintain all open sales order lines until they are shipped and billed.  All changes to an existing order are reported on the audit trail and transaction register reports in the Inventory Control application.

The Quote Order Maintenance conversation enables users to maintain all open quote order lines until they are closed.

Order maintenance processing can be performed on all sales order and quote order header fields that are displayed at sales order entry time, except the customer number, sold-to address, order number, and shipment type fields.  Order maintenance processing can be performed on all line item fields except the part number and warehouse number.

Information from either a quote order, a standing order, an existing sales order, or sales history can be copied to a new order through a Copy Order function available from the Sales Order Maintenance Function Select, Single-Line, and Multi-Line entry screens.  Once these lines are copied to the order, they can be maintained as if they were entered manually.  For more information about this processing, refer to the key concept on Order Productivity.

Besides changing individual fields during the Sales Order Maintenance and Quote Order Maintenance conversations, the operator can cancel line parts and orders by setting the status code to "closed."  When the order is canceled, all corresponding line parts are also canceled.  New line parts may be added to an existing order if it has not been closed.

The system will automatically update an original (parent) record when changes are made to the release (child).  For example, if a backorder release is maintained to increase the sales order and release quantities, the backorder quantity on the parent will be automatically reduced.

Automatic updating also occurs whenever a change is made to the line item which affects a summary total in the header record. For example, if a line part's VAT code is changed, the header's total tax amount fields are recomputed.

Automatic updating is also performed during off-line processing.  The most common field affected at this time is the order status code.  For example, if an open order is released during normal end-of-day processing, the order status is updated from "open" to "released."

Considerations

The Order Processing application requires that all operator sales order maintenance and quote order maintenance transactions be included on the audit trail and transaction register reports.  This provides management with a control list of all orders that were affected by order maintenance.

To minimize operator error and provide improved control over sales order file maintenance and quote order file maintenance, the number of operators permitted to perform order maintenance should be limited.  Where practical, the use of only one terminal for entering changes would eliminate the possibility of conflicting updates.  If possible, all order maintenance transactions should be processed at predetermined intervals before normal order processing.

Existing orders with backorder quantities should be maintained in Sales Order Maintenance before new orders are added, so that newly available inventory is reserved for older sales orders first.