Rodrigue Ahouansou, a seller at Illa Hardware in Akpakpa, is standing with Michel Agossou, a mason who wants thirty sheets of roofing and a bundle of iron rods. Rodrigue does not take the money. He writes the order, and the cashier, Sènami Dossou, cashes it. One afternoon Michel asks for a bigger discount than Rodrigue is allowed to give, and Rodrigue does not know who should decide. This page follows an order from its creation to its invoice. The same steps apply to any business where one person prepares the sale and another one collects the payment.

​
Create an order

Rodrigue creates the order with Create an order. It lists the items, the price of each unit, the stock each quantity is taken from, the customer and any discount. A connected seller is needed, and the company must not have reached its monthly order limit. The order starts as pending, unpaid. Creating it does not touch stock, accounting or what the customer owes. All of that happens when a cashier confirms the sale (see Run a register session).

​
Send an order to approval

Some orders cannot go straight to the cashier. If Rodrigue applies a manual discount, he needs the matching permission, and a manual discount above the approval threshold set for the company sends the order to approval. If Michel buys on credit beyond his limits, or has overdue credit, the order is refused unless Rodrigue asks for approval. In both cases the order becomes “awaiting approval”, and the members allowed to approve are notified. The credit rules themselves are described in Collect customer credit. Madame Illa then chooses:
  • Approve an order: the order becomes approved, and the cashier can confirm it without the credit limit check.
  • Decline an order approval: the order becomes unapproved, and Rodrigue can open it for changes.
Only an order that is awaiting approval can be declined. An approved order cannot be declined with this action.

​
Change an order

Michel adds forty bags of cement. Rodrigue works in two steps:
  1. Put an order in editing mode. This works on a pending or unapproved order.
  2. Edit an order. The items, customer and discounts are replaced and the totals are computed again.
After the edit, the order is pending again, or awaiting approval if a discount or credit rule requires it. The notification to the approvers is sent only when the order is created, not after an edit. If Rodrigue opens an order for editing and changes nothing, or if the cashier rejected it, he uses Return an order to pending. The order is not priced again and does not go back to approval.

​
Refuse or delete an order

A cashier who cannot serve an order, for example because the goods are gone, uses Reject an order. It works on a pending or approved order. The seller can then correct it, or someone with the permission to delete orders removes it with Delete an order, which deletes the items, discounts and tax lines with it.

​
Find and read orders

List orders shows the orders of a date range, filtered by status, seller, register or cashier. View an order shows one order with its items, totals and payments. The seller and cashier filters use the id of the person’s agent account or user profile, not the id of the seller or cashier record.

​
Produce the invoice

When a sale is confirmed, Exowpee creates the invoice and shows it. Later, Madame Illa can generate one for a completed order with Generate an order invoice. It uses the active invoice template and keeps a fixed copy, so a later change of template does not alter it. If a copy already exists, she gets that one instead. View an order invoice reads the saved copy.

​
The rules

  • Only the seller who created an order can put it in editing mode, edit it or return it to pending.
  • An order can be changed, rejected or deleted only if it was created today, unless the caller holds the permission to update past data.
  • An order can be deleted only when it is updating or rejected, and has no payments.
  • Only a connected cashier can reject an order, and only on the cashier’s own register when the order has one.
  • Without the permission to view past orders, the list shows today’s orders only. Without the permission to filter by user, it shows only the orders the caller sold or cashed.
  • Money amounts in requests are in major units, for example 200000 for 200,000 FCFA.

​
All the actions of this topic

  • Generate an order invoice: Creates the invoice document of a completed order using the active invoice template, and keeps it as a fixed copy. If one already exists it is returned instead.
  • View an order invoice: Retrieves the saved invoice document of an order.
  • List orders: Lists orders over a date range, filterable by status, seller, register and cashier. Users without the right to see all see only orders they sold or cashed.
  • Create an order: A seller creates a new order with items, discounts and customer, as a draft awaiting payment. It may go to approval when a discount or credit limit requires it.
  • View an order: Shows one order with its items, totals and payments.
  • Edit an order: The seller who created an order saves new items, customer and discounts after putting it in editing mode. The order goes back to waiting for payment or approval.
  • Delete an order: Deletes an order and its items. Only possible when the order is in a state that allows deletion and has no payments.
  • Put an order in editing mode: The seller who created a pending or unapproved order opens it for changes. This must be done before saving new content with the update action.
  • Decline an order approval: An approver refuses an order that is awaiting approval, so it is set to unapproved and the seller can open it for changes. An order that is already approved cannot be unapproved with this action.
  • Return an order to pending: The seller puts an order back to pending after it was rejected, or after opening it for editing without changing it.
  • Approve an order: An approver accepts an order that needed approval, for example for a large discount or a credit sale.
  • Reject an order: A cashier refuses a waiting order, for example because it cannot be served.
From other topics, also used here:
  • Check a discount code: Previews whether a discount code can be used for a basket and customer, and what the discount would be, without applying it or recording any usage. A valid request always gets a 200 answer with eligible, reasons and would_be.
  • Confirm and cash a sale: A cashier finalizes an order by recording the payments received. Stock is taken out, accounting and customer credit are posted and an invoice snapshot is created.