A client wishes to order items from suppliers in direct response to Sales orders being received from Customers. I have identified the Special Order Purchasing code functionality and this seems to provide an appropriate link between the two documents. However, when the orders are posted and invoiced, the corelation seems to be lost - i.e. the sales invoice can no longer be linked to the purchase invoice. Is this correct or am I missing a trick?
Check out the “Drop Shipment” feature of Navision. The basic idea of that is that you can order from a Supplier which directly “Delivers” the goods to the customer. This gives a real 1:1 relationship between Purchase Invoice and Sales Invoice. (Also for costing)
Hi Gary, you should still be able to see the connection to the original documents in the Shipment (at least this is so in the “Drop Shipment”, so I think this is valid for the “Special Order” as well). In the Sales Shipment Lines for example, you see this reference in the fields “Purchase Order No.” and “Purch. Order Line No.”. These fields are missing in the posted invoice, though, so you won’t be able to see the link there.
Thanks for the replies. I’ve had a look in the application at what you say and I agree. I don’t really appreciate yet what the difference is in the application between a drop shipment and a special order. In the documentation it says “A drop shipment is the shipment of an item or a consignment of items from one of your vendors directly to one of your customers”, wheras “You can create a special order for a specific nonstock item to be shipped to a specific customer. Your vendor ships the item to your warehouse and you can then ship the item on to your customer either independently or together with other items on another order”. Is it therefore correct that a special order is intended for non-stock items (in the Navision sense) and drop shipments for traditional items? Either way, I still have a problem. My client wants to be able to look at a sales invoice and identify the purchase invoice that was created from the purchase order created in response to the sales order. All I think I want is the reference to the SO line on the PO line to be followed through to the Sales Invoice or shipment line, but it seems as soon as the invoices are posted, the links are lost.
Scrap my last post, I’ve just reread Daniels post and couldn’t see the wood for the trees. If I look at the Sales Shipment line table (not the form) there is indeed a reference to the original po line, and this is sufficient for my tracability. The question does still stand though as to whether my interpretation of when to use a special order and when to use a drop shipment is correct ie special orders are for non-stock items and drop shipments for stocked.
Hi Gary, a Drop Shipment is as Thomas described, you raise a Sales Order then generate a Purchase Order and the goods are shipped directly to the Customer and bypass your warehouse altogether. A Special Order can be for either Stock Items or non stock items (most of my old clients used it for non stock) where you raise a Sales Order, generate a Purchase order and the goods are received into your warehouse (where they are reserved) and are then shipped onto the Customer. I hope this helps…Paul
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The question does still stand though as to whether my interpretation of when to use a special order and when to use a drop shipment is correct ie special orders are for non-stock items and drop shipments for stocked.
Whether you use “Drop Shipment” or “direct order” depends on the delivery method, not really on how you have set up your items as non-stock items or as stock items. “Drop shipment” should be used, if the items delivered do not hit your warehouse at all, but go directly from your vendor to your client. If you have set up all items that go directly from vendor to client as non-stock, then your interpretation would be valid.