Sales Management

Structured selling moves through documents: a quotation offers a price, a sales order confirms the customer’s commitment, and an invoice requests payment for what was delivered. Each step builds on the last, so nothing is re-typed and everything is traceable. In AWRA a quote is approved (approval is on by default), sent with a link the customer can accept or decline online, and then converted once — to a sales order for goods that ship over time or may be short, or straight to an invoice when the stock is on hand. An order can then be invoiced in full or in part, and a proforma can be printed from a quote or an order for a customer who pays in advance.

Keeping the flow connected means a question like "what did we quote, what did they order, and what have we invoiced?" is answered instantly — not pieced together from emails. Lines are priced once, when the quote is saved, and copied forward unchanged to the order and every invoice raised from it.

In practice: a hardware supplier quotes a contractor for 200 bags of cement. The quote is approved and sent with its online link, and the contractor accepts it there. Because delivery will come in three loads, the sales rep converts it to a sales order rather than an invoice, and raises a partial invoice as each load goes out. A walk-in customer paying for stock already on the shelf skips the order entirely: that quote is invoiced directly.

Customer records hold contacts, terms, and transaction history. For customers who buy on credit, credit terms and limits matter: they define how much a customer can owe before a new invoice needs review. An invoice that would take the customer over their limit is placed on credit hold, and it cannot be approved or checked out until someone overrides the hold with a reason.

Tracking this in one place protects cash flow — you can see who owes what and avoid extending more credit than is wise.

In practice: a customer on 30-day terms has a limit of 500,000 and owes 420,000. A new invoice for 120,000 would take them 40,000 over, so it is placed on credit hold instead of going through. A manager can release it by overriding the hold with a reason — say, a payment promised for Friday — and that reason stays on the invoice. The aging report then shows how much of each customer’s balance is current and how much is 1–30, 31–60, 61–90 or more than 90 days overdue, which is where collection calls start.

A sale is a promise to deliver, and fulfilling it draws on real stock. In AWRA, confirming a sales order reserves each stock line at the order’s warehouse, as far as stock is free, and backorders the rest; backorders are filled oldest first as stock arrives. The stock itself leaves when an invoice raised from the order is checked out — the same disciplined movement used everywhere in AWRA.

This is why sales and inventory cannot be separate systems: an order you cannot fulfil is a problem, and only a connected view tells you in time. Reserved stock is out of reach of the till, other invoices, transfers and manual check-outs, and invoicing a quote directly is refused when the warehouse is short, pointing you to a sales order instead.

In practice: an order for 50 units is confirmed at a warehouse holding 30 free. AWRA reserves the 30 and backorders 20, and the reserved 30 cannot be sold at the till or transferred away while they wait. When 40 more arrive the following week, the oldest backorders are filled first, so this order’s 20 are reserved before any newer order’s. The stock physically leaves only when the invoice raised from the order is checked out.

Good sales reporting answers practical questions: what is selling, to whom, at what margin, and what is still owed. Because the documents are connected, these reports come from real activity rather than manual tallies.

The discipline is to act on them — chase overdue invoices, double down on what sells, and spot slow movers before they tie up cash.

In practice, a weekly sales review can take fifteen minutes. Open the aging report and list every invoice more than 30 days overdue for a collection call, largest first. Then look at sales by item and by customer for the period: which lines are carrying the month, and which regular customers have gone quiet. Finally, check open sales orders with backorders, because a promise you cannot keep is better raised with the customer now than discovered on delivery day.