sales order planning business central

[!NOTE] Demand lines in the project production order that have Prod. Order in their Replenishment System field represent underlying production orders. After you have generated these production orders, you must again calculate a plan in the Order Planning window to identify any unfulfilled component demand for them. In that case, they are displayed as demand lines under a normal production order header line, meaning, the project relation is no longer visible in the window. However, if you are using the Order Tracking feature, then you can look back and forth to all supply orders made under the original sales order.

Planning Setting Up Manufacturing Manufacturing Inventory Purchasing Design Details: Supply Planning Setup Best Practices: Supply Planning Working with Business Central

How to Use Sales Order Dates in Business Central

A sales order specifies the details about the products or services ordered by the purchaser. Sales orders are vital to keeping track of your inventory. They allow you to keep track of what you have in stock, what’s on back order, and what you may need to purchase from your vendors. Sales orders also help you reduce the risk of material misstatement in your organization’s financial reporting.

Sales orders and purchase orders are inherently interconnected. The key difference between the two is who generates the document and who receives it. While a sales order is generated by the seller, a purchase order is generated by the buyer. In addition, a purchase order is not only integral to expense tracking and budgeting, but also to help keep supply chain management on track. It documents a buyer’s intent to purchase goods or services from your company. Once your company receives and accepts the terms of a purchase order, a sales order can be created based on purchase order details.

With the basics covered, now we’ll walk you through how to use sales order dates in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

How to Use Sales Order Dates in Business Central

There are several date fields on sales order screens in Business Central, which can be confusing. However, if used correctly, you can use these dates to improve your sales order processing. You also can more accurately fulfill your customers’ order requirements and track your delivery times.

Sales order dates can be located on the Header only, Line only, or both the Header and Line. If the date exists on both the Header and Line, you should bring your attention to the dates on the Line. The lines determine your planning parameters.

If you try to change the date on the Header, Business Central will ask if you want to update the dates on the lines. Answering “yes” will update the dates on the lines. You can have different dates between the header and lines.

Sales Header Dates

Let’s begin with Sales Header dates.

General FastTab

Document Date – Used to calculate invoice related fields, such as due date (for invoice payment and prepayment). The document date also is used to calculate “Quote Valid Until Date” for sales quotes. When you manually fill in the document date, the due date will be updated automatically.

Posting Date – Used when posting the transaction to the ledgers. It’s used for shipment date, invoice date, return date, or credit date, depending on what you post. The posting date defaults to the date the document was created. The posting date also is used to calculate the exchange rate. When you manually fill in the posting date, the document date will be updated to match.

Order Date – The date you received the sales order. This defaults to the date the document was created. It’s used to calculate price and discount.

Due Date – The date when the invoice needs to be paid (invoice payment due date). The date is calculated from Document Date + Payment Terms. Changing the due date will not update the document date.

Requested Delivery Date – The date the customer requested for the goods to arrive at their location. By default, the requested delivery date is blank. This date exists on both the Header and Line. The requested delivery date on the Header does not affect any fields. When you update the field on the Header, Business Central will ask if you want to update the requested delivery date on the Line. Changing the field on the lines will update the Planned Delivery Date and Shipment Date on the lines.

Promised Delivery Date – The date you have promised the customer to deliver the order. By default, it’s blank. This date exists on both the Header and Line. Entering a promised delivery date on the Header will lock the Requested Delivery Date on the Header. When you update this field on the Header, the system will ask if you want to update the promised delivery date on the Line. Changing the promised delivery date on the Line will lock the Requested Delivery Date and update the Planned Delivery Date on the lines.

Invoice Details FastTab

Pmt. Discount Date – Used to be eligible for payment discount if the customer does early payment. It’s calculated based on the Document Date + Payment Term Discount Date Calculation. If there’s no discount associated with the payment terms, this date will be equal to the document date.

Shipping & Billing FastTab

Shipment Date – Dates when the goods are to be available in inventory to be picked for shipment. This is not the actual shipment date. The actual shipment date should be the Posting Date when you post shipment. The shipment date defaults to the date the document was created. This date exists on both the Header and Line. The shipment date on the Header does not affect any fields. When you update the shipment date on the Header, the system will ask if you want to update the shipment date on the Line. Changing the field on the lines will update the Planned Delivery Date and Planned Shipment Date on the lines.

Prepayment Due Date – The date when the prepayment invoice needs to be paid (invoice prepayment due date). The date is calculated from Document Date + Prepayment Payment Terms. Changing the prepayment due date will not update the document date.

Prepayment Payment Discount Date – Used to be eligible for payment discount if the customer does early prepayment. It’s calculated based on the Document Date + Prepayment Term Discount Date Calculation. If there’s no discount associated with the prepayment terms, this date will be equal to the document date.

Sales Line Dates

Now let’s look at Sales Line dates in Business Central.

When the date exists on both the Header and Line, the date on the Line is the one being used by the system for planning (replenishment).

There are five dates on the Line (excluding the Fixed Asset related dates) – Requested Delivery Date, Planned Delivery Date, Planned Shipment Date, Shipment Date, and Promised Delivery Date. These dates are related to and calculated from each other. Changing one of these dates will cause the system to recalculate the other dates (which sometimes isn’t ideal depending on your warehouse process).

Requested Delivery Date – The date the customer requested for the goods to arrive at their location. Changing the requested delivery date will update the planned delivery date. If the requested delivery date is blank, the system will update the Line shipment date to match the Header shipment date.

Planned Delivery Date – The date when you expect the goods to arrive at the customer’s location. It’s calculated from Planned Shipment Date + Shipping Time.

Planned Shipment Date – The date when you expect the goods to ship from the warehouse. It’s calculated from Shipment Date + Outbound Warehouse Handling Time.

Shipment Date – The date when the goods are to be available in inventory to be picked for shipment. This is not the actual shipment date. Your actual shipment date is on the Header Posting Date when you post shipment.

Promised Delivery Date – The date you’ve promised the customer to deliver the order. By default, this field is blank. When you update the promised delivery date, the system will update the Planned Delivery Date to equal the Promised Delivery Date and will lock the Requested Delivery Date.

Calculations to remember:

Now that you know how to use sales order dates in Business Central, how else can we assist? The Business Technology Solutions Team at FORVIS is a Microsoft Dynamics Gold Partner and 2022 recipient of the Microsoft Inner Circle award. We provide analysis, design, implementation, upgrades, training, and support services for Business Central and other Microsoft Dynamics business applications. Use the Contact Us form below to get in touch.

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Business Central: ‘Create Purchase Orders’ from a Sales Order

In Business Central, users can use the Create Purchase Orders action on a sales order to create a means of reaching the demand. This is an alternative to using order promising functionality or MRP. In this post, we will cover how to use this functionality as well as its advantages and disadvantages. We’ll provide source material for other related topics along the way.

How to perform the Create Purchase Order action

On the sales order, click ‘More Options’, ‘Actions’, ‘Functions’, ‘Create Purchase Document’, ‘Create Purchase Orders’.

This image shows you how to reach the Create Purchase Orders action in Business Central, from a sales order. On a sales order, click 'Actions', 'Functions', 'Create Purchase Document' and 'Create Purchase Orders'.

For one item, notice there’s a Quantity to Purchas value matching the one in the Sales Order Quantity field. This reflects the need to purchase the stock to meet the sales order demand.

This image shows how after using the Create Purchase Orders action on a sales order, the suggested line populates the Quantity to Purchase field. This is because there is currently not enough stock in the Location to meet the demand.

Obviously the main benefit of this is you can create a corresponding purchase order to the sales order. It also helps you identify whether you have the item in stock. This is because the system will only populate the Quantity to Purchase with a value above zero if there’s not the stock levels available to meet the demand.

If you have stock available for the item you are selling, Business central will not suggest replenishment. See below:

This image shows how the Create Purchase Orders action on a Business Central sales order has come back suggesting a Quantity to Purchase value of 0.

Does ‘Lead Time Calculation’ affect purchases orders created from sales orders?

With the Create Purchase Orders action, it will populate lines from which you can create purchase orders. It bears resemblance to the Requisition Worksheet. But does it work in the same way regarding planning? To test this, I set up a vendor with a two day lead time.

On the Vendor Card, you can input a Lead Time Calculation value. This will carry through when using the Create Purchase Orders action on a sales order.

After performing the Create Purchase Orders action on a sales order, the 2D Lead Time Calculation value set against the vendor carries through to the lines. I can amend this value freely as it acts only as the default.

By clicking the '...' next to the Vendor on the Create Purchase Orders line, it brings up the Item Vendor Catalogue. As you can see, it's pulled the Lead Time Calculation value from the Vendor Card.

If I click ‘Ok’ and essentially accept the planning suggestion, the system creates a purchase order. Notice the order applies the lead time I incorporated on the vendor’s setup:

After accepting the suggestion on the Create Purchase Orders action, you can see the two day lead time on the resulting purchase order.

Accommodating multiple vendors

On a sales order, where you’re selling multiple items, it’s likely that the stock comes from multiple sources. In the context of purchase orders, you might require multiple purchase orders, each to different vendors with different lead times. Fortunately the Create Purchase Orders action accommodates this.

In the example below, I have setup the items to have different default Vendor No. values.:

This image shows two lines after using the Create Purchase Orders on a sales order. This is the case when the sales order contains more than one item.

When I click ‘ok’, I am taken to the Purchase Orders page where I can see two records, one for each line.

Following on from the previous image, the two lines result in two purchase orders. What defines whether it makes one or more purchase orders is the default Vendor No. set against the item. If they are different, then multiple purchase orders will be created for each.

For reference, if the items have the same Vendor No. value, it will not make separate purchase orders. It will batch them into one order.

Reordering policies

The Create Purchase Orders action only relates to the sales order in question. This means it only looks to bring in the stock being sold, nothing more. As it’s only concerned with the sales order in question, it ignores any predefined reordering policies against the items.

We covered the different item replenishment systems in a previous post . In my next example, I’ll use Maximum Qty. which looks to replenish stock back up to a set amount when stock falls below a specific level.

For item ‘X’, I set a Reordering Policy of Maximum Qty. with a Maximum Order Quantity of 10. However in spite of this, when performing the Create Purchase Orders action, the suggested Quantity to Purchase is zero.

When using an item without any available stock, the system still suggest a replenishment matching the sales order quantity. See my setup for this example below:

This image merely shows the reordering policy I have set up against this particular item. This example shows how reordering policies are ignored when using this functionality.

Here’s the result:

As you can see from this image, the reordering policy factor didn't come through in the suggested line made by clicking Create Purchase Orders. It still suggests reordering the exact amount we have on the sales order.

Make sure your item is set up correctly

The Create Purchase Orders action isn’t applicable for every potential setup you have for items. Let’s look at another critical field.

The Replenishment System field

On an item card, you can set the Replenishment System value:

On an Item Card, users can set the Replenishment System value. By setting this as Prod Order or Assembly, the action we are testing will not generate record suggestions.

To utilise the Create Purchase Order functionality, you must set this to Purchase. Otherwise, the system will not return any results:

This image shows the outcome of having a Replenishment System value of either Prod. Order or Assembly.

This means for items you typically assemble or manufacture and have set them up accordingly, you won’t be able to use this functionality for one-off occasions. Instead you’ll have to create a purchase order manually.

Does ‘Create Purchase Orders’ factor in incoming stock?

The Create Purchase Orders function on a sales order doesn’t factor in incoming stock. Available and capable-to-promise are concepts which Business Central handles, but not here. I tested this by creating purchase orders for items without stock currently available, to see if the system picked up that it could satisfy the demand once the stock arrives. However, by making an inbound order of Item 1145 with a quantity of five and a subsequent sales order quantity of two, the Create Purchase Orders action suggested replenishing the amount on the sales order, instead of utilising the stock that would be arriving shortly.

This image shows incoming stock will not be factored in when calculating the Quantity to Purchase value. It will only generate results which match the quantity on the sales order, as opposed to factoring in stock that will be available soon. This is different to how available-to-promise and capable-to-promise work.

Does ‘Create Purchase Orders’ accommodate drop shipments and special orders?

Special orders functionality grants users the ability to link purchase and sales orders together, much like the Create Purchase Order function does. The reason the link is important for special orders is because they are designed to accommodate specific catalogue items the customer has requested. After you receive the goods, you ship them onto the customer.

On a sales order, if you try to carry out the Create Purchase Orders action after setting the sales order as either a drop shipment or special order, you’ll see this screen:

This image shows the outcome of trying to use Create Purchase Orders action on a sales order in Business Central, when you are employing either special orders or drop shipments. It won't work for reasons I go on to explain.

The reason this doesn’t work for drop shipments and special orders is because you are associating the inbound orders with the outbound orders. So it doesn’t make sense to look at what stock you already have for the item(s). Stock from a drop shipment will never reach your warehouse as it goes direct to the customer. This means assessing what stock you have available would be a redundant exercise. For special orders, whilst the stock does reach your warehouse, you are only using the purchased goods to meet the sales demand. So again, it doesn’t matter beforehand whether you have the items in stock or not.

Closing remarks

Thanks for reading. The Create Purchase Orders from sales order in Business Central functionality offers an alternative way to manage stock, something which may be of use in particular situations for you. As we’ve discussed, it offers benefits in that it doesn’t require you to leave the sales order, follows vendor lead time setup and accommodates multiple purchase orders. It’s limited by the fact it doesn’t follow planning parameters, doesn’t account for incoming stock and requires you to have the items in question set with a Replenishment System of Purchase. But for all these shortcomings, Business Central offers alternatives such as using MRP instead.

I’ve attached Microsoft’s documentation on the topic , which acts more as a condensed set of instructions.

If there’s any topics you’d like to see covered in future, please let us know! Feel free to send over any comments or queries you have – contact us here . Finally, make sure to follow us on LinkedIn and never miss when we post!

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COMMENTS

Sales Order Planning and Demand Overview
When you create sales orders in Business Central, as a sales person, you would often like to know if the items are available or if it's possible to ship
Plan for New Demand Order by Order
To plan for new production order demand · Choose the Lightbulb that opens the Tell Me feature. icon, enter Planned Production Orders, and then
Create Production Orders from Sales Orders
Choose the · Select the sales order you want to create a production order for. · Choose the Planning action. · Choose the Create Prod. · Select the
Sales Order Planning and Demand Overview
How to complete your order planning and demand overview in Business Central? When you create sales orders in Business Central, as a sales
Dynamics 365 Business Central Forum
In general, Order Planning displays all new demand along with availability information and suggestions for supply. It provides the visibility
Dynamics 365 Business Central: How to Create a Sales Order
So, its shipped and invoiced like in business central terms. Creating an item. We are going to go through creating a sales order to a customer with an item. We
Design Details
The planner of a company, such as a purchaser or a production planner is presumed ... For example, if the user enters or changes a sales order, the dynamic
How to Plan Project Orders
To create a project production order · Choose the · Select the sales order that represents the production project, and then choose the Planning action. · In the
How to Use Sales Order Dates in Business Central
The lines determine your planning parameters. If you try to change the date on the Header, Business Central will ask if you want to update the
Business Central: 'Create Purchase Orders' from a Sales Order
But does it work in the same way regarding planning? To test this, I set up a vendor with a two day lead time.