Special orders: from quotation to invoice
How Achekam's Retail pack takes a customer special order from supplier check and quotation, through deposit and signed terms, to an invoice in the books.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Retail businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
A customer wants a couch in a fabric you do not carry, work boots in a size you never stock, or a part for an older appliance. You can get it from a supplier, given time. The sale rests on a promise: a quoted price, perhaps a deposit, and a date. In many shops that promise lives in a counter book or on one salesperson's phone, and it falls apart when the supplier changes the price or the person who took the order is on leave.
Achekam's Industry CRM, with the Retail & e-commerce pack switched on, gives each special order its own record and a set route from the first request to the moment the customer walks out with the goods. This article follows one order along that route, for shops in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.
Setting up the Retail pack
When a business switches on the Industry CRM, it picks one of twenty industries. The Retail & e-commerce pack keeps customer special orders and returns, and its screens call those records Customer orders and its quotes Quotations.
Switching the pack on also adds its revenue accounts to your chart of accounts and its starter items to your catalogue. None of those items carries a price: the business sets its own.
The stages of a customer order
A customer order moves through five stages:
- Requested. The customer has asked for something you do not have on the shelf.
- Quoted. A quotation has gone to the customer.
- Ordered from supplier. The customer has committed and you have placed the order.
- Ready for the customer. The item has arrived and been checked.
- Handed over. The customer has it.
An order can also be Cancelled, and the pack asks for a reason. Over time those reasons are worth reading: a run of "price too high" or "took too long" tells you something about a supplier.
Seen as a list, the stages answer the questions a manager asks every morning. How many quotations are waiting on customers? How many orders are with suppliers? What is sitting in the storeroom waiting to be fetched?
Ask the supplier before you quote
The pack's customer-order workflow starts by checking price and availability with the supplier. It is tempting to skip this for a familiar item, and it is exactly where special orders go wrong: the price list is out of date, the colour has been discontinued, or the lead time has quietly doubled.
Before quoting, get from the supplier:
- the current price, and how long it holds;
- whether the item is in stock with them or must be made or imported;
- an estimated delivery date, which you should present to the customer as an estimate.
Quotation, deposit and special-order terms
The quotation goes to the customer, who can accept it on a link by typing their name and ticking a box. Once sent, a quotation is frozen; any change is made by a revision, so there is never doubt about which version the customer accepted.
The workflow can then take a deposit and have the customer sign your special-order terms. Those terms carry the weight when something goes wrong, so be clear about whether the deposit is refundable, what happens if the customer never collects, and what happens if the supplier cannot deliver. Agree with your accountant how deposits should sit in your books before you take the first one. Investopedia's explainer on deferred revenue sets out why a deposit or other payment received in advance is a liability until what was paid for is delivered.
From acceptance to an invoice in the right account
The customer's acceptance drafts the invoice in receivables. Issuing it straight away needs an administrator's recorded authority; otherwise it waits as a draft for someone to check and issue.
Each invoice line names the revenue account and the product it sells. Revenue therefore lands in the account that belongs to it, and cost of sales is posted in the same journal. When the customer pays, record the payment against that invoice. A part payment leaves it part-paid, and any extra is held on the customer's account.
From there, the workflow carries on: order from the supplier, check the item when it arrives, tell the customer, and hand it over.
Why the pack never rings up a sale
The Retail pack never rings up a sale. Till sales stay with the till, and a refund or exchange is done at the till or by credit note.
That division matters on special orders. If the order has been invoiced, take the customer's balance against the invoice, not as a fresh sale at the till, or the same couch will appear in your revenue twice. If a customer later brings the item back, the steps in refunds, voids and store credit at the till or a credit note against the invoice apply, and South African shops weighing a faulty-goods claim can follow handling returns under warranty and the CPA.
Chasing open quotations, not web carts
The Retail pack has no web storefront and cannot see abandoned carts on a website. What it follows up instead is open quotations: customers who asked, were quoted, and have not said yes or no.
A short weekly routine works well. Open the list of orders still at Quoted, call anyone whose quotation is about to lapse, and cancel, with a reason, the ones that are clearly dead. If price is the sticking point, remember that any concession is a discount like any other; setting cashier discount limits explains how to keep those in check.
A special order is a promise made by your shop to one customer. Giving each one a record, a stage and a signed set of terms means the promise survives a busy month, a staff change and a supplier who runs late.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
