A sale order is the document most sellers call a sales order: the seller's written confirmation of what the customer agreed to buy, at what price, with what discount, tax, shipping and deposit, raised before the goods ship and read by the invoice after. The spelling varies by country and by software vendor; the document does not. This guide is the sale order line by line, with its arithmetic worked free on the sales order worksheet on this site and the record kept, with a status and a history, by Jobcardo Pro.
What a sale order carries
The customer and the ship-to address, the goods, the units at a unit price, any discount off the goods, the sales tax on the discounted goods, the shipping charge, the total, the deposit due on confirmation and the balance due on the invoice, plus a number and a date. Those are the lines on every sale order in every trade, and the worksheet on this site works every figure among them from the seller's own inputs, with no account, printed or saved as PDF as the confirmation the customer sees.
Sale order, sales order, order confirmation
Some vendors and some countries write sale order, most write sales order, and a few call the same document the order confirmation or the order acknowledgement. All name the seller's reply to the customer's purchase order. What matters is that it exists before the goods move and that the invoice later reads from it, so the customer's bookkeeper pays a figure they have already seen.
Kept as a record, with a status
A sale order kept in an inbox is remembered, not managed. In Jobcardo Pro every order sits against its customer with a status from confirmed to shipped to invoiced and paid, a date on every change and an export for the invoice. Stock, picking, carriers and the invoice itself are other products; the sale order is done properly by staying the order.
Questions people ask about sale order
Is a sale order the same as a sales order?
Yes. The spelling varies by country and vendor; the document is the seller's confirmation of the customer's order, raised before shipping.
Who issues a sale order?
The seller, in reply to the customer's purchase order or agreement. The buyer's side of the same transaction is the purchase order.
Can I price a sale order free?
Yes. The sales order worksheet on this site works the line total, discount, tax, shipping, total, deposit and balance on the page with no account.