To add a special order item to a sales order in POS, start with the sales order open.
This article is part of a related series of articles covering adding a new sales order with a special order item, generating a purchase order for that item and emailing it to the vendor, receiving the special order item into inventory, and recording the sale or shipment.
For this example, we’ll open a new sales order by clicking on the Sales Order button in the POS toolbar, followed by the New SO button. The menu selection Point of Sale->New Sales Order also works. Note that the buttons visible on the toolbar are configurable, so you may need to modify your toolbar to see the Receive Items button.
Next, click on the New Special Order Item on the I Want To… menu, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + F9.
At a minimum, select a Dept Name and an Item Name on the Item Info tab. Price & Cost fields such as Regular Price and Order Cost can be entered, but they’re not required. Since this is a special order item, we can assume we don’t have the item in stock, so we don’t want to enter any values for Average Unit Cost or On Hand Quantity. These fields will be updated when we ultimately receive the special order item into inventory. Add any required information on the Additional Info and Custom tabs.
Before saving this special order item, keep in mind that the data entered for Order Cost will influence how we process purchase orders for this item in related tasks. POS can automatically generate a purchase order for this item using this cost and email that purchase order to the vendor. However, many retailers opt not to enter an Order Cost at this point. Checking accurate Order Costs may delay completing the customer’s order, and it may be more appropriate to review cost information after hours. If you elect not to enter an Order Cost at this point, it’s important to change any purchase order generated before it’s transmitted to the vendor. For this example, we’ll opt to enter an Order Cost of $0 – something we know is inaccurate. We’ll change it in later steps.
To proceed to add this new special order item to the sales order, click Save and Select.
In our example, we assigned a Regular Price of $100 to this special order item, and our customer is ordering 1 of them. Choose the customer for this sales order in the Customer Info section in the lower left of the POS screen, and click Save & Print or Save Only to save the order.
With the sales order saved, POS will display a list view of current sales orders. Since this is a special order item, company policies may require taking a deposit from the customer. Select the sales order from the list and choose Take Deposit/Payment from the I Want To… menu to open the Take Deposit window.
In our example, we’ll take a deposit for the full amount of $100.
Clicking Ok will open the Receipt Payment window. Enter the Amount Tendered for the customer’s payment method, and click Accept Payment to activate the Save and Save & Print Receipt buttons.
After recording the deposit, which in this case was payment in full, POS displays the Balance Due for the Sales Order when it’s edited or viewed.
We’ve now completed the customer portion of taking a sales order for a special order item, but there are other steps to complete this sale. We need to order the special item from our vendor, receive it into inventory, and finally record the sale to the customer upon delivery.
Some POS users prefer to edit the description of an existing item instead of adding a new special order item as demonstrated in this article. Edits to an item don’t affect the item itself; they’re only reflected on the particular receipt on which they’re entered. The principal advantage of this approach is that it avoids adding new items. Nevertheless, we don’t like this approach. On Hand Quantities and Average Unit Costs stay with the original item itself. Since by definition this is a special item, cost may be different from the existing item, and we may mistakenly think that the order can be filled from stock on hand. If the item is an item with a lot of transaction activity, the details of this special order will quickly disappear. Finally, a headquarters store can convert special order items into regular items if there’s a good business reason to do so. Quickly identifying a special order item that is growing in popularity is much harder if the receipt began as an edited existing item. Given the simplicity of adding special order items to a receipt, we recommend you use the approach outlined here.
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