The Sales Workflow: Estimate / Sales Orders / Invoices


erplain has a very flexible sales workflow. You can start the sales process by creating any of the following documents:

  1. Estimate (or Quote)
  2. Sales Order
  3. Invoice

From the Estimate, you can generate the Sales Order or the Invoice directly.

From the Sales Order, you can generate your Shipping Orders and your Invoices.

You can also generate your Invoices from your Shipping Orders.


At every step, your inventory is automatically updated:



erplain tracks both your On-hand inventory and your Available inventory:

  • The On-Hand inventory is the quantity physically present in your stock location (warehouse, truck, office, basement,...).
  • The Available inventory is your On-Hand inventory minus the products currently in Sales Orders but not yet included in Shipping Orders. The latter is called Reserved inventory


Estimates don't update your inventory.

Sales Orders decrease your Available inventory and increase your Reserved inventory.

Shipping Orders decrease your On-Hand inventory.

Invoices only decrease your On-Hand inventory if they are not created from a Sales Order. When creating Sales Orders, only the Shipping Orders will decrease the On-Hand inventory.


All the documents created as part of the same workflow (Estimates, Sales orders, Shipping orders and Invoices) will share the same Sale number.

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