Customer orders

The Customer orders screen records what has been promised to a customer, and at what price. It is the exact counterpart of the purchase order: where the latter commits the company to a supplier, this one commits it to a customer.

Until now, Envergure knew everything about buying — expressing a need, ordering, receiving, handling the supplier invoice — and nothing about selling. A repair order models a repair that is bought from a subcontractor, not one that is sold; a work package knows neither customer nor price. This screen fills that gap, and it is the prerequisite for issuing invoices: without a customer order, an invoice would have nothing to invoice.

Creating an order

The “New order” button asks for three things:

  1. The customer. Only partners of type Customer are offered. The same partner can be both customer and supplier — common in MRO — but addressing a sales order to a partner who is not a customer is rejected: that would be an invoice to the wrong party.
  2. The currency, single for the whole order (no conversion).
  3. The sold lines, each of one of the two natures below.

Service or part

Nature What it represents Article
Service A repair, labour, an assessment, a fixed-price job. None
Part A part sold, picked from stock or sold off the shelf. Required

A service has no article — precisely the case no other object in the application could express. Its description names it, and that description is what will appear on the invoice: write it for the customer, not for yourself.

Each line carries its quantity, unit price excl. VAT and VAT rate. VAT is captured at sale time on purpose: when the invoice is issued, nothing should have to be guessed.

Optional link. A line may point to a work package, a work order or a stock item — whatever justifies invoicing it. This is optional: a part sold off the shelf has neither work package nor work order.

Invoicing a public body: the references not to forget

Selling to the State, the armed forces or a local authority goes through Chorus Pro, the French public invoicing platform. Three references drive the routing of the invoice at the buyer:

Reference What it is
Customer SIRET The exact public entity. Set on the partner record.
Executing service code The department that receives and validates the invoice at the buyer.
Commitment number The public purchase order. The State requires it.

An invoice missing any of them is rejected, and the payment deadline restarts from zero. These references are not invented at invoicing time: the public buyer provides them with the order. That is where they are captured, in the “Public references” block.

The list and the detail view show the completeness status. As long as something is missing, “Incomplete” is displayed — not a blocking error, since a private customer has no such references, but for a public customer it is a rejection waiting to happen.

Life cycle

From draft to closure

  1. Draft
    Being captured — freely editable and deletable.
  2. Confirmed

    The customer has committed. The order can no longer be edited.

  3. In progress
    The work is under way.
  4. Delivered

    Service performed or part delivered — the order becomes invoiceable.

  5. Invoiced
    An invoice has been issued for this order.
  6. Closed
    Finished, no further action possible.

An order can be cancelled as long as it has not been delivered.

Only a draft can be edited or deleted. Once confirmed, the order commits the customer: quietly correcting it would let what is invoiced drift from what was promised. To go back, you cancel — which keeps the trace.

What this screen does not do

  • It does not issue invoices. That is the next phase of the electronic invoicing programme.
  • It handles neither quotes, nor price catalogues, nor commercial discounts.
  • It does not touch stock. Selling a part here does not trigger its issue.