Managing Pre-sales with Backorders

In some cases, you may need to sell the products to your customers before they arrive at your warehouse, or even before you order them from your customers. In Hike, you can easily manage the pre-sales with the backorder feature. This article will explain the following scenarios in detail.

1. How to create a backorder
   
2. How to create a purchase order from backorders
   
3. How to get the summary of linked backorders in a purchase order
   
4. How to complete a backorder
   

How to create a backorder

Hike allows you to create a backorder when the product is out of stock in the outlet you are processing the sales. Before creating a backorder, please make sure the following settings are correct.

1. Your user to process backorders has permission to do it. If you are not the admin user, please ask the admin user to check it. For further explanation on how to change user permissions, please refer to Adding, Editing & Switching User IDs & Permissions in Hike.
   
2. You don't allow to sell out-of-stock products on either the store or the product level. The setting on the store level can be reviewed under Store setup >>> General >>> General Rules, while that on the product one can be reviewed on the product editing page of each product.
   

When you add an out-of-stock product to the sale cart, the system will ask you to confirm whether to create a backorder for it. The product will be added to the cart after clicking Yes.

You can continue clicking on the same product to add more items to the backorder or click on the line item in the cart to change the quantity. Please note, the quantity will always be shown as 0 in the cart, and the quantity in the backorder will be shown as a note.

You can add both the in-stock and out-of-stock products in the same cart. However, please note, if so, 2 invoices will be created automatically in the sales history, as shown in the image below, one for the in-stock products, and one for the out-of-stock ones.

After finishing adding the products to the sales cart, please add a customer to the sale and click on the CREATE BACKORDER or PAY button to move on to the check-out page. You can ask your customer to deposit a certain amount lower than the backorder total if necessary, and record it by inputting the amount in the textbox of the backorder deposit.

The order fulfillment status will be shown as a backorder.

How to create a purchase order from backorders

In Hike, you are provided with the flexibility to do it on the order or the supplier level. Please make sure the product has been associated with at least one supplier before creating the purchase order.

Create a purchase order on the order level

Find the backorder in the sales history, and click on the Create PO link.

A window will slide out and click on the CREATE DRAFT PO button on it.

A new window will slide out to let you choose between creating a new purchase order or adding it to an existing one. If the supplier associated with the products have an open purchase order, it will be listed in the dropdown list. Or else, you can click on "Create New PO" to add the item to a new purchase order.

Create a purchase order on the supplier level

Navigate to Inventory >>> Purchases, and click on ADD NEW to add a purchase order, or any open purchase order in the list.

Tick the option Auto-fill backordered items after you have set up the supplier and the outlet.

Then the backordered items will be added to the purchase order based on the supplier and outlet you chose. For further explanation on how to add purchase orders, please refer to What is a Stock Purchase Order?

How to get the summary of linked backorders in a purchase order

You may need to know which backorders are related when what you ordered from your supplier has arrived. Also, knowing which products are reserved for the backorders and which customers to notify will boost efficiency.

First, navigate to Inventory >>> Purchases to find the purchase order. You can tick "Only customer backorders linked POs" to filter the list.

Then, click into the purchase order, and you will find the sales reference numbers of the backorders in the notes of the purchase order.

To check the details of the linked backorders, please click on LINKED BACKORDERS at the bottom of the page.

A window will slide out, which includes the customers to inform and which products are ordered for the backorders. You can also print it out if necessary.

How to complete a backorder

After the products have arrived at the outlet, you can then complete the backorder you created.

Find the order in the sales history, and click on Pay to reopen the backorder.

Then, you can complete the payment on the following pages. Hike will ask you to confirm whether the order has been fulfilled. You can choose to fulfil the order now, or later in the sales history.

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