Make drop shipments

A drop shipment is the shipment of items from one of your vendors directly to one of your customers.

When a sales order is marked for drop shipment, and you create a purchase order specifying the customer in the Ship-to field, Customer Address, you can link the two documents to instruct the vendor to ship directly to the customer.

To create a sales order for drop shipment

To prepare a drop shipment, you create a sales order for an item and indicate on the sales line that the sale requires drop shipment.

1. Create a sales order for an item. For more information, see Sell Products.
2. On the sales order line for the drop shipment, select the Drop Shipment checkbox. Alternatively, in the Purchasing Code field, select a purchasing code that has the Drop Shipment field selected.

Tip

By default, the Drop Shipment checkbox and Purchasing Code field aren't available on the lines. If they aren't, you can add them by personalising the section of page that contains the lines. For more information, see Personalise Your Workspace.

To create the purchase order for drop shipment

To prepare a drop shipment, you indicate on the purchase order that it must be shipped to your customer, not to yourself.

1. Create a purchase order. Don't fill any fields on the lines. For more information, see Record Purchases.
2. In the Ship-to field, select Customer Address.
3. In the Customer field, select the customer that you're selling to.
4. Choose the Drop Shipments action, and then choose the Get Sales Order action.
5. On the Sales List page, select the sales order that you prepared in To create a sales order for drop shipment.
6. Choose the OK button.

The line information from the sales order is inserted on the purchase order line(s).

You can now tell your vendor to ship the items directly to the customer. For example, you might send them the order by email.

If your vendor provides additional information, such as a tracking number, you can add that information as a comment on a purchase order line. To add a comment on a line, in the Type field, choose Comment, and then enter the information in the Description field.

To create multiple purchase orders for drop shipments

You can also use the requisition worksheet to create purchase orders. The advantage of using the requisition worksheet is that it can create purchase orders for all outstanding drop shipments. That means you won't have to create each order individually.

1. Choose the icon, enter Requisition Worksheets, and then choose the related link.
2. Choose the Drop Shipments action, and then choose the Get Sales Order action.
3. If needed, enter filter criteria for the orders you wan to get, and then choose the OK button.
4. Review the purchase order lines, and in the Vendor No. field, select the vendor that supplies the goods.
5. Choose the Carry Out Action Message action to convert the lines to a purchase order.

To view the linked purchase order from the sales order

Select the drop-shipment sales order line, choose the Order action, choose the Drop Shipment action, and then choose the Purchase Order action.

To post a drop shipment

After the vendor ships the items, you can post the sales order as shipped. You can also post the purchase order, but only with the Receive option until the sales order has been invoiced.

1. Choose the icon, enter Sales Orders, and then choose the related link.
2. Open the sales order that you created in To create a sales order for drop shipment.
3. In the Qty. to Ship field, specify how many of the order quantity to ship, the full or a partial order quantity.
4. Choose the Post or Post and Send action.
5. Choose either the Ship option to invoice later, or the Ship and Invoice option to invoice immediately.

Tip

Don't forget that you need to post the purchase order invoice.

See also

Create Special Orders
Purchase Items for a Sale
Sell Products
Record Purchases
Sales
Inventory
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