From quote to cash: what actually moves between your modules

The order you key in three times

A tool for sales, a spreadsheet for stock, accounting software at the practice: each one works. What does not work is the handover between them, and it costs three things.

• Re-keying. The same order is retyped for the delivery note, then for the invoice, then for the journal entry. Three chances to get the same line wrong.
• Lost origin. Six months later nobody knows which order this invoice came from, or who approved the discount.
• Stock that lies. You sell a unit somebody reserved this morning, and you find out from the customer.

The five steps, and what each one writes

Quote

You price it with your products, your discounts and your taxes, stamp duty included. The quote commits nothing: it carries a validity date and expires on its own if it goes unanswered. Nothing is written elsewhere at this stage.

Order

The order takes the quote without re-keying. It fixes what is owed by this customer: quantities, prices, and what remains to be delivered. This is where a stock reservation can kick in — so two sales reps do not sell the same last unit.

Delivery

The delivery note records what actually leaves. You can deliver in three goes: what remains to deliver is tracked line by line, not at document level. Stock leaves here, on delivery — never on the invoice.

Invoice

The invoice opens the receivable and freezes the detail of the taxes applied, so the printed document and the total cannot diverge. A rate change next year does not rewrite a document already issued.

Payment

One transfer can settle several invoices — oldest first, largest due or largest amount, in one action. An overpayment becomes a credit in the customer's name instead of disappearing into a corner of a spreadsheet.

Three things travel, not one

What passes from one module to another falls into three categories, and confusing them is the source of most misunderstandings about what an ERP does.

• The document — conversion without re-keying, partial conversions tracked line by line, a conversion log (who converted what, when, for which quantities) and a timeline readable from any document in the chain.
• The goods — reservation when the order is confirmed, exit on delivery, valuation on every exit, receipt and cost layer on arrival.
• The money — receivable at the invoice, payable at the purchase invoice, aged balances on both sides, one transfer allocated across several invoices.

What happens when somebody gets it wrong

This is the real test of a chain. An order cancelled after a partial delivery and an issued invoice is not a rare case: it is Tuesday.

A return to draft stays possible for as long as nothing irreversible has happened downstream. Beyond that, the correction is made by a document that corrects another — a credit note pointing at its invoice — and not by silently editing a document already issued. That is slower to read in a demo, and it is the only version that stands up to an audit.

You choose the path, not the other way round

Not every business goes through all five steps. A services firm often invoices directly, with no delivery note. A distributor never invoices without delivering.

The document path is configurable: you decide which steps are required and which are skipped. What is not configurable is what each step writes when it does happen.

What you need before wiring the chain up

• Your country settings — taxes, tax groups, fiscal positions, currency and numbering series are in place when your organisation is created. The Tunisian detail is on the compliance page.
• Your data — customers, catalogue and opening stock come in by import, in dependency order.
• Your document path — decided once, applied to every deal afterwards.