Sales Orders

Payment Terms are one of the first things you’ll need to have entered into your system before you start working with Sales Orders and other transactions in Striven. Payment Terms note when Payment is agreed to be delivered to the buyer. There are defaults in Striven for this section including Net 30, Due On Receipt, etc. To edit Payment Terms, simply click on the name to edit the information. You can add Payment Terms as well by clicking the Add button on the Payment Terms list. Below is a screenshot of a Payment Term and what can be configured there. Once Payment Terms are added, they can be associated with Sales Orders and transactions in Striven.

To view Payment Terms, navigate to:

Company → Settings → Accounting → AR → Sales Orders → Payment Terms

It is important to note that the Has Discount option for Payment Terms is available for Accounts Payable type transactions only and will not be in effect for Sales Orders and their related Invoices.

Striven can help facilitate your Contract Management and the Sales Orders active Customers have placed. Included with Payment Terms as discussed above, Terms & Conditions are agreed upon by both the seller and buyer upon the point of purchase. Once the Sales Order is approved, it is then considered a Contract and both parties must meet each other’s end of the Sales Order. When at the Terms & Conditions List, individual terms can be edited by clicking on the name. This will initiate a popup as shown below in which you can choose where the Terms & Conditions appear. These include Sales Orders, Purchase Orders, public forms, recruiting, and Surveying. These can be enabled by toggling the appropriate checkbox.

To view Terms & Conditions, follow these steps:

Company → Settings → Accounting → AR → Sales Orders → Terms & Conditions

To use Terms & Conditions on your Sales Order, your Sales Order Type must have the Turn on Contract Managed option toggled, as will be discussed in the next section of this guide.

When you are ready to start selling goods and services, it is important to view and configure Sales Order Types. Sales Order Types can be configured to fit different needs for your Company’s sales department. There are defaults in your settings, which include Standard Orders and Contract Managed Orders. Standard Orders are flexible, meaning they do not require Customer approval and can be completed or edited at any time. Contract Managed Orders are stringent, meaning they require Customer or internal approval to start completing work. When on the Sales Order Type List simply click the Add button to start building a new type or click the name of an existing type to edit. Below is an example of a Contract Managed Sales Order Type and what can be configured there.

To view Sales Order Types, navigate to:

Company → Settings → Accounting → AR → Sales Order Types

Contract Management

Contract Management designates your Sales Order Type work as a Contract. Once toggled on, you can choose Terms to be associated with the Sales Order Type, automatic invoicing based on triggers, and even the different ways your Customers can approve Sales Orders.

As you know, companies can be very busy and may not always have the time to check in on an update. Configuring your Approved Order Notifications for Contract Managed Sales Orders is a great way to make sure you are aware each time a Sales Order is approved of the selected type, no matter who the salesperson was. When viewing your Sales Order Type info, click on the tab Approved Order Notifications and choose to Add Recipient.

If you wish to capture any additional data on the Sales Order, Custom Fields can be created. Custom Fields can be captured as a global Sales Order field, meaning it will appear for all Sales Orders, no matter the type. They can also be created per type to allow for a more specific information-gathering effort. To learn more about Custom Fields for Sales Orders, review our Custom Fields Guide.

An additional layer of information you can capture from your Customer upon approving a Sales Order is through the use of Custom Fields set per Sales Order Type. A link labeled Set up custom fields to be entered upon approval will be available underneath the Approval Methods when configuring your Sales Order Type. A sub-tab is also available to access these fields when viewing the Custom Field Tab within a Sales Order Type.

Custom fields that are required for approving Sales Orders can be filled in either by Employees or Contacts. The custom field must be visible on the Portal in order to designate a Contact to fill in custom fields when approving Sales Orders. If a user is electing to approve a Sales Order via the written or verbal option, the fields will be displayed in order to fill in the appropriate information. Below is an example of custom fields that are visible to Contacts as they approve a Sales Order (indicated by the blue arrow):

Custom Columns can be configured if you would like to track additional information per Line Item within a Sales Order. These fields can be useful for tracking information with regard to commission, shipping information, or product-specific detail such as attributes. To add Custom Columns to your Sales Orders, use the following steps:

Company → Settings → Accounting → AR → Sales Orders → Custom Columns

You will be brought to a new page once you have selected the option to Manage Field Mappings on the Custom Columns page for Sales Orders or Invoices. To map fields from a Sales Order to the related Invoice, you will begin by clicking Add Mapping. An example of configuring a Custom Field Mapping is displayed below:

Sales Orders, Invoices, and Sales Receipts have the added feature to group Line Items by Item Type, Item Category, or a custom grouping of your design. Not only will this group your Line Items, but it will also supply a subtotal for each grouping.

Grouping Options

Once the Line Item Grouping feature is turned on, you will find the grouping choices under the Options menu on the Sales Order or Transaction. These options include Group by Item Type, Group by Item Category, or create a Custom Group.

When Grouping by Item Type, you’ll be able to organize your Line Items under an Item Type header. Item Types include Inventory, Non-Inventory, Service, Item Group, Discount, Fixed Asset, and Manufactured. This will gather all Line Items of the same Type into one section on your transaction and provide a subtotal of those Items.

Grouping by Item Category will arrange your Line Items into groups by their assigned Item Categories and provide a subtotal as well.

• Note: For more information about configuring and utilizing Item Categories, please refer to the Item Categories section of our Item Management Guide.

The Custom Group option offers the ability to enter a group name, and then select the individual Line Items you wish to add to this group. There’s also the option to add all ungrouped Items at once to your Custom Group.

Other Options

The Options Menu also houses the Manage Groups and Remove All Groups settings.

The Manage Groups option allows you to sort the groups on the page by clicking and dragging the group name to the desired position, as well as edit a group name, create a new group, and includes the option to show subtotals for each group in the subtotal section below all Items. 

Should you wish to remove all groups, but keep the Line Items, you can select Remove All Groups and the Line Items will just be listed in the original order in which they were added to the list.

Grouping Header Menu Options

On the far right side of each group header you’ll see the kebab menu with options to Edit the group name or Remove the group.

Line Item Menu Options

While nested in groups, all Line Items will have a kebab menu on the left side with options there to Move the Item to another group or Remove the Item from the current group.

Adding new Line Items after grouping your existing Line Items will not automatically list the new Items in the corresponding group. Newly added Items will be listed at the bottom of the groupings as ungrouped Items. Re-grouping is an option to ensure newly added Items are listed in the corresponding groups and can be easily accomplished by removing all groups, and then selecting your preferred grouping option again.

Since Sales Orders already have the ability to drag/drop Line Items into a specified order, this can still be done, but you will only be able to rearrange the Line Items within the groups – not between different groups.

Transaction Printable Format Options

Printable format options to accommodate the group headers and footers on your Sales Orders, Invoices, and Sales Receipts can be configured from the Items section of your printable formats. In order to display the group headers (which is the group name), and group footers (which is the subtotal), the option must be enabled under the Group Settings.

Additionally, if the Sort Order Column in the format is set for Amount, the items will be sorted automatically by amount within each group.

Enabling/Disabling Line Item Grouping

One last thing to note about this feature is that when the Line Item Grouping is turned on and transactions are created, turning the grouping feature off will cause those transactions to still display the Line Items in the configured groups, but none of the grouping related options would be available. The grouping feature would need to be re-enabled to make any changes to the grouping on those transactions.

The Striven Discount Calculator is available on Sales Orders, Invoices, and Sales Receipt pages to allow you to easily calculate a discount and apply it to the desired transaction. As a general note, all discounts are calculated pre-tax and before any shipping/handling charges are applied.

When adding a Discount Item to your transaction, a small Calculator icon will appear next to the Item name which when clicked will trigger a popup wherein you can enter your discount settings. If you’re utilizing the new Line Item Grouping feature, you will see 3 options for applying your discount on the transaction. You can select to apply the discount to the entire transaction, for certain groups, or for specific Items on the transaction. If you’re not grouping your Line Items, the option to apply to certain groups will not be available.

When you are entering a discount for the entire transaction, you’ll see the discount Line Item amount and a reduced subtotal.

Creating a discount for specific Items will show a list of available Items from the transaction to select for the discount. The transaction will display the discount amount for the selected Items and the reduced subtotal.

For transactions with a large number of Line Items (more than 10), you can either click Load More to see more of the Items, or you can utilize the search option to find the exact Items you wish to apply the discount for. Search options include searching by Item name or Item category.

And lastly, as mentioned earlier in this guide, if you’ve grouped your Line Items, you will have the option to apply the discount to certain Item groups.

An internal approval process can be configured within Striven to allow for Employees to send a Sales Order to an internal user before it can be sent to a Customer for approval. This is a great way to make sure new Employees are trained properly. Sensitive Orders, such as over a certain amount, can also be flagged as needing internal approval to allow more flexibility on which Orders needs to follow the internal approval process.

As noted above in the Sales Order Type section, the Requires Internal Approval option will need to be toggled on for the process to take effect.

To begin setting up a Sales Order Internal Approval Process, you will navigate to the Employee which should not have access to send Sales Orders directly to Customers.

This can be done by navigating to Employees → List and typing in the Employee’s name in the search field available.

Once you have navigated to the Employee you wish to configure for the Sales Order Internal Approval Process, you will then click on the Order Approval Settings tab.

When an Employee is required to send a Sales Order for internal approval, they will be prompted to select an Employee when they try to order for approval rather than the approval methods selected within the Sales Order Type. The Employee selected to review the Sales Order will receive an email informing them that they will then be able to send the Sales Order to the Customer Contact for approval.

Striven allows the use of Custom Fields as Custom Columns in the Items section of the various formats within Striven. With the exception of encrypted Custom Fields and attachments, all other Item Custom Fields are available for use on all seven format types.

Striven’s Printable Formats have the option to include page numbering on transactions. To turn on page numbering for your transaction formats, you will need to find the page number checkbox on the Format Settings page, above your format sections.

When the box is checked, further options appear for you to select the page number font color, type, and size.

These page numbers will display in a “Page __/__” format on the bottom of your transaction pages, but only when printing a particular transaction. Printing in batches from the Invoice Print Queue, for example, will not display the page numbers.

Currency display settings can be determined for transaction printable formats. These settings options are located on the Content, Items, and Totals sections of your formats. Striven provides the ability to select whether currency shows with currency symbols or currency codes.

If you wish to remove a currency setting from displaying, simply uncheck the box next to the display option you do not want to be displayed.

The Sales Order List will display important information in which you can view if you have the appropriate permissions. Sales Orders are also stored within the Customer’s Information and can be viewed by navigating to the A/R tab and the subsection Sales Orders. To view the Sales Orders List, navigate to the following:

Customers → Sales → Sales Orders

The Sales Order Info screen will display all the information you will need regarding your Sales Order. From the status to the related transactions, this can all be gathered from right from viewing the Sales Order itself. While Standard Orders allow for editing as needed, Contract Managed Orders will follow a more strict editing process where only unapproved Sales Orders can be updated and edited. Change Orders can be used to make any increases or decreases to the overall Sales Order that have been configured as a Contract Managed Order.

Once the initial information for your Sales Order has been filled in, it is now time to select the Items. Items are goods or services that you wish to sell to your Customer. After selecting an Item, key information such as the quantity, unit price, and shipping & handling can be entered to calculate the overall total for the Sales Order.

Items Section

When selecting line items for your Sales Order, you can use the drop-down box on the Sales Order page to search for your Item. Clicking into this field will load the first fifty (50) Items in your Items List, along with an option to Load More. The Item Name is displayed at the top, and the Item Categories are displayed beneath the Item Name, in-line.

If a Category is deeply nested under other Categories, the Category Name will be truncated so that you will not see the top level “parent” Categories, but there will be an ellipsis you can click on to display the full Category hierarchy in-line.

You have the option to search using either the Item Name or Category Name, and any matching text will be highlighted in the displayed results.

When selecting Items to add to your Sales Order, Invoice, or Sales Receipt, you can use the Items Search & Add option as an alternative to selecting the items from the drop-down list. This feature is available on the Items header on the Sales Order, Invoice, or Sales Receipt by clicking on the magnifying glass icon and will allow you to search for Items by Item Name, Description, Manufacturer Part #, Category, or Item Type.

After selecting your search criteria and clicking the Search button, if the search returns more than 10 Items, a Load More button will appear at the bottom of the results to see more options.

You can select Items by checking the box to add them to the Sales Order, Invoice, or Sales Receipt. Once selected, you can click the Add button to add them to the page, or the Add & Select More button, which will add the selected items to your page, but maintains the search so you can continue adding other items as well.

If you have Line Item Grouping enabled in your Striven system, you will also have an option to add selected Items to an existing Item Group, or create a new one.

The Line Item costs can be edited from Sales Orders and Invoices. The new Item cost will be stored at the Sales Order level to be used as the default cost when creating a Purchase Order from the Sales Order.

• Note: While Item costs can be edited from an Invoice, the cost will not be stored at the Invoice level.

In order to enable this feature, you will need to visit the AR Settings page and look for the option in the General section of the page.

Additionally, there is a tooltip icon next to the Cost column to inform Employees of all the results of changing the cost on the Order.

Depending on the Item Types included in the Sales Order, the cost will display differently.

When creating the Purchase Order from the Sales Order, you’ll see the costs that have been changed will carry over from the Sales Order to display accordingly on the Purchase Order.

After a Sales Order is created, there are many actions that can be taken right from the Sales Order. From creating related entities, such as Invoices or Tasks, to notifying your Customer, there is no limit to the accomplishments that can be made right from this screen without having to navigate away. Review the available actions and related information in regards to Sales Orders below:

Progress Invoicing in Striven allows users to define an invoicing schedule for Sales Orders. This creates a staggered invoice process based on thresholds such as on Order approval, on Order completion, or by reaching a completed percentage of the Order’s timeline.

To begin using Progress Invoicing, you will first need to configure your Invoicing Schedules. Invoicing Schedules determine how invoicing is triggered based on the Order. Once the Invoicing Schedules have been configured, you will then need to configure the Sales Order types to include the schedule as an option when creating the Sales Order.

To configure a Progress Invoicing Schedule, navigate to:
Company → Settings → Accounting → Sales → Sales Orders → Progress Invoicing Schedules.

The Progress Invoicing Schedules List page will display the schedules that have been added to your Striven system. Information is available from the list, as well as the option to search through the list with filters to narrow down results.

Creating a Progress Invoicing Schedule