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In Business Central you can invoice directly on a sales order, either at the same time as you ship it or after the goods have left the warehouse. This gives you the flexibility to separate the physical shipping process from the financial invoicing, so different people in your organisation can handle each step. This article walks through how partial shipping and partial invoicing work on a sales order, and how the posted documents are linked back to the original order.
You control shipping and invoicing independently using the Quantity to Ship and Quantity to Invoice fields on the sales order lines. The warehouse can ship part of an order while the accountant invoices a different quantity later. When you post an invoice from a sales order, Business Central creates a normal posted sales invoice that carries the original sales order number, so all partial postings stay connected to the same order.
Shipping and invoicing as separate steps on a sales order
When you open a sales order, you can post the shipment and the invoice together or one at a time. Each line on the order has a Quantity to Ship field and a Quantity to Invoice field. The warehouse staff fill in the quantity to ship when they pick and send the goods, and they can choose to ship the full order or only part of it.
In a typical scenario, a salesperson has created an order, for example for repair work that includes some resource hours. The order lines might have quantities like zero, one, and two and a half. The warehouse enters the quantity to ship to reflect what they are actually sending, which means they can ship the order partly. The Quantity to Invoice field is filled in by default with the same quantities.
Posting a partial shipment
To ship without invoicing, you choose the Ship option when you post. Because shipping and invoicing are distinguished from each other, you can post only the shipment, just as the warehouse would do in everyday operations. This creates a posted sales shipment without generating an invoice.
If the warehouse also handles invoicing and includes the invoice in the box with the goods, they would post both the shipment and the invoice at the same time. But when the accountant takes over the invoicing as a separate step, you keep the two operations apart.
Invoicing the remaining quantities from the sales order
When the order reaches the accountant for invoicing, you go back to the sales order and adjust the quantities. Set the Quantity to Ship to zero, because you are not shipping any more parts of the order. Then update the Quantity to Invoice on the right-hand side to the quantities you actually want to bill, for example one and two and a half.
Posting the invoice from the sales order works just like posting a normal invoice. It creates a normal posted sales invoice, in the same way that posting the shipment created a posted sales shipment.
Reviewing the posted sales invoice
Because the order was not posted in full, Business Central does not prompt you to open the posted document automatically. You can find it by searching for the posted sales invoice, and it will be the last one you posted.
The posted sales invoice only includes the quantities that were filled in the Quantity to Invoice field, since that is what you are billing the customer for. The invoice also shows the sales order number. This is the key to keeping everything connected: when you later invoice the remaining quantities from the same sales order, the new posted invoice carries the same order number, so all partial documents are linked back to the original order.
Q&A
Can you invoice a sales order separately from shipping it in Business Central?
Yes. Business Central lets you post the shipment and the invoice independently. You can ship the goods first and create the invoice later, which means the warehouse and the accountant can each handle their own step.
How do you control how much is shipped and how much is invoiced on a sales order?
Each sales order line has a Quantity to Ship field and a Quantity to Invoice field. You enter the quantity you want to ship and the quantity you want to invoice separately, which allows partial shipping and partial invoicing.
How do you invoice only the remaining quantities of a sales order?
Set the Quantity to Ship to zero so nothing more is shipped, then enter the quantities you want to bill in the Quantity to Invoice field. Post the invoice from the sales order, and it will include only those quantities.
How are partial posted documents linked to the original sales order?
Each posted sales invoice and posted sales shipment carries the original sales order number. Because every partial posting from the same order uses the same order number, all the documents stay connected to that order.
Why doesn’t Business Central prompt you to view the posted invoice after partial posting?
When you post only part of an order rather than the complete order, the prompt to open the posted document does not appear. You can still find the invoice by searching for the posted sales invoice, where it will be the most recent one you posted.