QuickBooks 2011: The Missing Manual

Invoicing for Backordered Products

Placing a product order to fulfill your customers’ orders is known as a backorder. If backorders are a regular part of your business day, you should consider finding suppliers who deliver more quickly, and maybe upgrading to QuickBooks Premier, which has a built-in sales order form for tracking backordered items. You can also handle backorders using pending invoices if you have QuickBooks Pro.

When you tell customers that a product is out of stock, they might ask you to handle the backorders in different ways. Here are the most common requests for backorders:

• Remove the backordered items from the order. Customers in a hurry may ask you to fill the order with only the products you have in stock. If they can’t find the backordered products anywhere else, they can call in a new order.

• Ship all items at once. If convenience is more important than delivery date, you can hold the customer’s order until the backordered products arrive and then ship the entire order at once.

• Ship backordered items when they arrive. Many customers request that you process their orders for the products you do have in stock and then send the backordered products when you receive them.

If your customer wants you to remove backordered items from an order, you can ship the rest of the order and invoice the customer immediately. But when customers ask you to hold all or part of their orders until backordered products arrive, they usually expect you to invoice them for backordered ...