Sales Management Overview｜Business Flow & Features

Sales Management is a core iDempiere module. It covers the entire sales cycle — from creating a quotation, confirming the order, shipping, invoicing, through to payment reconciliation.

Business Flow

graph TD
    Q["Quotation"] --> SO["Sales Order"]
    SO --> SH["Shipment"]
    SO --> INV["Sales Invoice"]
    SH --> INV
    INV --> PAY["Receipt"]
    PAY --> BS["Bank Statement"]
    RMA["Customer RMA"] --> SH
    RMA --> INV

Sales Order Sales Invoice Bank Statement Customer RMA

Features & Roles

#	Function	Window	Main role	Document types
①	Sales Order	Sales Order	Registers quotations / orders. Starting point for shipping & invoicing	Quotation / Standard Sales Order
②	Shipment	Shipment (Customer)	Shipping and delivery of inventory	Shipment
③	Sales Invoice	Sales Invoice	Revenue recognition & invoice issuance	Sales Invoice / Credit Memo
④	Customer RMA	Customer RMA	Return handling & credit-memo generation	Return Authorization

💡 Related modules: Receipts and bank statements are covered under Receivables / Payables; business-partner master data under Business Partners.

Typical Scenarios

1. Standard order-to-cash flow

Sales Order → Complete (reserves inventory) → generate Shipment → Complete (reduces inventory) → generate Sales Invoice → Complete (recognizes revenue) → reconcile Receipt.

2. Quotation → Order conversion

Create a document of type Quotation and complete it → run the Generate Order from Quotation process → complete it as a Sales Order. A quotation does not reserve inventory; a standard order does.

3. Return handling

Customer requests a return → create and complete a Return Authorization (RMA) → generate a return Shipment (inventory back in) and a Credit Memo (revenue reversal).

Automatic document generation

Source document	Generated document	Method	Condition
Quotation	Sales Order	”Generate Order from Quotation” process	Quotation completed
Sales Order	Shipment	”Generate Shipment” process	Order completed
Sales Order	Sales Invoice	”Generate Invoice” process	Order completed
Shipment	Sales Invoice	”Generate Invoice” process	Shipment completed
Return Authorization	Shipment (return)	Process	RMA completed
Return Authorization	Credit Memo	Process	RMA completed

Data flow (table relationships)

erDiagram
    C_Order ||--o{ C_OrderLine : "lines"
    C_Order ||--o{ M_InOut : "generates shipment"
    M_InOut ||--o{ M_InOutLine : "lines"
    C_Order ||--o{ C_Invoice : "generates invoice"
    C_Invoice ||--o{ C_InvoiceLine : "lines"
    C_Invoice ||--o{ C_Payment : "reconciles payment"
    C_Order }o--|| C_BPartner : "customer"
    M_RMA ||--o{ M_RMALine : "lines"

generates shipment generates invoice reconciles payment

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About OSS ERP adoption

iDempiere Sales Management manages the full quotation-to-payment cycle end to end. As-Link Inc. provides iDempiere implementation support and customization development.

Learn more about our OSS ERP services