long-term contracts

Let’s take the case of your biggest client placing an order for buying 10,000 units of your product for a period of one year from now. But they do not want you to deliver 10,000 units at once but monthly in shipments of 830 units each. Preparing a dozen separate sales orders now will mess up your systems and forecasting as well. That is why Blanket Sales Orders of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can become your saviour.  The Blanket Sales Order is neither a shipping document nor a financial transaction. On the other hand, it is an agreement that includes the negotiated price and quantity to be shipped in parts according to schedule.  Look at how to handle Blanket Sales Orders in Business Central.  The Advantages of Using Blanket Orders  Before getting into the “how,” we first need to know the “why.” There are three reasons why using blanket orders makes sense:  Price Security: This ensures that the negotiated price will be protected for the customer from any changes in price in the future.  Forecasting: The quantities in a blanket order are known to the planning engine, giving you a forecast of what’s to come without making an inventory commitment at the present.  Efficiency: It saves you the trouble of having to enter all that customer information, item numbers, and negotiated prices every time a partial shipment is made.  How It Works in Business Central  In the Business Central solution, blanket orders are managed using the following straightforward two-tier structure: Blanket Sales Order (agreement) and Standard Sales Order (implementation).  While creating the standard sales order based on blanket order, Business Central will automatically calculate the remaining quantity of blanket order. Moreover, it reserves the quantity of “Blanket Order Quantity” on the item card for your supply chain.  Workflow  1. Creating Blanket Sales Order  Create a new Blanket Sales Order and provide the customer, delivery date(s), and line items. Enter the total agreed upon quantity on the lines.  2. Releasing the Order  Like regular orders, you need to change the status of the Blanket Sales Order to Released from Open. It indicates that the order is now official and ready for a partial fulfilment.  3. Making the Order  In case you want to deliver some part of the product, Make Order from already available blanket order with the quantity specification of the product that needs to be shipped.  This way system automatically creates a regular Sales Order that will have all the necessary information about customer, item, and prices filled. Next, you just need to process this order normally.  Best Practices for Success  Keep Your Statuses Clear: Do not keep any active agreements in the “Open” status when they have blanket orders. Always release them so that the planning engine can recognize the demand.  Use the Order Tracking Window: If you get notified by a customer that they want an increase in their monthly delivery of products, you can use the Order Tracking window in Business Central to identify the exact quantity allocated to blanket orders or other sale orders.  Close Them out: After the final delivery the “Quantity to Receive” becomes zero, close the blanket order. Having old, completed blanket orders on your platform will make your sales pipeline cluttered.  Make Use of Archiving: In case you need to see the original agreement details after several months, but you do not need them on your active list, take advantage of archiving functionality in Business Central instead of simply deleting them.  Conclusion  Handling long-term contracts does not necessarily mean trading off on day-to-day efficiency. Thanks to Blanket Sales Orders in Business Central, you will easily be able to separate the deal from its implementation. Not only does it keep your process from becoming inefficient, but it is also what will help the rest of your team in forecasting demands.  Do you use blanket orders to their full extent in your existing ERP system? If your system obliges you to manually manage partial deliveries, then maybe it’s time to consider Business Central as your sales solution.