MYOB Acumatica Sales Orders: Order Types, Back Orders, Credit Holds and Drop Shipping for Australian Distributors

A MYOB Acumatica sales order is entered on the Sales Orders form (SO301000) as one of 13 predefined order types, SO for a shipped sale and QT for a quote among them. Shipments are confirmed on SO302000 and billed on SO303000. Three shipping rules (Ship Complete, Back Order Allowed and Cancel Remainder) decide what happens when stock is short, and a credit check can hold the order before it ships.

At a glance

• Who it is for: Australian wholesalers, distributors and product businesses running MYOB Acumatica, or evaluating it, who want to know how a sale moves from quote to shipment to invoice and where the controls sit
• Problem it solves: quotes rekeyed as orders, partial deliveries going out with no agreed rule, orders shipped to customers already over their credit limit, and drop-ship purchases that never tie back to the sale
• Platforms: MYOB Acumatica with the Inventory and Order Management feature enabled on the Enable/Disable Features form (CS100000); the Standard, Plus and Enterprise editions and the Distribution functionality all use the same Sales Orders form
• Typical cost: licences are per named user and quoted through partners, not price-listed; a partner-led implementation runs A$20,000 to A$75,000 ex GST as an indicative range from our MYOB Acumatica cost guide
• Typical timeline: sales order fulfilment and shipment processing are module 4 of the 12-week FastStart program for wholesale distributors; three to six months for a partner-led project with customisation
• Last verified: 24 October 2026 against the MYOB Acumatica Online Help pages for Order Types (SO201000), Shipping Rule Combinations and Back Ordering and Replanning Back Orders

Most of the questions we get about MYOB Acumatica sales orders aren’t about the screen. They’re about the decisions behind it: what the system should do when the warehouse is short, who can release an order the credit check has stopped, and how a drop-shipped line gets invoiced when the goods never touch your shelves. This post walks the order from quote to invoice and names the forms and settings as it goes. We implement and support the platform as a MYOB Acumatica partner in Brisbane, and this is the order flow we configure on most distribution projects.

What is a sales order in MYOB Acumatica, and which order type should you use?

Every sales document in MYOB Acumatica is created on the Sales Orders form (SO301000) and carries an order type. The order type decides what you enter, what the system does with it and which downstream documents get created. MYOB’s help page for the Order Types form (SO201000) lists 13 predefined types:

• SO (Sales Order). A customer request to buy goods that will be shipped. This is the type most distributors live in.
• SA (Sales Order with Allocation). The same as SO, except the ordered quantities are reserved in inventory when you save the order.
• QT (Quote). An intention to buy at a stated quantity, date and price. It does not touch stock or accounts receivable until it’s copied to an order.
• IN (Invoice) and CS (Cash Sale). Sales that need no shipment, so processing goes straight to a billing document. IN bills on credit; CS records payment at the time of sale.
• BL (Blanket Order). A long-running agreement for large quantities, released into child orders over time.
• RC, RM, RR, CM and CR. The returns family: return for credit, RMA within warranty, return with replacement, credit memo for unauthorised returns, and cash return.
• MO (Mixed Order). A sale and a return on the same document.
• TR (Transfer). Generated when stock is replenished from another warehouse. It appears only when the Multiple Warehouses feature is on.

If a predefined type doesn’t match how you sell, the Custom Order Types feature lets a partner build a new one from any of the templates. The common mistake is leaving every type active, so a new sales clerk sees 13 options on day one. Deactivate the ones you don’t use.

How does a quote become a sales order and then an invoice?

A quote is a sales order of type QT. According to the Processing Pre-Sale Quotes help page, you enter the customer, the planned and requested dates, the items and prices, and optionally the shipping terms and shipping rule, which default from the customer record. New quotes save with the Open status because the Hold Documents on Entry box is cleared for QT by default. The quote has a Cancel By date, calculated from the Days to Keep value on the order type, but the system does not cancel expired quotes on its own. Someone has to run Cancel Order on the Process Orders form (SO501000).

When the customer says yes, you open the quote and click Copy Order on the More menu. The system copies the lines, accounts and subaccounts into a new document, and you choose the behaviour: Sales Order, Invoice, Transfer Order, Credit Memo, RMA Order or another Quote. Once the new order is saved, even for part of the quoted quantity, the quote’s status changes to Completed and the new order carries a link back to it in the Orig. Order Nbr. box on its Financial tab. If Customer Discounts are enabled you can choose whether the discounts are recalculated on the copy.

From there the SO follows the standard path. A shipment is prepared and confirmed on the Shipments form (SO302000), which is where the warehouse picks and packs. Each confirmed shipment is billed by a sales invoice on the Invoices form (SO303000), which is released and becomes an accounts receivable invoice. An order can be shipped and invoiced in parts, and it completes when every line has been billed. Our guide to scan-based pick, pack and ship in MYOB Acumatica covers the warehouse side of that same shipment document.

Quotes don’t allocate stock or update receivables, so a pipeline full of open quotes doesn’t distort your available-to-promise figures. If your sales team works in a CRM, a won deal can arrive as a sales order without the quote step; our HubSpot and MYOB Acumatica post covers what that takes.

What happens when you cannot ship the full order?

This is the decision most distributors haven’t made when they go live, and MYOB Acumatica forces it through the shipping rule. The Shipping Rule Combinations help page explains that a rule is set at the document level on the Shipping tab and at the line level on the Details tab, with three options:

• Ship Complete. The line goes on a shipment only if the full ordered quantity is available. Otherwise it stays Open with its whole quantity still open. Lot- and serial-tracked items can never ship short under this rule.
• Back Order Allowed. The available quantity ships now. The remainder is reclassified to the SO Back Ordered allocation type and the order takes the Back Order status.
• Cancel Remainder. The line ships once, for whatever quantity is available, and the open quantity is set to zero. The customer gets what you have and nothing more.

The rule defaults from the customer record, so set it per customer class before go-live. A retail distribution centre that fines short deliveries wants Ship Complete. A trade customer who would rather have 80 per cent today wants Back Order Allowed. The Processing Partial Shipments page adds two settings on the Sales Orders Preferences form (SO101000): Add Zero Lines for Items Not in Stock, so the invoice still lists what was ordered but unavailable, and Free Item Shipping, which sends promotional free items proportionally or on the last shipment.

How are back orders released once stock arrives?

A back order isn’t a separate document. It’s the same sales order with the Back Order status and lines sitting in the SO Back Ordered allocation. MYOB’s Back Ordering and Replanning Back Orders page describes two ways to release it. For a single order, you can create a shipment directly from the Sales Orders form as soon as the quantity is above zero. To mass-create shipments for many back orders from the Process Orders form (SO501000), the back orders must first be replanned, which moves their lines from SO Back Ordered to SO Booked.

Replanning can be automatic or manual. With Replan Back-Orders ticked on the Inventory Preferences form (IN101000), the system replans on the release of every inventory receipt, transfer or positive adjustment that increases stock on hand, for the items in that transaction. With it cleared, you run Recalculate Inventory (IN505000) with the Replan Back Orders option, which can be scheduled, for example once a day. The replanning order is documented: lines are sorted by Ship On date from earliest, then SO Booked before SO Back Ordered, then by the largest quantity. A line is replanned in full or not at all, never split, and a Ship Complete line is only booked when the whole quantity can be covered.

The operational consequence: if two customers are waiting on the same item, the one with the earlier Ship On date gets it, not the one who called most recently. Overriding that is a manual step. Back orders are also a symptom; our post on MYOB Acumatica replenishment and reorder points covers the cause.

How do credit holds stop an order before it ships?

By default MYOB Acumatica performs a credit check on sales orders of every type but only warns the user when the customer fails it. The Changing the Processing of Sales Documents help page explains how to turn the warning into a block: tick Hold Document on Failed Credit Check in the Order Settings section of the Order Types form (SO201000) for the order type. A failed check then puts the order into the Credit Hold status, and the Sales Orders form reference confirms that an order in that status can only be saved as Credit Hold or On Hold. Ticking that option also selects Remove Credit Hold on Payment Application, so the order is released automatically when a payment is applied for the customer. Otherwise an authorised user clicks Remove Credit Hold on the order and it returns to Open.

The credit check itself is configured on the receivables side. The Managing Credit Policy page lists the tools: credit terms that set due dates, credit verification rules that automatically hold overdue invoices and block new ones for a customer who has failed, manual customer credit hold, overdue charges, statement cycles and dunning letters. The Automatic Credit Verification page adds the point that matters for sales staff: once a customer is placed on credit hold through the Manage Credit Holds form (AR523000), no new sales orders or invoices can be created for them at all. We cover the receivables end, including dunning and the GST timing on invoices, in our MYOB Acumatica accounts receivable post.

The design question is who holds the Remove Credit Hold right. In most of the distributors we work with it’s the credit controller, not the sales rep who took the order.

“Most of the pain we see in order processing isn’t the software. It’s three questions nobody answered before go-live: what do we do when we’re short, who can release an order the credit check stopped, and who owns the back order. MYOB Acumatica has a setting for each one. The business has to decide first.”

Bill Alvarez, Practice Manager, Auboros

How does drop shipping work when you never hold the stock?

Plenty of Australian distributors sell lines they never warehouse. MYOB Acumatica handles this inside the ordinary SO type. The Processing Sales with Drop Shipping help page sets out the flow:

• Mark the line. On the sales order, tick Mark for PO and set PO Source to Drop-Ship. The system does not allocate stock for these lines and creates a purchase request of the Drop-Ship plan type.
• Create the purchase order. Process the request on the Create Purchase Orders form (PO505000). The resulting purchase order carries the sales order number on its Shipping tab. A drop-ship purchase order can link to one sales order only.
• Receive on confirmation. When the customer confirms delivery from the vendor, you prepare and release the purchase receipt. That receipt acts as the shipment document for the drop-ship lines; no inventory receipt is created because nothing arrived at your warehouse.
• Invoice. The purchase order and the sales order both move to Completed, and you prepare the sales invoice as usual. Drop-shipped quantities never appear in any warehouse’s available quantity.

Agree the delivery confirmation with your supplier, because it triggers both the purchase receipt and the customer invoice. If confirmation lags by a week, your invoice does too. Our post on purchase requisitions and approvals in MYOB Acumatica explains how Drop-Ship requests fit alongside stock purchases.

Five settings to decide before go-live

These are the order-management decisions we ask a distributor to make in discovery, with the form each one lives on:

• Which order types stay active (SO201000). Usually SO, QT, IN and one or two return types. Deactivate the rest.
• Hold Orders on Entry and Hold Document on Failed Credit Check (SO201000). Decide whether orders need a human release, a credit release, or neither, per order type.
• Default shipping rule per customer class. Ship Complete, Back Order Allowed or Cancel Remainder, so the right behaviour arrives on every new order without the clerk choosing.
• Replan Back-Orders (IN101000) or a scheduled Recalculate Inventory (IN505000). Automatic replanning is simpler; the scheduled run gives finance a predictable moment to review what’s about to ship.
• Cancellation rules. The Sales Order Cancellation help page notes an order can only be cancelled while it has no related shipments, invoices, child orders, payments or credit memos. After a shipment exists, a change is a return, not a cancellation.

All five sit inside the standard scope of MYOB FastStart for wholesale distribution, whose fourth module covers sales order fulfilment, purchase orders, shipment processing and landed costs. For how order management, stock and margin reporting fit together on either platform we implement, see our guide to ERP for wholesale distribution in Australia. MYOB’s 2025 ERP trends report found 45 per cent of Australian decision-makers say disconnected systems are limiting growth. A quote in one system, an order in another and a credit limit in a spreadsheet is what that looks like in a distribution business.

Goes well with

• MYOB Acumatica barcode scanning and warehouse management: what is built in
• MYOB Acumatica accounts receivable: invoices, dunning letters and getting paid on time
• MYOB Acumatica replenishment: how to set reorder points and safety stock

Setting up sales orders in MYOB Acumatica for a Queensland distributor?

Auboros implements and supports MYOB Acumatica from Brisbane and the Gold Coast, and order types, shipping rules and credit holds are the first things we configure on a distribution project. If you’d like a second opinion on how your orders should flow, or want to see the back-order and credit-hold settings working on a demo instance, book a free consultation. No pitch, just a working session on your order flow.