Order & Inventory Application — New Employee Guide

1. What the application does

The application coordinates customers, products, sales orders, inventory, purchasing, invoices, payments, operational reports, and basic order-availability planning.

Sell

Create customer orders, add line items, allocate stock, invoice, ship, receive payment, and close the order.

Buy

Create purchase orders, submit them, obtain approval, receive goods, and record final payment.

Plan

Compare an order’s demand with stock on hand and planned production to identify shortages and likely promise dates.

Review

Preview invoices, sales summaries, employee contact lists, product information, and availability results.

Training boundary: the workflow below is supported by the captured application structure. Your organization’s live approval limits, timing rules, data-entry standards, and exception procedures must be confirmed with a supervisor.

2. First-day checklist

Confirm that your employee profile is associated with your Windows account.
Ask which privileges you have, especially purchase-order approval.
Learn who owns customer, product, pricing, tax, and inventory corrections.
Confirm the approved location for exported spreadsheets and PDFs.
Practice the order and purchase-order workflows using training records.
Ask how shortages, rejected approvals, partial receipts, and returns are handled.
Know whom to contact before changing administration or system settings.

3. Starting and navigating the application

Verified: When the database starts normally, it performs initialization, identifies or prompts for the current employee, and opens the order list. A welcome screen may appear first.

The main ribbon provides routes to orders, purchase orders, products, customers, employees, reports, features, administration, learning material, and application information.

The order list

This is the normal landing point. It can show:

Open Orders — orders not yet closed.
Recent Orders — orders from the recent period defined by the application.
My Orders — orders assigned to the signed-in employee.
All Orders — the complete order list available to the user.

Select an order number to open its detail form, or use Add Order to begin a new one. A recent-items selector can also reopen recently used orders and purchase orders.

4. Sales-order workflow

New→ Invoiced→ Shipped→ Paid→ Closed

Stage	What you do	Application control
New	Select the customer and add one or more product lines.	The application assigns the current employee, tax settings, and initial status.
Allocate	Review whether requested products can be committed.	Lines are classified using current inventory and incoming approved purchases.
Invoice	Enter required shipping charges and create the invoice.	The order must be New, contain lines, and have every line allocated. Partial invoicing is not supported by the captured workflow.
Ship	Complete the shipping information and ship the order.	The order must already be Invoiced.
Payment	Enter required payment information and receive payment.	The order must already be Shipped.
Close	Confirm that the completed order should be closed.	The order must already be Paid.

Do not force a status change. If a button is unavailable or the application rejects the transition, correct the missing information or escalate the exception. Do not edit status tables directly.

Verified: Orders may be deleted only while New or Invoiced. Later deletion would conflict with inventory and transaction history.

5. Checking stock availability

From an existing order, the availability action evaluates whether each product can be supported by current inventory and future planned production.

Save the order and confirm it has at least one line.
Select Check Stock Availability.
The application replaces any previous plan for that order.
It totals required quantities by product.
It combines the latest stock take with future production capacity.
It opens a report showing availability, shortages, promise dates, and planning status.

Available to promise = latest quantity on hand + future planned production

Typical result statuses are Available now, Planned production, and Shortage.

Confirm before relying on the result: the scan does not establish who maintains production capacity, how often it is refreshed, or whether the present values are demonstration data.

6. Purchase-order workflow

New→ Submitted→ Approved→ Received→ Closed

Action	Effect	Control
Submit	Records the submitting employee and date.	The PO must be New.
Approve	Records the approver and approval date and makes quantities count as incoming supply.	The PO must be Submitted, and the user must have approval privilege.
Receive	Marks all lines received and reallocates inventory to waiting orders.	The PO must be Approved; the user confirms posting to inventory.
Close	Records payment date, tax, total, and final status.	The PO must be Received and required closing information must be complete.

Verified: changing the vendor on an established PO may remove existing line items after confirmation. Treat that prompt carefully.

7. Products and inventory

The product area combines product master information with calculated inventory measures.

Quantity on hand

Starts from the latest stock-take record and reflects receipts and invoiced sales after that point.

Allocated

Quantity already committed to waiting sales-order lines.

On order

Quantity on approved purchase orders that has not yet been received.

Available to sell

Physical availability after subtracting quantities allocated to existing orders.

Allocation priority

Verified: waiting demand is processed oldest order first. A full line is marked allocated when physical inventory is sufficient, on order when approved incoming supply can cover it, or no stock when neither is sufficient.

Product maintenance

Authorized users can maintain product details, category, selling price, cost, reorder and target levels, minimum reorder quantity, vendor associations, discontinued status, and stock-take history.

8. Reports and exports

Output	Typical purpose	What to check
Invoice	Customer-facing order document.	Customer, lines, prices, discounts, tax, shipping, and order status.
Availability report	Stock, production, shortage, and promise-date review for one order.	Capacity freshness and shortage interpretation.
Product spreadsheet	Excel list with product and inventory-planning measures.	Approved save location and whether an older file will be replaced.
Employee sales	Sales totals by employee and month.	Start and end dates.
Product sales	Monthly or quarterly sales by product.	Date range and grouping.
Contact lists	Employee email and telephone reference.	Current employee records.
Product catalog	Products grouped by category.	Product descriptions, prices, images, and output location.

The ribbon also offers a generic Excel export for the currently selected exportable object. Confirm what is active before exporting.

9. Maintenance and administration

Maintenance areas support companies and contacts, employee identities and privileges, products and categories, vendors, tax defaults, system/user settings, interface text, demonstration dates, test-data cleanup, and application navigation.

Restricted area: administration actions can alter settings, privileges, dates, test records, and application behavior. Use them only when assigned and trained.

Unknown: the scan does not establish your organization’s ownership and approval process for these changes.

10. Suggested daily routine

Start of day

Confirm that you are signed in as the correct employee.
Review open or assigned orders.
Review shortage or on-order lines requiring attention.
Check purchase orders awaiting your permitted action.

During processing

Save transaction changes before producing reports or changing status.
Use the application’s workflow buttons instead of editing statuses directly.
Read confirmation and warning messages fully.
Escalate unexpected shortages, dates, prices, permissions, or totals.

End of day

Review incomplete orders and purchase orders.
Confirm that required exports and reports were saved to approved locations.
Close open transaction forms and exit through the application command.
Record unresolved exceptions using the organization’s support process.

11. Safety and data-quality rules

Do not bypass validation by editing underlying tables.
Do not advance an order or purchase order before its prerequisites are complete.
Do not change vendors, delete transactions, or post receipts without reading the confirmation.
Do not treat availability results as reliable until planning-data ownership and refresh timing are confirmed.
Do not change administration settings unless the responsibility is assigned to you.
Do not overwrite exports unless the destination and retention rules are understood.
Do not assume a displayed total or status proves that the underlying operational data is correct.

12. Glossary

Allocated	Inventory committed to a particular sales-order line.
Available to promise	Current stock plus qualifying planned production used in the planning extension.
Line item	A product and quantity within a sales order or purchase order.
No stock	Demand that cannot be fully covered by current stock or approved incoming supply.
On order	Incoming quantity on an approved purchase order.
Promise date	The date the planning workflow associates with expected availability.
Stock take	A dated observation of physical quantity on hand.
Target level	The desired inventory level used when calculating a reorder quantity.

13. Confirm with your supervisor

This guide explains the captured application structure. Before independent use, confirm:

Which customers, vendors, products, prices, and tax settings you may maintain.
Who may approve purchase orders and at what value thresholds.
How partial shipments, partial receipts, returns, cancellations, and credits are handled.
When a sale should reduce inventory: invoice, shipment, or another event.
Who maintains production-capacity data and how often it is refreshed.
Which reports are official business records and where they must be retained.
How to report errors, correct transactions, and request access changes.

Evidence legend

Verified means directly supported by the scan. Confirm locally means the application supports the behavior but organizational procedure is not known. Unknown means runtime observation, current data, or stakeholder confirmation is required.