The products your customers want to purchase aren't always in stock, but you still want to be able to process the sale and order the stock to fulfill these.

Instead of turning the customer away, you can offer a special order, which is called an unfulfilled sale in Retail POS.

This allows the sale to be processed and marked as an unfulfilled sale while you source product(s) from your supplier(s) to fulfill the customer's order.

The customer can also choose to have the purchase delivered directly to them, or to pick up the purchase in-store at a later date.

When to use an unfulfilled sale for a special order

Product(s) out of stock

If a product is out of stock and you are unable to provide the customer with the product at the time of sale, you can still process the sale.

The sale is processed as an unfulfilled sale and then the stock can be ordered from your supplier(s).

Once the stock arrives in-store, this can be allocated to the order and fulfilled through the customer's desired method (delivery or pickup).

When you add the product to the sell screen and the stock level is at 0 or below, you will be unable to click the Pay button and a banner will be displayed to prompt the cashier: "You don‘t have enough inventory available. Mark sale as unfulfilled?".

For this to happen, your outlet must have the Negative inventory warning setting enabled. If you do not wish to enable negative inventory warning functionality, see the Creating an unfulfilled sale for a special order section below for more information on how to create a special order.

Creating an unfulfilled sale for a special order

1. Add the product(s) the customer wishes to purchase to the Sell screen. If the product(s) are out of stock, there are two ways to mark a sale as unfulfilled:
   • If you have the negative inventory warning enabled, the prompt to mark the sale as unfulfilled will be displayed. Click Mark sale as unfulfilled.

     

   • If this setting is not enabled, click More actions and select Mark as unfulfilled.

     

2. Select Delivery or Pickup, depending on the customer's needs, in the modal that opens.

   

3. Select an existing customer or add a new customer to the sale. Contact details from an existing customer will be prefilled and can be edited to suit the order. New customers will require a name, email, and phone number.

   

   If a customer was already added to the sale before selecting the Mark as unfulfilled option, these details will be prefilled.
   

4. In the Sales note, capture the customer's address for Delivery, or the desired date and time for Pickup. These details will be captured in your Sales history and on the customer's receipt.

   

5. Click Mark as Unfulfilled.
6. Once the sale has been marked as unfulfilled, you can choose to take full payment, partial payment, or no payment, depending on your in-store policy.

   Deposits

   To take a deposit for the sale, enter the deposit value into the Amount to Pay field and select the payment type. Once the payment has been processed, click Save Sale.

   This deposit will now be recorded as revenue received in advance. Once the order has been paid in full, whether at the time of ordering or at a later date, the revenue received in advance will switch to revenue in your accounting and closure reports.

   

7. If full payment is taken, click Complete Sale to finish. For partial or no payment, click Save Sale.

The order is now recorded in Sales history (Sell > Sales history) as Delivery, unfulfilled or Pickup, unfulfilled.

Adding a product to your catalog as part of a special order

There may be scenarios where your customers wish to purchase products that are not currently available in your store and have yet to be created in your catalog. Instead of manually adding these products to your catalog and processing the special order separately while your customer waits, you can quickly add the product during the special order using the quick add product modal.

1. Navigate to Sell > Sell.
2. Enter the name of the product you wish to add to your catalog in the Search for products field and click Add "X" as new product.

   

3. Enter the product information as required.

   

   For more information on using the quick add product modal, refer to our Using the quick add product modal guide.

4. Click Add Product.

The new product will be added to your catalog using the information entered and to the special order sale to be completed as per your normal workflow.

Ordering stock for a special order

Retail POS allows you to quickly identify which products require the stock to be ordered to fulfill unfulfilled sales and quickly add them to a purchase order.

1. Navigate to Inventory > Stock control and click Order stock. Enter the required purchase order information.

   

2. To add products that are out of stock and have been sold as part of an in-store order (unfulfilled sale), click Add products from recommendations.

   

3. Choose the outlet to deliver to in the drop-down and click Next.

   

4. Choose what type of recommended products to order and click Apply filter.

   

5. The modal now displays all products that require stock to be sourced for unfulfilled sales. Use the checkboxes to select which products you wish to order and enter the amount desired in the Quantity field.

   

6. When all products have been selected and the quantities entered, click Add products to order. You can then complete your purchase order as per your normal workflow.

Use the purchase order Note field to indicate that the order contains stock intended for an unfulfilled sale.

Navigating the Fulfillments page

All of your unfulfilled orders can be accessed by navigating to Inventory > Fulfillments.

Clicking an order on the fulfillments page will allow you to quickly Mark as packed, View sale, or Mark as picked up.

Packing an order

Your unpacked orders will be listed on the Pack orders tab with the New status.

To mark an order as packed:

1. Click the order to expand its details.

   

2. Click Mark as packed.
3. In the modal, click Mark as packed.

   

Your order will now receive the Packed status and be marked as packed.

Changing status on orders picked up by customers

Your pickup orders will be listed on the Customer pickup tab.

To mark an order as picked up:

1. Click the order to expand its details.

   

2. Click Mark as picked up.
3. In the modal, click Mark as picked up.

   

This will change your order's status to Pickup, fulfilled.

Changing status on delivery orders

Your delivery orders will be listed on the Delivery tab.

To mark an order as delivered:

1. Click the order to expand its details.
2. Click Mark as shipped.
3. In the modal, click Mark as shipped.

   

This will change your order's status to Delivery, fulfilled.

Fulfilling an unfulfilled sale for a special order

Once you have received the required products, you can also fulfill the order through the Sales history (Sell > Sales history).

An unfulfilled sale must be paid in full before it can be fulfilled.

To fulfill an order through the sales history, follow the steps below:

1. Navigate to Sell > Sales history
2. Locate the sale and click to expand
3. Select Mark as complete to change the status to Delivery, fulfilled or Pickup, fulfilled and complete the order.
4. You can now dispatch the sale for delivery following your normal delivery workflow, or contact the customer on the provided details to advise that the sale is ready for pickup.
   • For pickup sales, we recommend printing a copy of the sale receipt and attaching this to the items in order to quickly identify the order when the customer arrives for collection.

Processing an unfulfilled sale doesn't automatically trigger a stock order and this must be done manually after processing the sale.

For further information on ordering stock required for unfulfilled sales, see the Ordering stock for a special order section above.