Sales orders, purchase orders, pricing, returns and intercompany trade

Maps the BC order-to-cash and procure-to-pay cycles — sales/purchase orders, blanket orders, drop shipments, prices and discounts, prepayments, item charges and returns — to D365 equivalents including trade agreements, charges, return orders and intercompany trade chains.

What you will be able to do

Introduction

Business Central's trade cycle is familiar to any finance or operations professional: Sales Orders flow through shipment and invoicing; Purchase Orders flow through receipt and vendor invoicing; Blanket Orders frame long-term agreements; Drop Shipments and Special Orders handle vendor-to-customer direct flows.

Sales order to customer invoice

Partial shipments and partial invoices are supported — a single order can have multiple posted shipments and multiple posted invoices.

Purchase order to vendor invoice

BC purchase orders follow: Open → Released → Posted Receipt → Posted Invoice. Three-way matching is not enforced by default — BC trusts the receipt and invoice amounts unless custom validation is added.

Blanket orders, drop shipments and special orders

BC blanket sales orders and blanket purchase orders define a framework quantity or value commitment. Release orders (standard sales/purchase orders) are created against the blanket and reduce the outstanding commitment.

Pricing — trade agreements replace price lists

Legacy tables (Sales Price, Purchase Price, Sales Line Discount): flat per-item/customer/vendor pricing with minimal date and quantity support. Price List architecture (Price List Header / Price List Line): introduced in recent releases; adds price-list assignment to customer/vendor groups, currency, UOM and minimum quantity.

Prepayments

BC prepayments apply a prepayment percentage at order level or line level. When the prepayment invoice is posted, BC creates a posted prepayment invoice (receivable/payable) and recognises a prepayment GL entry. At final invoice, BC automatically deducts the prepayment amount from the invoice balance.

Item charges and the D365 charges framework

BC item charges are standalone charge items (type = Charge (Item)) that are assigned to purchase-receipt lines or sales-shipment lines after posting. Allocation methods include equally, by amount, or by weight/volume. The allocated charge adjusts the inventory value or is posted to a cost account.

Returns and disposition codes

BC sales return orders and purchase return orders reverse the original transaction:

Intercompany trade

BC uses IC Partner codes. When a sales document is posted in the selling company, an IC outbox entry is created. The buying company accepts the entry from its IC inbox, creating a purchase document. The flow supports manual acceptance and automatic send/receive via job-queue entries.

Knowledge check

Summary

BC's trade cycle maps to D365 with close structural correspondence at the document level — sales orders remain sales orders, purchase orders remain purchase orders — but the surrounding infrastructure (pricing, matching, prepayments, charges, returns, intercompany) is materially richer in D365 and requires active configuration decisions.