About Back Orders
Back orders are used to indicate to both you and your customer that you don't currently have a certain item in stock or that an order hasn't been filled. When you first enter an sales order in Sage 50 Accounting, all quantities are shown in the back order column. When you fill the sales order, you remove the quantities from back order and put them in the shipped Quantity column.
There are three possible back order scenarios:
All items ordered are on back order
If you attempt to fill an order, but find that the items are on back order from the vendor, you should find out how long they will take to ship and then contact your customer with this information. They may prefer to find another source for the item or they may ask you to ship the items when they arrive.
One or two items are on back order
If most of the items on an order are available for shipping, you should check with the customer to find out whether they want to wait to receive the goods until the complete order is available. If they do not, convert the sales order to an invoice, but do not alter the quantities on back order for the items that are not in stock. When you convert the order to an invoice, the sales order will automatically retain the items on back order.
No items are on back order (you
know by checking item record)
Fill the order and convert to invoice to remove the back orders.