Sales order automation for Business Central, tried first on POs your team already keyed.

Someone on your desk opens a new sales order and types the customer's name, and Business Central fills most of the header from the customer card. They copy the buyer's PO number into External Document No., choose where it ships, and add a line per item, keying the customer's own number into Item Reference No. where one is set up. Then they look at the unit price and line discount that come back and decide whether to trust them.

For the test, AI reads copies of POs your team has already entered and drafts each one the way Business Central holds a sales order: header, lines, and the price each line ought to land on, with a note on how it chose every field. Nothing is created, released or posted in Business Central. Your reviewer puts each draft beside the order your team saved or posted and marks every difference.

The PO number, and a setting that bites late. The buyer's PO number belongs in External Document No., though some companies use Your Reference instead; both carry onto posted documents and can be searched. Sales & Receivables Setup has an Ext. Doc. No. Mandatory setting, and Microsoft's help ties it to posting: with it on, an invoice can't post without the number. So a missing PO number tends to surface at invoicing, not when the order is keyed. Shipping Advice on the Shipping and Billing FastTab also deserves a look, because set to Complete it rules out partial shipments. The draft fills the PO number the way your team does and sets Shipping Advice to Complete only where the PO asks for it.

Item references, the former item cross-references. Microsoft finished replacing item cross-references with item references in the 2021 release wave 2, converting existing entries; in a company that never used cross-references, the fields stay hidden until someone turns on Use Item References in Inventory Setup. An entry ties a reference number of up to 50 characters to one of your items, with a reference type and the customer it belongs to, and it can carry its own unit of measure, variant, description, and starting and ending dates. Keying the number on a sales line brings in the entry's description, variant and unit, so an entry set to a case unit turns a buyer's 10 into ten cases. The draft names the reference entry behind every line, says when an entry had expired or belonged to another customer, and lists lines it could match only by description.

Which price a line lands on. In the pricing experience Microsoft introduced in 2020 release wave 2, which companies that started earlier turn on as New sales pricing experience in Feature Management, prices live on price lists. A new list starts as Draft and counts for nothing until someone makes it Active, and with Allow Editing Active Price on, an edited line drops back to Draft until Verify Lines runs. Among the prices that qualify on the order date, by unit of measure and minimum quantity, Business Central picks the lowest price with the highest line discount, and it looks them up for the Bill-to Customer No., not the sell-to. A branch that bills through its head office pays the head office's prices. Each draft names the price list line it expects, the customer it priced for, and every line where the PO's number and yours part ways.

Credit warnings, blocks and ship-to codes. The Credit Warnings field offers Both Warnings, Credit Limit, Overdue Balance or No Warning, and Microsoft's help is clear that you can still post past the limit, so a warning is often a notice someone clicks through. What does hold a customer is the Blocked field on its card: Ship blocks shipping transactions, Invoice blocks invoicing, and All blocks every sales transaction. On the order, Ship-to is Default (Sell-to Address), Alternate Shipping Address or Custom Address. An alternate address is a ship-to code on the customer, and it can bring its own location, shipping agent, tax area and salesperson, so the wrong code can change the warehouse and the tax, not just the label. The draft picks the code from your list, marks a Custom Address where nothing matches, and flags customers your export shows blocked, over their limit or past due.

Blanket orders, quotes, and what your reviewer watches. A blanket sales order holds a long agreement as one line per shipment, and its quantities don't count against availability. Make Order turns whatever sits in Qty. to Ship into a sales order and leaves the blanket in place, and an order line tied to it through Blanket Order No. won't post if it runs past its blanket line. A quote becomes an order through Make Order too, which removes the quote and leaves its number in the order's Quote No. field; an archived copy survives only if your archiving settings keep one. The draft names the blanket line or quote each PO answers and lists every line that departs from it. Your reviewer looks hardest at references, price sources and ship-to codes, because those decide what ships, from where, and at what price.

If the drafts meet the success criteria, new POs get the same drafting for roughly 30 days.

Someone on your team approves, fixes or rejects each draft before a sales order exists in Business Central, and releasing it stays their call. Whoever runs your Business Central, in house or at your partner, decides how approved drafts arrive: keyed by hand, or loaded with something your company already licenses. The scoring sheet from the test runs all month.