Orders Overview
Orders in Endless follow a simple flow:
Sales Order → Fulfillment Orders → Shipments
The Mental Model
| Record or role | What it represents |
|---|---|
| Sales Order | What the customer ordered, including the customer, destination, items, quantities, and commercial details. |
| Fulfillment Order | The work required to fulfill some or all of the Sales Order. |
| Shipment | What the fulfillment service shipped and how it was sent. |
A Sales Order may be created directly in Endless or received from an integration. You can always edit it in Endless. If an integration continues to synchronize the order, be aware that a later update may overwrite the same Sales Order fields.
A Sales Order can have one Fulfillment Order or many. Fulfillment Orders may also be created in Endless or supplied by an integration. Either way, your job is to use Endless to organize and route the fulfillment work, then pass each Fulfillment Order to the appropriate fulfillment service.
The fulfillment service may receive the work through a connected integration. Alternatively, its team can work directly in the Endless app or use the API to retrieve and process its Fulfillment Orders.
When goods ship, the fulfillment service creates the Shipment. Shipments complete Fulfillment Orders, and the combined progress of the Fulfillment Orders determines the Sales Order status.
How an Order Progresses
- A Sales Order records the customer's demand.
- One or more Fulfillment Orders divide that demand into executable work.
- Endless routes each Fulfillment Order to a fulfillment service.
- The fulfillment service processes the work and creates Shipment information.
- Shipment activity completes the Fulfillment Order.
- Fulfillment Order progress and coverage determine the Sales Order status.
Continue Reading
- Sales Orders explains Sales Order statuses and fulfilled coverage.
- Fulfillment Orders and Shipments explains how fulfillment work is created and processed.
- Integration-Created Orders explains what to expect when order records come from another system.
- Exporting Order data explains the Orders export format.