About Back Orders

Back Orders typically occur when a stock item is out of stock, so the order quantity is recorded as a Back Order, to be supplied when you receive more quantity of the stock item. However, you may also want to ration your available quantity of a stock item across a number of Sales Orders, to ensure each Sales Order at least is partly supplied. In MYOB EXO Business, in addition to the status of Back Order, there is also the status of Release. The Release quantity is the quantity of an undelivered stock item that remains "allocated" to a Sales Order. The sum of the Release and Back Order quantities equal the Sales Order quantity, i.e. the Back Order quantity is separate from the Release quantity. Adjust the Back Order quantity to what you require, and the Release quantity is automatically adjusted.

To use a simple example, if you have a Sales Order of 10 of an item, but want to only supply 5 of the 10, to ration out the shipment of the item you have just received, 5 will have a status of Back order, to be supplied at a future date, and 5 will have a status of Release, to part-supply the Sales Order.

(If you have the MYOB EXO Business Configurator, you can turn this setting off by changing the Enforce constraint of sales order quantity and release quantity Company-level profile setting.)

When you supply a Sales Order with insufficient stock to supply a line, the Stock Shortage window is displayed, asking if you want to back order the shortfall quantity:

Note: The Check available stock for sales orders profile setting affects the checks that determine when this window appears.

If you choose not to back order, the shortfall quantity will show as negative stock for the stock item, and the Sales Order can be processed. This prompt is controlled by the Default response to backorder prompt User-level profile setting in EXO Business Config. By default it is already activated, but if you set it to "Never", the Back Order prompt will not be displayed and no quantities will be placed on back order.