Understanding the ENFORCETERMS profile and its effect on sales orders

Regarding the Config profile: ENFORCETERMS

The description of this profile is currently:

“Enforce account credit terms during invoice entry
Select to strictly enforce the account credit terms at the time of invoice entry based on the account's credit status. For example, if an account's credit status is Cash Only, then an invoice cannot be saved if the payment amount is less than the invoice total”

It would be more correct for this profile to read:

“Enforce account credit terms during invoice entry and Sales Order saving.
Select to strictly enforce the account credit terms at the time of invoice entry based on the account's credit status. For example, if an account's credit status is Cash Only, then an invoice cannot be saved if the payment amount is less than the invoice total Account Credit Terms will also be enforced on Sales Orders with any status other than Quote. In order to raise Sales Orders please use the Quotes feature by turning on the profile EXTRAORDERSTATUS.”

Workflows with ENFORCETERMS on

• Raising an Invoice that goes over the credit limit will violate ENFORCETERMS, and cause the client to receive a blocking error.
• Raising a Sales Order that goes over the credit limit will violate ENFORCETERMS, and cause the client to receive a blocking error.
• Raising a Quotation that goes over the credit limit will not cause a blockage, and be accepted.

Workflows without ENFORCETERMS on

• Raising an invoice that goes over the credit limit will generate a WARNING, but they can proceed. (Unless Stop Credit is on).
• Raising a Sales Order that goes over the credit limit will generate a WARNING, but they can proceed. (Unless Stop Credit is on).
• Raising a Sales Order Quote will not generate a Credit limit warning, and they can always proceed. (If Stop Credit is on, they will receive a WARNING that there is a stop credit situation).

Why the profile works this way

The intended workflow is to prevent any opportunity, when ENFORCETERMS is on, of committing to supply of an order that would put you over the credit limit.

To process a sales order either a prepayment will need to be received, or the credit limit will need to be raised.

If you need to have strictly enforced credit limits, but want to be able to raise a Sales Order, our advised process is to raise a QUOTE. This will allow you to record a transaction quoting to the client that you can supply goods, but without enforcing a credit check.

The basic workflow is that Sales Orders are treated as accepted quotes, with an intent to supply, but that payment must be taken before this can happen.