Quote to invoice on one record.
A quotation, once sent, becomes the shipment. The shipment’s revenue and cost lines become the invoice, and what is left is that job’s profit. Five modules write to the same record, so nothing is retyped between them.
What it replaces
In most offices, this is what leaves in the week SCM goes in.
Five modules, one record between them.
Shipments and consolidations
House and master registers, bookings and shipping instructions, the cut-off board, and houses attached to a master when they consolidate. The house B/L, arrival notice, delivery order, labels and manifest print from the record. An EDI 315 file is written for download.
Customers
Credit terms and margin rules by customer grade sit on the customer card, where the quotation desk and the billing desk both read them. While an invoice is past terms, the delivery order for that customer is locked and the screen says which invoice locked it.
Quotations
Buy and sell lines come from the rate tables in QMS — air weight breaks, LCL revenue ton, FCL per container. Below the minimum margin for that grade the line requires an approval, and the approval is recorded. An accepted quotation opens the shipment with its lines already on it.
Billing and job P&L
Month-end billing across every shipment on one screen, supplier bills allocated onto the job’s cost lines, credit notes and partial payments on the invoice. The job’s profit is what the two sides of the same record leave behind.
Hired trucking
The road leg sits on the shipment. The driver is sent a link, and waiting time becomes a charge line on that shipment — so it reaches the invoice and the job’s profit rather than a text message no one can find in March. This is part of SCM rather than an extension: the company that hires trucking is the company that owns none, and that screen must not be the one it has to buy separately.
Quote, book, bill — and what carries between them.
Retyping is where the numbers stop agreeing. Each step below hands the next one its own fields.
Quote
The rate tables price the buy and the sell side by side. An expired table cannot price at all, and a line under the minimum margin for that customer grade requires an approval before it goes out.
Parties, route, pieces, weight, volume — and every charge line, with the basis it was priced on.
Book
The accepted quotation opens the shipment with those lines on it. Booking and shipping instructions, the cut-off board, the house attached to its master. Documents print from these fields.
The quotation’s lines become the shipment’s revenue and cost lines. The B/L and the invoice read the same weight because there is only one.
Bill
Month-end billing runs across all shipments at once. Supplier bills land against the cost lines, credit notes and partial payments sit on the invoice, and the job’s profit is what is left.
Nothing is keyed twice. With the Connect extension the invoice goes to QuickBooks and the payment reads back and marks it paid.
The job’s profit, while the job is still open.
The same revenue and cost lines the invoice will use, shown on the shipment rather than in a month-end report, with the two that are still estimates marked as estimates.
| Charge | Basis | Qty | Revenue | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ocean freight, LCL8.000 CBM / 12,000 KGS · W/M = 12.000 | Per W/M | 12.000 | 1,044.00 | 780.00Estimate — carrier has not billed |
| Terminal handling, origin | Per shipment | 1 | 185.00 | 145.00 |
| Documentation | Per B/L | 1 | 65.00 | 25.00 |
| Pickup, Vernon CA | Per truck | 1 | 320.00 | 245.00 |
| Waiting at pickup90 min over 2 free hours | Per hour | 1.50 | 97.50 | 75.00Estimate — trucker has not billed |
The rule this screen keeps
A number the system has not been given is never drawn as a number. A missing supplier bill shows as an estimate; a read that fails says it failed. One of the twenty release checks (check_silent_errors) exists only to stop a build that paints a zero over a gap.
Quotation → Shipment → Job P&L on HBL AMCH-2609-0418, demo company- Open the accepted quotation and rest the cursor on the ocean freight line: 12.000, 1,044.00.
- Open the shipment it created. The same line, the same quantity, and nobody typed it.
- Open Job P&L on that shipment and stop with the two estimate costs on screen.
The other five already know this record.
Nothing is exported between them and nothing is mapped. They read the same shipment.
QMS
ABI
Portal
LiveTrack
Stage 1WMS
All six
Asked about SCM.
Does the quotation really become the shipment?
Can we hold a delivery order when the customer has not paid?
We do not own trucks. Is the trucking module any use to us?
Does SCM keep our books, and does it send EDI?
45 minutes on a real shipment.
One shipment is taken from quotation to invoice, on a demonstration company or on a copy of a spreadsheet the office already uses. Difficult lanes are welcome. The session ends with a written quotation.