Managing Blanket Orders

Manage blanket purchase orders for long-term supplier agreements and call-offs.

Blanket orders act as long‑term agreements that define a total quantity a vendor commits to supplying—or that a customer commits to purchasing—over time.

Instead of creating multiple individual orders, a blanket order serves as a central contract from which you release smaller call‑off orders as needed. This is useful when customers need staggered deliveries (e.g. a retailer taking weekly shipments of 200 cases in the run‑up to Christmas) or when vendors hold stock on your behalf (e.g. a producer reserving 1,000 cases of a new vintage for you across the year).

Blanket orders also support better planning because they don’t affect item availability until call‑offs are created, making them ideal for forecasting demand, managing cash flow, and tracking supplier commitments. Each planned shipment or receipt can be entered as its own line—such as scheduled monthly spirit deliveries or quarterly beer allocations—and released into actual orders when required.

Prerequisites

Working knowledge of processing sales or purchase orders.

Creating a Blanket Order

1

Search for the blanket order page

In the button, search for either Sales Blanket Order or Purchase Blanket Order.

2

Create the blanket order

Create the blanket order in the same way you would a normal order.

3

Add item lines

Create item lines with the total quantity required.

Creating orders from a blanket order

Before creating the order, we need to make sure the blanket order details are correct.

1

Confirm addresses

Make sure Ship-to address or Order address details are correct for the particular order you want to create.

2

Update quantities

Amend the Quantity to Ship or Quantity to Receive on all lines.

From the blanket order ribbon, select Make Order. This will create a copy of the blanket order as an order, and you will see a message confirming this. The new order lines are linked to the blanket order line it was created from.

Creating manual orders and linking to a blanket order

Create a sales or purchase order and populate the following fields on each order line:

• Blanket Order
• Blanket Order Line No.

When the PO is received/shipped and invoiced, the Quantity Shipped or Quantity Received and the Quantity Invoiced will be increased by the quantity ordered.

Linking return orders to the original blanket order

If you want to create a sales or purchase return and reflect this in the original blanket order quantities, you can populate the following fields on each order line:

• Blanket Order
• Blanket Order Line No.

Once the return order has been posted, the Quantity Shipped or Quantity Received and the Quantity Invoiced will be reduced by the quantity returned.

Querying blanket order quantities

Blanket order lines tell you:

• Quantities that are outstanding on an order Outstanding Qty. on Purchase Order or Outstanding Qty. on Sales Order
• Quantities Shipped or Received: Quantity Shipped or Quantity Received
• Quantities Invoiced: Quantity Invoiced

In addition, the blanket order Lines section has ribbon options, Unposted Lines and Posted Lines that will display linked lines.

For more information from Microsoft on blanket orders see Work with Blanket Sales Orders.