Flexible work with orders: changing the quantity of goods and partial refund of the advance payment

In real life, the process of trading by customer order is rarely linear. Customers often change their decisions: they order three items, leave a deposit, but when they come to collect the order, they decide to take only two, or ask to replace a size that has a different price. 

Entrepreneurs regularly ask: "How do I issue only half of an order?", "How do I correctly split the prepayment amount if the customer collects the goods in parts?" or "How do I refund part of an advance payment if the customer refuses one of the items so that financial accounting is not disrupted?". The customer order mode is designed specifically to help keep control over the movement of goods and finances in such non-standard situations, allowing flexible management of reserves, advances, and refunds.

1. Changing the quantity in an order and partial issue of goods

When an order has been created and the customer has made a prepayment, it switches to the «Active» status. In this status, the order is fixed, and the goods are usually moved to a temporary storage warehouse (reserve). However, there is often a need to change the quantity of goods. Torgsoft provides two scenarios for such cases:

Scenario A. Physical change of the order contents (editing)

If the customer calls and asks to reduce the quantity of goods or add another item, an active order cannot simply be overwritten. It must be switched to editing mode. To do this, click the «Order status» button and select «Change». After you add or remove materials, services, or goods, the order must be switched back to the «Active» status.

Scenario B. Partial issue of an order (without changing the document itself)

If the customer comes in and wants to collect only part of the ordered goods, leaving the rest for later, you do not need to redo the order itself. In the «Order issue» form, you can move only the goods the customer is ready to collect right now to the right side of the window («Sale of goods»). The remaining goods will safely remain in the temporary storage warehouse (in reserve) until the customer’s next visit.

2. Partial use of an advance payment (prepayment)

The financial aspect of partial goods issue raises the most questions among entrepreneurs. What should be done with the prepayment if the customer collects the order in parts?

Torgsoft allows the seller to flexibly manage which part of the advance payment should be applied during each transaction. In the goods issue window, there is a special «Use» field that displays the amount of the prepayment made. This field is editable.

How does this work in practice? Let’s say a customer ordered two items with a total value of 2,000 UAH and left a prepayment of 500 UAH. When visiting the store next time, the customer wants to collect only one item. At that moment, the seller moves only one item to the sales block. Then there is a choice of what to do with the prepayment:

1. Apply the advance payment now. The seller can leave the full advance amount (500 UAH) in the «Use» field, and then the customer will pay less for the first item, or pay nothing if the item costs less than 500 UAH.

2. Save the advance payment for later. The customer may decide to fully pay for the first item in cash or by card right now, while leaving the prepayment for buying out the second item in the future. In this case, the seller must manually change the amount in the «Use» field to «0».

3. Partial refund of funds (advance payment) and closing the order

There are frequent situations when a customer refuses part of an order, and the amount of the advance payment made exceeds the value of the goods the customer actually collects. In this case, the entrepreneur needs to make a partial refund.

Procedure for refunding the difference

The program has a special «Prepayment refund» button. The prepayment can be refunded either in full (if the customer completely canceled the order) or partially.

The partial refund amount is calculated using a simple formula:

Refund amount = Amount of prepayment made - Amount of goods shipped.

Forced closing of a partially fulfilled order

If the customer has collected part of the goods and stated that they will not collect the rest, such an order should not keep "hanging" in the system indefinitely. The order form has a special «Close» action. When you apply this action to a partially issued order, the system performs the following steps:

1. Checks whether there is any unused advance payment left. If there is, it suggests refunding it (you can refuse this if, by agreement, the money is not to be returned).

2. All goods that the customer refused to collect and that were stuck in the temporary storage warehouse (in reserve) are automatically returned to the store’s main warehouse for free sale.

3. The order receives the irreversible «Completed» status.

Additionally (for wholesale and online stores)

Flexible prepayment refunds are also implemented in the «Trade with invoice issue» mode. If an invoice was overpaid or the goods were not fully shipped, the available prepayment amount can be allocated to other unpaid waybills of the same customer or refunded to the customer in the same form in which it was received. The same applies to the «Repair» mode, where an overpayment for a closed repair can be assigned to an outgoing waybill or refunded as an advance payment.

Conclusion

Thanks to this functionality in Torgsoft, the entrepreneur is protected from accounting chaos. Changing quantities, "juggling" advance payment amounts during partial shipments, and fair refunds are handled transparently, warehouse balances always remain up to date, and settlements with the customer match down to the last coin.