Sage 50 Import Sales Orders and Import Sales Orders Into Sage 50 From Customer Purchase Order PDFs

How customer purchase orders get into Sage 50 without typing

Sage 50 US (Pro, Premium and Quantum) brings sales orders in through its import templates. Open File, choose Select Import/Export, pick Accounts Receivable on the left and Sales Order Journal on the right, then click Import. On the Fields tab you tick Show for each column your file contains, in the same order as the file. On the Options tab you point Sage at the CSV and choose whether the first row holds headings. Save that layout as a template and every later import is a two click job. The template screen is quick once the file exists. The slow part is the file itself. A distributor or light manufacturer gets purchase orders from customers as PDFs out of each buyer system, and none of them arrive as rows. Someone reads each PDF and types it, and that is the step this page covers.

PurchaseOrders handles that step. Upload the customer PO and the AI returns the header and every line as a spreadsheet, one row per line with the PO number, date and ship-to repeated beside each. You add the columns Sage needs that are not on the customer document, such as your Customer ID, A/R account, G/L account and tax codes, which are the same on most orders and fill down in seconds. Save as CSV and run the saved template. A 40 line order that took twenty minutes to key becomes a few minutes of checking. If your books run in QuickBooks instead, the same output feeds the QuickBooks sales order import.

The required fields that stop a first import

The Sage 50 help lists the Sales Order Journal import fields and marks which are required. The ones that catch people out are the ones you never see when you enter an order by hand. Customer ID (up to 20 characters) has to be the ID of a customer that already exists in Sage 50, not the company name on the PDF. Accounts Receivable Account and Sales Tax ID are required on the order. Every line needs a G/L Account (the income account), a Tax Type and an Amount. The Date is month/day/year. Leave out any one of them and the import stops on that row. Build the first file from a template saved with these columns ticked and you avoid the guessing.

Number of Distributions and the line number on each row

Number of Distributions is the field that confuses almost everyone, because it has no box on the sales order screen. It is the count of lines on the order, and it repeats on every row of that order. A 3 line order carries 3 on all three rows. The SO/Proposal Distribution field then numbers the lines 1, 2 and 3. Sage accepts 1 to 147 distributions, so one sales order can hold at most 147 lines. A long customer PO with more lines than that has to be split into two sales orders. Because the extraction returns lines in document order, the count and the line numbers fall out of the spreadsheet with a COUNTIF and a running number rather than being counted by hand.

Why imported amounts can come in as negatives

The Sage 50 field reference says a positive amount is a debit and a negative amount is a credit. A sales order line is a credit to an income account, and Sage 50 users in the Sage community have reported positive Amount and Unit Price values importing as negatives, with the fix being to put a minus sign in front of both in the file. Treat that as the first thing to test: import a two line order, open it in Sage 50 and check the line totals before you run a full batch. Back up the company before the first real import so a bad file can be rolled back by restoring the backup.

Customer PO number, ship-to and the length limits

The customer purchase order number belongs in the Customer PO field, which takes up to 20 characters and prints on the invoice the buyer will match against their own PO. Ship to Name and both address lines take 30 characters, Ship to City 20, Ship to State 2 and Ship to Zipcode 12. Customer documents often print longer values, a store name with a department or a suite on the street line, so trim them in the spreadsheet rather than letting the import cut them. Notes printed on the PO, such as a dock appointment or a must-ship-by date, can go in the Internal Note field, which holds up to 2,000 characters, and the ship-by date maps to Ship By.

Customers and items have to exist first

The import references records, it does not create them. Every Customer ID and Item ID in the file should already be set up in Sage 50, and buyers do not order by your item IDs. A retail chain prints its own vendor item number and a short description. The fix is a mapping step before the import: keep a sheet per customer that turns their item code into your Sage 50 Item ID (up to 20 characters) and run the extracted part column through it. New customers get set up in Sage before the first order. Test with a two line order and open it to confirm both lines show the right item and price.

When the volume makes this worth paying for

The math is simple for a distributor on Sage 50. If the order desk keys 15 customer POs a day at 12 lines each, that is 180 lines typed by hand, every one a chance to transpose a quantity or pick the wrong item. Extraction does not remove review, but it turns typing into checking. Teams with a morning pile of attachments use bulk purchase order upload to clear up to 50 files at once. When Sage 50 is outgrown, the same workflow runs on the Sage 100 sales order import and Sage Intacct sales order import, and supplier purchase orders on the buying side go through purchase order to Sage. The wider picture is on sales order entry automation.