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Work Orders

A Work Order is a held sale with the type Work Order — typically a landscaping or installation job that will be fulfilled later. Because the plants and materials on a work order may sit in your yard for weeks before the job is completed, VMX can reserve those items in inventory so they aren't sold out from under the job. Reservations are managed on the Inventory → Reservations page (see Item Reservations), and clients with the Work Orders page enabled also get a line-by-line view at Inventory → Work Orders.

Hold a sale as a Work Order

Work orders are created at the register, the same way as any held sale:

  1. Ring up the items for the job.
  2. Press the Hold Sale button (or the down arrow with the tender section highlighted).
  3. In the Hold Sale window, set the Type dropdown to Work Order.
  4. Optionally fill in Sale Note, Requested Date (when the customer wants the job done), and Expiration Date.
  5. Click Hold.

Below the Type dropdown, a hint tells you what the selected type will do to inventory. Depending on your company's settings it reads either:

Work Orders reserve inventory — items will be deducted from available stock.

or:

Work Orders do not reserve inventory — items remain available for others to sell.

Whether work orders reserve inventory automatically when held is a company-wide setting configured by VMX — contact help@vmxllc.com if you'd like to change it.

To pull a work order back up, ring it out, or edit it, use the Held Sales page — see the Held Sales documentation.

The Work Orders page

Inventory → Work Orders shows every line item from every open work order in one sortable, filterable table, so the yard/production team can see what still needs to be pulled, reserved, or ordered.

Availability: the Work Orders page is enabled per-client by VMX. If you don't see a Work Orders tab under Inventory and you'd like this view, contact help@vmxllc.com.

The heading shows the totals, e.g. Work Orders (12 items from 4 orders). If your company has more than one store, the page shows only the current store's work orders by default — check All stores and click View to see every store. The download icon at the top right exports the table to a CSV file (WorkOrders.csv).

Columns:

  • Work Order # — the held sale number; links to the held sale on the Held Sales page.
  • PO # — the customer's purchase order number entered on the sale, if any.
  • Customer — the customer on the work order; links to their profile.
  • Department — the item's department.
  • PLU — the item number; links to the item page.
  • Description — the item description.
  • Qty — quantity of this item on the work order.
  • On Hand — current on-hand quantity for the item.
  • On Order — quantity on open purchase orders (with an estimated delivery date) for your store; links to the purchase orders page for that item.
  • Status — Reserved (green) or Need (orange); see the next section.
  • Note — a per-line note; click the pencil icon to edit it.
  • Requested — the work order's Requested Date.
  • Created — when the work order was held.

Two kinds of lines are left off this page: lines with no item number (fees, discounts, etc.) and items that don't track inventory counts.

Reserve or release a single work order line (Status column)

On the Inventory → Work Orders page, each line shows a Status pill: green Reserved means the item is being held back from available stock for this work order; orange Need means it is not reserved (still needs to be sourced or is deliberately left unreserved).

Click the pill to toggle it:

  1. Click a Need pill and confirm "Reserve this item in inventory?" — the line's quantity is reserved and the pill turns green Reserved.
  2. Click a Reserved pill and confirm "Remove reservation for this item?" — the reservation is released and the pill turns orange Need.

Reservations created this way appear on the Inventory → Reservations page with the reason Work Order and a note naming the work order number. Reserved quantities reduce the item's available stock (including on your website, if you sell online) — see Item Reservations.

If you see the error "Item not found in held sale (it may have changed — please refresh)", someone edited the work order at a register after you loaded the page — reload the page and try again.

Edit a work order line note

On the Inventory → Work Orders page each line has a Note column for pull/staging notes:

  1. Click the pencil icon next to the note.
  2. Type the note in the text box.
  3. Click Save (or press Enter). Cancel (or Escape) discards the change.

The note is saved onto that line of the work order itself, so it also appears when the work order is pulled back up at a register.

Managing work order reservations (Inventory → Reservations)

Reservations created by work orders are managed on the Inventory → Reservations page alongside every other reservation at your store. Each work-order reservation shows the reason (e.g. Work Order) with a link to the held sale, and can be released, given a release date, or trashed from there. For the full guide to that page — releasing, the Release On date workflow, trashing damaged stock, and reserving items manually at the register with Create Reservations — see Item Reservations.