Split deliveries and backorder tracking in Odoo
A delivery date entered line by line, a visible marker on partial orders, and the expected date carried through to the backorder and the invoice.
The need
This client imports industrial parts (castings, machined parts, aluminum and stainless steel) purchased in China to fulfill orders from French and European customers. Manufacturing lead times run into months.
A single order mixes prototypes and production runs, delivered on different dates. Tracking backorders, in other words what is left to deliver, is a daily task. Without the right tool, this tracking happens in a separate spreadsheet, with all the discrepancies that implies between the spreadsheet and the ERP.
Odoo thinks in lead times from confirmation, the business thinks in firm dates promised to the customer. The whole development lies in that gap.
What Odoo does out of the box, and where it stops
Odoo offers two options: a lead time in days per line, or a single commitment date for the whole order. There is no delivery date entered line by line.
The lead time in days drifts as soon as confirmation slips
The lead time is counted from confirmation. A February 10 date entered on the 1st becomes a 9-day lead time, and confirming on the 5th pushes it to the 14th. This is the trap that ruled out that approach.
Nothing flags an order with multiple dates
The information exists in the lines, but it stays invisible until you open each order one by one.
The expected date disappears from the backorder
On a delivery order, the date expected by the customer does not flow down to the stock move. It therefore disappears from the backorder, which is precisely the document you track.
The invoice shows neither the delivery slip number nor the customer reference
Without these two pieces of information on each line, invoices are rejected by the accounting departments of large accounts, and payment is delayed by weeks.
What we built
Delivery date per line
A fixed date, never converted into a lead time, with an entry column in the grid and a column on the printed quote and order confirmation.
Single or split delivery indicator
Computed and stored from the line dates. Colored badge in the order list, filter, grouping, and an alert banner at the top of the relevant order.
Full mirror on the purchasing side
The same indicator on purchase orders, and a planned date column per line on the printout. What applies to sales applies to purchasing.
Shipment control tables
Two tables side by side: the requested dates line by line next to the delivery orders actually created, with their dates. This is the screen that shows a shipment is missing.
Planned date carried through to backorders
On screen and on the PDF, in both backorder tables of the document: the one for a shipment in progress and the one for a backorder linked to a shipment that is already closed.
Expected references on the invoice
Delivery slip number and date per line, plus the customer's order reference shown in the header. These are the two details accounting departments ask for.
What it looks like
The result
Backorder tracking happens on screen and on the document, with no separate spreadsheet. Invoices go out with the references expected by large accounts' accounting departments.
This building block can be reused as is by any distributor or manufacturer that delivers an order in several shipments. It is the most common scenario as soon as there is make-to-order manufacturing or imports with long lead times.
Do you track your backorders in a spreadsheet?
It is a sign that your ERP does not yet hold the right information. Show us your spreadsheet, and we will tell you what can be handled through configuration and what requires development.
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