Backbone MRP

Factory control & optimization platform

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Orders

Orders capture what a customer has purchased. Each order holds one or more line items, and Backbone tracks each order through the rest of the sales workflow — shipping the goods and then billing for them. You work with orders from the Sales menu in the workbench toolbar; the Open Orders list shows every order that is not yet fully shipped and complete.

For the day-to-day list behavior — how orders appear, progress, and drop off once every line item is accounted for — see the Sales page. This page covers an order’s shipping locations and a special kind of order: Return Goods Authorizations.

Sales tax: the order editor's top row shows the order's Tax %, and the line-item table has a Taxed column marking which items are taxed (non-taxable parts are excluded). The rate is inherited from the customer when the order is created. See Sales Tax for the full flow.

Shipping locations: from and to

Every order has two shipping-location fields in the order editor, shown one above the other:

The ship-from location is chosen automatically

You do not have to set the ship-from location on every order. When a new order is created, Backbone fills it in for you:

  • If your company has only one company location, every new order uses it as the ship-from location.
  • If you have several company locations and have marked one as the default, new orders use that default.

You can always change the ship-from location on an individual order using the Ship from your location drop-down. If you have more than one company location and none is marked default, new orders start with no ship-from location and you pick one on the order.

Where the document’s company details come from: The company address, phone, fax, and email printed in the header of the order document come from your Company Settings, not from the ship-from location. You can edit the company phone, fax, and email on the Company Settings page in the web portal.

Return Goods Authorizations (RGAs)

A Return Goods Authorization (RGA) is how you handle a customer returning goods to you. In Backbone an RGA is not a separate kind of document with its own screens — it is simply a regular order with the Is RGA box checked. Because it reuses the order workflow you already know, the same list views, editors, shipping, and billing steps all apply; the Is RGA flag just tells Backbone (and QuickBooks) that this order represents goods coming back rather than going out.

Creating an RGA

  1. Create a new order for the customer just as you would a normal sales order, and add the line items being returned.
  2. In the order editor, check the Is RGA box. That single checkbox is what turns an ordinary order into an RGA.
  3. Save the order. It appears on the Open Orders list like any other order, with the RGA column marked so you can tell returns apart from outbound sales at a glance.

Shipping an RGA (receiving the returned goods)

An RGA is shipped exactly like a normal order. Creating the shipment against the RGA is what represents the goods physically being returned — you are recording that the returned items have come back in. The resulting shipment carries the RGA marker through, so it is clearly distinguishable on the Open Shipments list from ordinary outbound shipments.

Same steps, opposite direction: There is no separate “receive returns” screen. You ship the RGA the way you ship anything else; the Is RGA flag is what makes that shipment mean “goods returned” instead of “goods sent.”

Billing an RGA — a Credit instead of an Invoice

When you generate the “invoice” for an RGA shipment, Backbone recognizes the RGA flag and produces a Credit rather than an ordinary invoice. This reflects the accounting reality: money is owed back to (or off the account of) the customer for the goods they returned, rather than being billed to them. The document is titled Credit instead of Invoice accordingly.

Credits in the Open Invoices list and QuickBooks

Credits generated from RGAs are included right alongside regular invoices on the Open Invoices list. They are listed there on purpose: it means credits get exported to QuickBooks Online together with your invoices in the same step, so returns flow into your accounting without a separate process. In QuickBooks a Backbone credit becomes a credit memo, offsetting the customer’s balance just as the invoices add to it.

For how the export itself works — connecting QuickBooks, selecting items, and the Exported to QB column — see Open Invoices.

In short: An RGA is an order with Is RGA checked → ship it normally to record the goods coming back → billing it creates a Credit → that credit rides along in the Open Invoices list and exports to QuickBooks with everything else.