External sales order staging

You can import external sales orders into the system as Excel or CSV files received from various suppliers. The system will generate external sales orders if the import is successful without any errors. Follow these steps to import and process external sales orders:
1. Select the Search icon , enter External Sales Order Staging, and then choose the related link.
The External Sales Order Staging page opens.
2. On the action bar, select Import from CSV.
3. Browse and select the required CSV file from your system and then select Open.

The file must adhere to the following formatting requirements:
- The data in the file should align with the columns defined in the data exchange definition created for external sales orders. For more information, see Set up data exchange definitions.
- The file should contain a single header row, as the system skips the first row during processing.
- If specific columns listed in the data exchange definition are not used, they should still exist in the file with their data left blank. When working in Excel, these columns can be hidden for convenience before saving the file as a .csv.

The system generates the lines and updates them with the information from the imported file. You can manually add a new line by selecting the New or edit the existing lines using the Edit List action on the action bar.
4. On the action bar, select Actions > Process External Sales Order.
The system then checks for the following:
* The values from the imported file match the information in your system.
* The mandatory fields such as Sell-to Customer No., Posting Date, Order Date, Item No., Quantity, and Unit Price are filled.

If all criteria are met, the system updates the **Verification Status** field as *Pass* and the **Process Status** field as *Document*. At this point, the line becomes non-editable because the document has been created.

If any errors are found, the system updates the **Verification Status** field as *Fail*, the **Process Status** field as *Error*, and the **Error Message** field displays the cause of the error.

> [!NOTE]  
> The sell-to customer and sold by customer cannot be the same. The **Sold By Customer No.** field must be filled if the **Credit Sold By Customer** toggle is turned on.

You can fix the errors identified and execute the **Process External Sales Order** action again to create external sales orders.

1. On the action bar, select Actions and select the required action from the following list:

   Action	Description
   External Sales Orders	View the external sales order created for the selected line.
   Filter Unprocessed Records	Filter and display only the lines that have not yet been processed into external sales orders.
   Clear Page Filters	Remove the filter for unprocessed records to view all lines.

If the external sales order created via the Process External Sales Order action is deleted, the system will update the Process Status field to Ready for the relevant line. However, the values cannot be edited, and you can only reprocess the order. If the external sales order has already been posted and then deleted, it cannot be reprocessed.

You can use the retention policy functionality to specify how often to delete outdated lines from the External Sales Order Staging page using the External Sales Order Staging object ID (70219202). To know more about configuring retention policy, see Set up a retention policy.