Sale Phase

Within Fieldpine you will see reference to a "sale phase", but what is this exactly? A sale phase indicates the current "state" of a sale during its lifetime.

When a sale is actively being rung up on a checkout, it has a phase/state of "Active". When the sale is completed, it goes into the "completed" phase. That is basically all there is to it, however, there are many other states a sale can be in, parked (temporarily pushed to background), picking (eCommerce website has sent sale and we need to collect the items), void (a sale that was cancelled). And the list goes on.

Sale phase is important as some things cannot be changed depending on the sale phase. For example you do not typically edit a completed sale and add/remove items.

Marked Incomplete

A related flag on sales is the "marked incomplete" indicator. This flag can be applied to a sale in any phase and is used to place this sale on a review list. This is used so that you can mark individual sales "incomplete" and review and work with them later.

For example, a customer may arrive and pay for an XYZ item using eftpos, but you do not have the items in stock. The sale phase itself is now "complete", but you might mark this sale "incomplete" so it appears on a report for you.

Technical Background

Sale phase is actually part of a state transistion machine as shown in the simple illustration below. Each box represents a state and what can be done to sales in each state varies.

Illustration only. Does not include all possible states or transistions.