When you save a Customer Order or Work Order as an 'Open' the MicroBiz system will automatically allocate any Open Stock available to fill the customer order. If the item is in stock, inventory units are moved frrm Open Stock to Committed Stock in the product record so that available stock is reserved against or committed to the Open Order.  

If no Open Stock is available at the time that an order is saved as 'Open', the system will mark the stock required for the order as 'Backordered'.  That way there will be a reminder that you need to order the items to fill the customer order. First, there are a couple of tools that can be used to check backorders. There are two Order reports that show items on backorder. Second, In a PO, you can use the Action Menu>Automation>Autofil Open Orders button to add all backorders to a PO.

Items on Special Orders are automatically marked as 'backordered'. This occurs whether or not there is available open stock. The Special Order process overrides the automatic allocation of open stock – since the user has indicated they wish to special order the item – despite its ‘in stock’ status. For example, when there is a ‘floor model’ that the retailer does not wish to sell.

There may be cases when you want to skip the normal allocation process of open stock for a standard customer order.  For example, you have an order with a future ship date a couple months out (i.e the customer does not want to item for a couple of months).  Rather than hold an instock item committed against this order with a  Due Date a few months out, you may want to use your current stock to fill orders with more imminent ship dates.  

To do this, you can use the 'Force Backorder' button. 

The clerk can force a backorder by using the Force Backorder button in the Action Menu. First, select the lines on the order and mark them backordered using the Force Backorder button. This will unallocate the current open stock from the order so that the stock can be sold to other customers. The items onthe order will be classified as Backordered.

When you want to allocated stock against the order that you 'Force Backordered' you simply re-open the order containing backordered items. If Open Stock is available, you will see a green ‘Available Stock’ alert. To re-allocate this Open Stock to the order, go to Action Menu>Orders and press the'Check Backorders' button. This will pull items from Open Stock and allocate them against the order, with the stock being treated as Committed.