Live value of all open Sales Orders not yet invoiced in Business Central. The forward revenue book.
At a glance
Total dollar value of Sales Orders that are open in Business Central (Document Type =Order, StatusOpenorReleased) and have not yet been fully Invoiced. The forward revenue book.
| What it counts | SUM(Sales Header.Amount) where Document Type = 'Order' and matching Sales Lines have Outstanding Quantity > 0 or Qty. to Invoice > 0. Excludes Quotes, Blanket Orders, and any Order that has been fully invoiced. Status Pending Approval, Open, and Released all included. |
| VAT / tax treatment | Net of VAT. BC’s Sales Header Amount field is exclusive of VAT in the standard UK / EU localisations; Amount Including VAT is the gross figure. This card uses Amount for parity with the GL revenue card. |
| Shipping | Included if shipping is configured to post to revenue. The Sales Line for shipping carries the Type = G/L Account row pointing to the shipping income account. |
| Discounts | Deducted at line level. Line Discount Amount and Invoice Discount Amount reduce the Sales Line Amount before it sums into this card. |
| Released-but-shipped | Included. An Order in Released state with shipped lines but no posted Invoice still has Outstanding Quantity > 0 from a billing perspective; the value sits in this card until Post Invoice runs. |
| Cancelled orders | Excluded. Sales Orders deleted via the Cancel action drop out immediately; voided lines drop out at the line level. |
| Currency | Multi-Company tenants: each Company’s open SOs translated to the Reporting Currency at current Currency Exchange Rate. The total is the consolidated forward book. |
| OData freshness | Pulled from salesOrders OData v2.0 endpoint with a 5-minute cache. Status changes propagate near real-time. |
| Time window | RT (real-time snapshot, not a window) |
| Alert trigger | - (no default alert; pair with Sales Orders Blocked for actionable triggers) |
| Roles | owner, finance, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Microsoft Dynamics 365 data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US wholesale electronics distributor running Business Central Online with a single Company, $90M annual revenue, mostly B2B Net-30 / Net-45 terms. Snapshot taken on 14 Apr 26.| Component | Value (USD) |
|---|---|
Open SOs in Open state (no approval workflow yet) | $1,840,000 |
Open SOs in Pending Approval (>$50K threshold) | $620,000 |
Open SOs in Released (approved, awaiting fulfilment) | $4,180,000 |
Open SOs Released + partially shipped (awaiting Post Invoice) | $920,000 |
| Open Sales Order Value (this card) | $7,560,000 |
- The
Released + partially shippedbucket ($920K) is the working-capital trap. Goods are out of the warehouse, the customer has them, but no Posted Sales Invoice means no Customer Ledger Entry. The customer’s Net-30 clock has not started ticking. This is the bucket the Revenue Gap vs Commerce card surfaces asReleased-Not-Invoiced. Pending Approval($620K) is the credit-control queue. BC’s Approval Workflow holds Sales Orders above a configured threshold for Finance signoff. If approvers are slow, this number grows. Pair this card with Sales Orders Blocked to see the median age of pending approvals.- **The total 7.4M. Open SOs at 1.5x or 2x monthly revenue indicates a fulfilment backlog. Open SOs at < 0.5x indicates a sales pipeline collapse.
- Quotes are excluded. A Sales Quote (
Document Type = Quote) is a non-binding price offer; it does not create inventory commitments and is not in this card. If your team works in Quotes that auto-convert to Orders, only the converted portion shows up here. - Blanket Orders are excluded. A Blanket Order is a master agreement (e.g. customer commits to 12,000 units over 12 months); the actual orders are released as Make-to-Order Sales Orders against the Blanket. Only the released SOs show in this card.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Open SO Value |
|---|---|
| Sales Orders Blocked | The actionable subset: SOs stuck on credit hold, missing inventory, or pending approval. |
| Revenue Booked into GL | Backward-looking partner. Open SOs become GL revenue once posted as Invoices. |
| SO to Invoice Lead Time | Tells you how fast the open book converts. |
| SO State Breakdown | Splits this number across Open / Pending / Released states. |
| Revenue Gap vs Commerce | The Released-Not-Invoiced bucket here is the structural cause of the commerce-vs-GL gap. |
| Average Sales Order Value | Helps interpret whether Open SO Value reflects more orders or larger orders. |
| Top B2B Accounts | Concentration. Are 3 customers driving 60% of the open book? |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Business Central:Sales > Sales Orders (List view, sort by Document Date, sum Amount column at the bottom) Reports > Sales > Sales Order Statistics (period-scoped variant) Power BI > Sales Insights content pack > Open Orders tile (single-Company) Role Centre > Activities cue tile (Order Processor / Sales Manager profile)The Sales Orders list view at
https://businesscentral.dynamics.com/{tenant}/{environment}?company={company}&page=9305 matches this card to within rounding when filtered to the same Company. The Power BI Open Orders tile uses a slightly different filter (excludes Pending Approval by default) so it usually shows a smaller number than this card.
Why our number may legitimately differ from BC’s reports:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Pending Approval inclusion | Card higher | Power BI excludes Pending Approval by default; this card includes it (it is real economic commitment). |
| Currency translation | Either | BC’s per-Company Sales Order list shows Local Currency; this card consolidates to Reporting Currency. |
| Blanket Order treatment | Either | Some BC reports show Blanket Orders as open; this card excludes them (only Released children count). |
| OData sync window | Card up to 5 min behind | A new SO created in BC appears within 5 minutes via OData. |
| Multi-Company aggregation | Card materially higher | Single-Company BC views always show one Company. This card sums across all connected. |
| Card | Direction | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| shopify.open_orders_value | Commerce ≥ BC subset | Shopify orders flow into BC as Sales Orders. The DTC-side count should be approximately equal once the AL connector has synced. Big discrepancies indicate sync issues. |
| bigcommerce.open_orders_value | Commerce ≥ BC subset | B2B orders typically sit longer in Released state due to Net-30 invoicing cadence. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What is a healthy Open SO Value as a multiple of monthly revenue? For DTC: 0.3 to 0.6x (orders flow through quickly). For B2B Net-30: 1.0 to 1.5x (Net-30 ship-to-bill lag stores up roughly one month of forward book). For B2B Net-60: 1.5 to 2.5x. Anything above 3x is a fulfilment backlog. Does this include Quotes? No. BC’sDocument Type = Quote is non-binding and excluded. If your sales process converts most Quotes to Orders, you may want a sister card on Quote Value; ask Vortex IQ to add it via the field map.
Does this include Blanket Orders?
No. Blanket Orders are master agreements; the actual stock commitments are in the Released child Sales Orders, which this card counts.
My BC tenant uses an AL Extension that adds custom approval states. Are those included?
Yes. The card uses the standard Status enum (Open, Released, Pending Approval, Pending Prepayment) and any custom states added by AL Extensions are mapped to Open by default. If your custom states should be excluded (e.g. a Draft state), the field map can override.
Power BI shows a different Open Orders number. Why?
The standard BC Power BI content pack tile excludes Pending Approval by default and is scoped to one Company. This card includes Pending Approval and sums across all connected Companies. To match Power BI exactly, filter the dashboard to the same Company and toggle off the Pending Approval inclusion.
How does this compare to NetSuite’s Open SO Value?
Mathematically identical: SUM(Open Sales Order Amount). The state-machine differs slightly. NetSuite uses Pending Approval > Pending Fulfilment > Pending Billing > Billed; BC uses Open > Released > Posted. Both have the same economic meaning.
Multi-currency, how is the consolidation done?
Each Company’s open SOs are converted to Reporting Currency at the current Currency Exchange Rate (snapshot). Because this is a real-time card not a posted-period card, the FX rate moves day-to-day; expect 0.5 to 2% intra-month wobble from FX even if no new orders post.
Does this card include Drop-Ship Orders?
Yes. Drop-Ship Sales Orders (Drop Shipment = Yes on the Sales Line) are still Sales Orders in BC; the value commits regardless of whether the inventory comes from your warehouse or a vendor.
Why is this a hero card if there is no alert trigger?
Because the magnitude itself is informative: every CFO needs to know the size of the forward book at a glance. The actionable signals live on the sibling Sales Orders Blocked and Revenue Gap vs Commerce cards, which fire alerts when the open book stops moving forward.