Drop shipping in Acumatica is the case where the goods never touch your warehouse: the customer orders from you, you order from the vendor, and the vendor ships straight to the customer. The money still flows through your books — you owe the vendor, the customer owes you — but no inventory receipt, no pick, no pack happens on your side. Acumatica models this with a specific link between a sales order line and a purchase order, and understanding that link is what keeps the accounting straight.
The document chain
A drop-ship flow in Acumatica is a chain of four documents that stay linked so quantities and costs reconcile end to end:
- Sales Order — the customer's order. Lines destined for drop ship are marked so Acumatica knows not to allocate from stock.
- Purchase Order — of type Drop Ship, raised to the vendor and tied back to the SO line that generated it.
- PO Receipt — entered when the vendor confirms shipment. This is what recognises the cost and, in a drop ship, is the event that lets you invoice.
- SO Invoice / AP Bill — the customer invoice and the vendor bill, each posting to the right side of the ledger.
The link between the SO line and the PO line is the whole point. It is what lets Acumatica carry the customer's ship-to address through to the vendor's shipment, and what keeps the receipt tied to the right sales line so the margin is correct.
Marking a sales order line for drop ship
On the sales order line, the field that drives everything is the PO Source (Mark for PO / PO Source = Drop-Ship). Setting a line to Drop-Ship tells Acumatica this quantity is not fulfilled from your warehouse; it must be procured against a drop-ship PO. Once marked, the line does not create an allocation against on-hand inventory — which is exactly right, because you never intend to hold that stock.
Both create a linked PO, but a normal "Mark for PO" special order ships to your warehouse, you receive it, then you ship it onward to the customer. Drop-Ship skips your warehouse entirely — the vendor ships to the customer's address. Choosing the wrong one is the most common drop-ship mistake, and it shows up as an unexpected receipt sitting in a warehouse for goods that were supposed to go straight to the customer.
Generating the purchase order
Once SO lines are marked, the drop-ship PO is created through Create Purchase Orders (the SO-to-PO process), or automatically depending on your order type configuration. Acumatica sets the PO's ship-to address to the customer's address from the sales order rather than to your warehouse, and stamps the PO type as Drop-Ship so downstream logic treats it correctly. The vendor sees an order that ships to your customer, and the PO carries the link back to the originating SO line.
Receipt and the invoicing trigger
In a drop ship you did not physically receive anything, but you still enter a PO Receipt when the vendor confirms the goods shipped. This is deliberate: the receipt is the accounting event that recognises the cost of goods and releases the sales order to be invoiced. Skip it and the customer invoice has no cost against it, so the margin on the transaction is wrong. The sequence that keeps the books right is: vendor ships → enter PO receipt → the receipt updates the linked SO line → invoice the customer → bill the vendor from the PO.
If you invoice the customer before entering the drop-ship receipt, you post revenue with no matching cost, and the sales order's completion state can get out of step with the PO. Enter the receipt first. On month-end, unreceived drop-ship POs are the usual reason a sales order shows as shipped by the vendor but not yet invoiced.
What posts where
The value of understanding drop ship is understanding the postings. Because nothing enters inventory, the cost does not sit in an inventory asset account waiting to be relieved — the PO receipt and the customer invoice recognise cost and revenue close together in time.
| Event | Effect |
|---|---|
| SO line marked Drop-Ship | No inventory allocation; line flagged for procurement |
| Drop-ship PO created | Ship-to = customer address; PO linked to SO line |
| PO Receipt | Recognises COGS; releases the SO line to invoice |
| SO Invoice | AR + revenue to the customer |
| AP Bill (from PO) | AP + expense/COGS to the vendor |
When drop ship is the right model
Reach for drop ship when you genuinely never want to hold the stock — bulky items, made-to-order goods, or a supplier who ships faster from their own dock than you could from yours. If you actually take possession, even briefly, use a normal special-order PO instead so the warehouse movements are real. The single rule that keeps a drop-ship implementation clean: keep the SO line and PO line linked, and always enter the receipt before you invoice.
Independent software engineer in Nairobi specialising in Acumatica customisations, Laravel backends, and tax fiscalisation integrations across East and Southern Africa.