Order (business)
In business or commerce, an order is a stated intention, either spoken or written, to engage in a commercial transaction for specific products or services. From a buyer's point of view it expresses the intention to buy and is called a purchase order. From a seller's point of view it expresses the intention to sell and is referred to as a sales order. When the purchase order of the buyer and the sales order of the seller agree, the orders become a contract between the buyer and seller.
Within an organization, the term order may be used to refer to a work order for manufacturing, a preventive maintenance order, or an order to make repairs to a facility.
In many businesses, orders are used to collect and report costs and revenues according to well-defined purposes. Then it is possible to show for what purposes costs have been incurred.
Read more about Order (business): Spoken Orders, Steps in Commercial Orders, Uniform Commercial Code, Aggregate Level of Orders
Famous quotes containing the word order:
“He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)