Shipment lines in Business Central allow you to consolidate multiple delivered sales orders into one sales invoice – so a customer receives a single document covering everything shipped to them over a period. This guide covers how to use the Get Shipment Lines function to pull those lines together and post the combined invoice.
Why Get Shipment Lines Exists
When a customer calls and asks for one invoice covering all the goods you shipped to them, Business Central has a direct solution. The Get Shipment Lines action on a sales invoice lets you pull in all the items you sent but have not yet billed, and place them on one document in a single step.
This is most useful when a customer receives goods from several different sales orders. Instead of opening each order and handling them one by one, you create one sales invoice, run the action, and pick the lines you want to cover. Then you post a single document that closes them all. So the customer gets one clean invoice, and all the source orders mark those items as billed.
Without this feature, you would look up each order, check what you shipped, and add the lines by hand. Moreover, with several orders involved, the risk of missing a line or adding one twice is real. Get Shipment Lines removes that risk entirely.
Creating the Sales Invoice
To start, open the Sales Invoices page and click New to open a blank document. Next, select the customer in the Sell-to Customer field. Business Central fills in the customer details from their card. After that, leave the lines section empty – do not add lines by hand.
Then go to the Lines section and open the Functions menu. There you find the Get Shipment Lines action. Click it and Business Central opens a list of all items you shipped for that customer but have not yet billed. The list shows each line with its source shipment number, the item, and the quantity.
Using Get Shipment Lines
Selecting the Shipment Lines
The list shows lines from all source shipments together. Multiple lines from different orders appear side by side. Specifically, the list only shows lines you have not yet billed – items you already invoiced do not appear here.
In the example, two desks appear from two separate sales orders you shipped earlier. The customer confirmed they received both and wants one invoice. So both lines get selected. Click OK and Business Central adds them to the sales invoice. At that point, the invoice is ready to review before posting.
Posting the Invoice
After you add these lines, the sales invoice looks like any other – items, amounts, and prices on each line. Review the document and click Post. Business Central asks for confirmation. After posting, the invoice holds the items from both source orders in one document. You can send this to the customer as their single billing record.
Additionally, the invoice number and billing details are all visible on the posted document. Furthermore, those items are now closed – you cannot bill them again through a second invoice. So the system prevents duplicate billing by design.
What Happens to the Source Sales Orders
After you post, the source sales orders update on their own. Business Central records the billed quantity on each order line and links it to the posted invoice. Notably, the quantity billed now matches what you shipped, and the link points to the invoice that closed those lines.
In the example, both source orders now show the desk line as shipped and billed. Clicking the billed quantity on either order takes you to the posted invoice. So Business Central keeps the full trace from each source order to the invoice that closed it.
When all lines on a sales order are shipped and billed, the order is done. Business Central still shows it as open, but there is nothing left to act on. Indeed, the usual next step is to delete those finished sales orders to keep the list clean – and that is covered in the next video.
When to Use This Approach
Get Shipment Lines works best when a customer wants one invoice for several deliveries. This is common when goods ship in stages across multiple orders, but billing happens at the end of the month or at one set point. Instead of sending one invoice per order, you combine them into a single document.
Furthermore, this approach helps when orders are kept separate for logistical reasons – different dates, different sites – but the customer prefers a single bill. So Get Shipment Lines gives you the freedom to run shipping and billing on their own schedules, then bring them together when it is time to send the invoice.
Additionally, the feature scales well. Two orders or ten orders – the Get Shipment Lines list shows all open items at once. You select what you need, click OK, and they all land on the invoice. Overall, this removes the manual effort of hunting through multiple orders to find what still needs billing.
It is also worth knowing that Get Shipment Lines respects the customer filter. When you select a customer on the sales invoice and then run the action, Business Central only shows lines for that customer. So you never see lines from a different customer by mistake here. Next, once you select lines and click OK, they appear on the invoice just like manually entered lines. You can still edit the quantities if needed – for example, if the customer only wants to pay for part of a delivery right now. Then post when the document is ready. Overall, the process is the same whether you invoice two lines or twenty. The Get Shipment Lines dialog handles all of them in one view, with no extra navigation required.
Wrapping Up: One Invoice from Multiple Shipment Lines
Get Shipment Lines in Business Central solves a common billing problem: one invoice for goods that shipped from several orders. Select the customer, run the action, pick the lines you want, and post. One document covers all of them, and the source orders update on their own. That means no double-entry, no risk of missing a delivery, and no need to manually check which orders have already been billed. Business Central handles the tracking automatically as soon as the invoice posts.
In short, this feature removes manual work and keeps billing accurate. Moreover, the trace from each source order to the invoice stays intact in Business Central. So you can always check which order each billed line came from. Additionally, it works on any number of source orders at once. Whether two orders or ten, the process is the same – select the lines and post. That is the core value of Get Shipment Lines: one consistent action that keeps billing clean and customer accounts accurate.
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