Checking for Duplicate Invoice/Sales Orders in Sage

At certain times you may wish to check Sage for duplicate invoices/orders, especially if you are transiting from manual data entry to automating data entry. This article describes the best way we have found of doing this.

1. In Sage go to the Invoices and Credits or Sales Order module, depending on what you have elected to create. If you populate the Invoice/Order with the online order number then ensure the Customer Order Number column is visible. If it isn't, right-click on the column headers in the Sage list and select Customer Order Number from the drop down list.
2. At this point, you can apply filters to the Sage Invoice/Order list if you wish to see only specific orders. To do this choose the Filter button at the top of the Sage list and apply a filter criterion.
3. Then choose File > Microsoft Integration > Contents to Microsoft Excel.
4. Sort the Excel worksheet by the Customer Order Number and then highlight the entire column by clicking on the column header.
5. From the Home page, under the Styles section, choose Conditional Formatting.
6. Select Highlight Cell Rules > Duplicate Values and then choose a format to apply to any duplicate values, i.e. Light Red Fill with Dark Red Text and choose OK.
7. Then highlight all data columns in the Excel spreadsheet and from the Editing section of the Home page choose Sort & Filter > Custom Sort. In the Sort Box choose to sort the Customer Order Number by Cell Colour and order the results with No Cell Colour on the Bottom of the results, as per the graphic below.