Incoming orders

Order intake in German industry since 1952

Under orders are understood in the economic statistics the sum of all customer orders or orders within a company whose production has not yet begun.

General

Incoming orders are an important economic indicator as an early indicator for assessing the economy or as an economic indicator for evaluating companies . The order backlog is the difference between the accepted orders / orders and the deliveries made , whereby the existing order backlog must also be taken into account:

  Auftragsbestand
  + Auftragseingang
  - Lieferungen
  = neuer Auftragsbestand

Incoming orders and orders on hand are inventory quantities . Order intake is still a cancellation made possible by customers, the order backlog is already a withdrawal from the contract before. The status changes from incoming orders to backlog as soon as processing or production has started.

Business aspects

The incoming orders can be used as a measure of future employment or capacity utilization in the company or used for the duration of the processing of the orders or the total of the sales acts or for the time required of the sales staff by the buyer in connection with the sales volume . Incoming orders are often viewed as the first link in a chain, followed by other value-adding business processes. The key figure provides an insight into future developments in production , sales and shipping. The order intake is therefore also the measure for operational adjustments , because a continuously increasing order intake can make it necessary to increase capacities and vice versa.

Incoming orders can be measured in different ways, primarily as the value of new incoming orders within a certain period of time, for example a month, as the volume of orders (i.e. order backlog or value of the orders in the order books) at a certain point in time, for example at the end of the month, or as order cancellations during a certain period of time.

Cancellations or the absence of new orders are referred to as negative incoming orders .

Economic aspects

In the same way, incoming orders are used as a statistical measure in economics . They are collected monthly in selected branches of the economy ( manufacturing industry excluding food, beverages and tobacco, construction ) from companies with more than 20 employees and published by the Federal Statistical Office as index figures. According to preliminary information from the Federal Statistical Office, price-adjusted incoming orders in the manufacturing sector in September 2018, seasonally and calendar adjusted, were 0.3% higher than in the previous month. For August 2018 there was an increase of 2.5% compared to July 2018. Price-adjusted order intake excluding major orders in the manufacturing sector in September 2018 was 1.6% lower than in the previous month, seasonally and calendar adjusted.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kurt Scharnbacher, Statistics in Operation: Textbook with Practical Examples , 2004, p. 237
2. ↑ Erich Schäfer , Employment and Employment Measurement in Enterprises and Companies , 1931, p. 3 ff.
3. ↑ Verlag Dr. Th. Gabler, Gabler's Wirtschafts-Lexikon , Volume 1, 1984, Sp. 331
4. ↑ Destatis, press release No. 429 of November 6, 2018, manufacturing industry in September 2018: incoming orders + 0.3% seasonally adjusted on the previous month