Suppliers and purchase orders
Stock arriving is the other half of stock leaving, and it used to be a manual adjustment with a reason attached. That moved the right number of units and lost the price — which is the number every margin figure in your reports is worked out from.
A purchase order records all three facts together: what you ordered, what arrived, and what it cost.
Suppliers
A supplier is a name, contact details and the terms you buy on. Purchase orders are raised against one.
Raising a purchase order
Pick the supplier, the location the goods are coming to, and the lines — variant, quantity, and the unit cost you agreed. The cost is per line, because the same item bought twice at different prices is two different costs and averaging them quietly is how margin goes wrong.
The stages
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Yours to change. Nothing has been ordered. |
| Ordered | Sent to the supplier. The units show as incoming. |
| Partial | Some of it arrived. |
| Received | All of it arrived. |
| Cancelled | It is not happening. |
Partial is worked out, never chosen. It is a statement about the lines — some arrived, some did not — so it follows from the quantities you received rather than from a dropdown. A status you could set by hand would be a status that disagrees with the numbers underneath it.
Received and cancelled are final. Your margin reports read the cost history behind a received order, so editing a receipt after the fact would rewrite months that are already closed. If a receipt was wrong, correct it with a stock adjustment, which leaves a record of the correction rather than replacing the original with a better story.
Incoming stock
Once an order is placed, its outstanding units show as incoming against the variant at that location. Incoming is not available — you cannot sell it, and it will not stop you overselling — but it is what tells you whether to reorder or wait.
Receiving
Receive against the order, line by line, entering what actually turned up. Three things are written together, in one transaction:
- The units go into on hand at the receiving location.
- A ledger line records where they came from.
- The unit cost is recorded against the stock.
That third one is the point. It is the cost snapshotted onto a sale later, so a product whose supplier price went up in March has the March cost on March's orders and the old cost on February's. Gross margin is worked out from what you actually paid, not from a current price applied backwards.
Short deliveries are normal: receive what came, and the order sits at partial with the rest outstanding.
Where to find it
Manage → Purchase orders, with suppliers inside it. What each receipt did to stock is visible in the movement ledger under Manage → Inventory → Movements.