A purchase order is what you send a supplier to say what you want. Raising it here means the delivery can be checked against it later instead of against somebody's memory.
Steps
- Go to Purchase Orders.
- Press Create Purchase Order.
- Choose the branch and the supplier.
- Add each product, with the quantity and the Cost Price.
- Save.
- Press Approve Order when it is ready to send.
Cost price is what you pay
Cost Price is what the supplier charges you, not what you sell it for. Getting these two mixed up is the single most common mistake here, and it makes every margin figure wrong afterwards.
Current Stock is shown as you add products, so you can see what you already hold before deciding how much to order.
Draft, then approve
An order you save without approving is a draft, and the screen says Changes saved as draft. Drafts are useful for building an order up over a few days as people notice things running low.
Nothing is committed until Approve Order. Get into the habit of approving deliberately rather than treating it as another save.
Cancelling
Cancel Order is for an order that will not be fulfilled. Cancel it rather than deleting it, so there is a record of what was ordered and dropped.
When the delivery arrives
Use Add Stock to bring it in, and check what arrived against what you ordered. Short deliveries are common and are only caught if somebody counts.
Record Damaged Items honestly. Stock written off as damaged is money, and it is worth being able to show a supplier a pattern if it keeps happening.
If a supplier is missing
They have to be added first, and they have to be assigned to the branch you are ordering for.