Purchase orders

You’ll need: Purchase orders — if you cannot see these, the module may be switched off for your business or outside your permissions. An administrator can change either.

A purchase order is your commitment to buy. It is the document a supplier works from, and the one your receipt and bill are later matched against.

What it holds

A purchase order number, the supplier, and the supplier quote it came from where there was one. Currency, order date and expected delivery date. Business location — where the goods are going. Lines, a description and any documents.

There is also a sales order link, for when you are buying specifically to fulfil something you have sold. That link is what connects a customer waiting to the delivery they are waiting for.

Raising incoming stock

The moment a purchase order exists, its quantities appear as incoming at the destination location.

This is the planning number from the inventory course. It does not mean you have the goods. It means somebody has promised them, which is enough to stop a colleague ordering the same thing again on Thursday, and not enough to promise a customer Friday delivery.

Incoming is drawn down when the goods actually arrive.

Expected delivery date is a working field

It is not decoration and it is not the supplier’s marketing. It is what makes “what is late” a question with an answer.

Put in the date you were actually promised, and update it when it changes. A purchase order list where every date is optimistic is one nobody checks, and then lateness is discovered by a customer rather than by you.

The business location is the destination

Which location receives the goods decides where the incoming sits and where the stock will land. Get it wrong and you have goods arriving somewhere that was not expecting them, while the place that was expecting them shows an arrival that never comes.

Same trap as everywhere else in FeePrime: quantities belong to places.

Order what you need, from the quote you accepted

Where a supplier quote exists, raise the order from it. The lines and prices carry across, the link is kept, and any later argument about what was agreed has a document behind it.

Typing a fresh order for a quote you accepted breaks that chain, and the price you meant to hold the supplier to is now just a number you typed.

Try it

On staging.feeprime.com, raise a purchase order from a supplier quote and check the incoming figure on one of its items. Then change the expected delivery date and notice this is a live document, not a filed one.