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Purchase Orders

On the Supply Chain ribbon, click on Purchase Orders to find existing purchase orders or to create a new one.

Results for a search are shown in a grid; click on a column to sort by that column, and click on a row to open that purchase order for viewing or editing.

You can also print or export your search results via buttons at the bottom left of the screen.

What is a Purchase Order?

A purchase order is a list of products that you want to order from a single vendor. It includes all of the relevant details such as where to send the products to, a ship date, cancel date, terms, and even line item notes for products. When you are ready to receive products, it also encapsulates the receive vouchers and return vouchers (return vouchers can also be created outside of a purchase order). Of course you can print the purchase order or its vouchers.

The status of products in a purchase order is automatically integrated into other parts of OmniChannel Commerce. For example, products on order (and the expected date if set), can be shown to customers on your websites if a product is out of stock. This status is also shown in other places, such as products management.

When product is received, inventory is automatically updated in real-time, and if certain criteria are met, such as the presence of an image, retail price, etc., (as set in global settings), then the product can automatically be made active. You can also receive stock into a prepping area called a receive bin, and you can specify in what physical location you are receiving stock.

How to Create a New Purchase Order

First make sure you have setup a vendor who you will be buying from.

Click on the ‘Create New’ button in purchase orders management or in the Supply Chain ribbon the New Purchase Order button.

This will bring up a short dialog where you select the vendor from a drop down box, and the purchase order type.

Filling out a Purchase Order

Only one person can edit a purchase order at a time, which is done by clicking on the ‘Claim’ button in the lower left. If someone else has already claimed it, then this button will instead be called ‘Remove Claim’ Clicking on this button, if you have sufficient administrative rights, then brings up a dialog asking if you want to forcefully release the other persons claim and take it for yourself. When you close a purchase order screen, your claim is automatically released.

At the top of the purchase order screen is summary information and the purchase orders status.

There are five phases of a purchase order, which are replicated in the purchase order screen.

Setup

When you first create a purchase order you select a vendor and purchase order type (normal, special order, consignment). This then fills in the various communication details into the purchase order, of which you can change them if desired. This includes the ship to address, ship to method, and who pays for shipping along with a shipping account number if you pay. Also on this screen are the details of where the vendor sends the bill, terms, and agreed upon payment method (if any).

Products

On this panel, is a grid of all the products in the purchase order, along with the quantity, purchase cost, vendor sku, etc. There are several ways to add products to a purchase order:

Search / Add Existing Products – shows a screen for adding products to a list, which when finished you add to the products grid. This has full search capabilities including the ability to find products with low inventory.

Direct Add – you type in either a product id, code, or if configured a vendor sku, and as you type a list of matching products are shown. Selecting a product in the results list, shows its details to the right, and holding a mouse over its details shows a popup with further details about the last purchase of the product. Click on the ‘Add’ button to add the selected product to the purchase order.

Quick Add – Brings up a screen for adding a new product to the database, and when you are finished, this is added to the purchase order. This screen includes the ability to add a new inactive product with variants, and can be workflow constrained (as to the categories and attributes selected) using product templates.

For products already in the grid, you can edit the cost, quantity, line item notes, etc., directly in this grid. If you add a product already present in the gird, then it will add to its quantity rather than create a new line item.

Start / Cancel

On this panel you enter a ship date (if any), and a cancel date (if any). You also confirm, and change if necessary, the address that you are sending this purchase order to, along with your understanding of the minimum purchase amount (if any) set by the vendor. When all looks good, you mark the purchase order as ‘Sent’.

Once a purchase order is sent, you can revert it and edit its contents again as long as you have not yet received any products yet. Once you have received products, you can no longer edit the original purchase order, because this would result in a document that is different than what your vendor and accounting department has received. However there are other mechanisms to take care of mistakes, as shown in the next steps.

Receive

In this panel you add receive products by creating one or more receive vouchers. You cannot add more to a conventional receive voucher than what you have ordered, however you can create a special kind of receive voucher on this panel called – “Products Received and Not Ordered’.

When all looks good and you finalize the receive voucher; a dialog will ask if you want to receive product directly into available inventory or into a receive bin for further prep. The default choices and what is allowed is configured in the global settings form.  Next you will have the opportunity to make adjustments to how the products are listed in your system and print labels.

In addition to the updates to the inventory transaction tables, OmniChannel Commerce also adds a set of transactions for each product recording the new average cogs and how that was reached (previous available inventory at the moment, previous average cogs, the current purchase price, and the new calculated values).

Whether you are allowed to re-open a closed receive voucher or not, is a configuration set in Setup --> Global Settings --> Purchase Orders. The default is not to allow you to reopen a closed receive voucher. If you do re-open a closed voucher, when you close it again, OmniChannel Commerce will update inventory changes, average costs of goods, etc., using the difference between what you previously entered and the current values.

You can also open all the products from a purchase order, or any of its vouchers, at any time by clicking on a button called ‘Edit All Products’ which opens those products in products management, from where you can make changes, add images, and print labels. You do not need to claim a purchase order to do this.

Returns

On this panel you open previously created returns, or create a new one linked to this purchase order. A return voucher can contain products linked to several purchase order, and even products not linked to any purchase order (which is important when you are moving over from a previous system).

Also presented are options to pre-fill the return voucher with products from the purchase order or a particular receive voucher, along with conditions for selecting the products. Once in the return voucher, you can remove any products that were inappropriately added.

When a return voucher is closed, internally the average cogs and inventory is adjusted for each product, similar to a receive voucher.

Return Vouchers also have their own management home, making it easy to search through tem for various conditions and statues.

Forcing a Purchase Order to be Complete

A purchase order is complete when it has been sent and all of its products have been received.

There are some purchase orders which will never be complete, and you can force the complete flag to be set for these by checking on the ‘archived’ checkbox in the header area.

This will then prevent the purchase order from showing up on searches for incomplete orders.

Special Order Purchase Orders

This is similar to a regular purchase order, except that on initial setup you enter the customer order id this purchase order is linked to.

Consignment Purchase Orders

This type of purchase order has some additional vouchers and abilities. This includes a report to show all products that have been sold which were received for this purchase order, as well as the ability to create and manage payment vouchers, showing what you have paid to a vendor, and how much (if any) is still due. There is a button to automatically create a new payment voucher according to what is due.

You can also filter a number of reports to products received on consignment (or not).