Procurement and assets

Procurement and assets covers what happens to hardware after somebody decides to buy it: the order to the supplier, the delivery, the stock on your shelves, the hand-over to the client or the staff member, the supplier’s bill, and the unit’s life afterwards as an asset with a warranty. This page explains how the pieces connect, what each plan includes, and where each task is documented.

The flow from quote to delivery

On the MSP plan, the flow starts with a quote:

1. A customer accepts a quote with hardware on it. Outpost converts the quote as it always does, and adds a sales order for the goods. See Sales orders.
2. You buy the goods on purchase orders, grouped by supplier. A purchase order is approved, then emailed to the supplier or submitted to a distributor. See Purchase orders.
3. The goods arrive. You receive them against the purchase order and scan each serial number. Stock goes into a location, and each serialized unit becomes an asset. See Receive deliveries.
4. You deliver to the client. Delivering takes the units out of stock, moves the assets into the client’s register as deployed, and raises the delivery invoice the order’s invoicing calls for.
5. The supplier bills you. The bill is matched against the purchase order and what was received. Approving it spreads freight and fees over the goods as landed cost, which corrects the stock cost, the assets’ cost, and the sales order’s margin. See Supplier bills.
6. The asset lives on. It links itself to the endpoint that reports the same serial number, tracks its warranty with the manufacturer, and appears on the refresh forecast when it ages out. See Assets.

On Home Lab, Essentials, and Enterprise there are no sales orders. You raise purchase orders yourself, or let the reorder run draft them, and the rest of the flow is the same for your own organization.

What lives where

Section in the console	What it holds
Sales > Orders (MSP plan)	Sales orders: lines, deliveries, purchases, invoices, and margin
Procurement	Purchase orders, Supplier bills, Suppliers, Returns, and Settings. On Home Lab, Essentials, and Enterprise, Subscriptions too.
Inventory	Stock items, Stock levels, Locations, Transfers, Movements, and Reorder
Assets	All assets, Staff equipment, Warranty and refresh, and Returns
Client billing (MSP plan)	Subscriptions and Reconciliation
Settings > Integrations	Distributors, Warranty, API keys, and Webhooks

On the MSP plan, purchasing, stock, and distributors belong to your practice, so they are at the practice level and not inside a client’s workspace. Assets belong to whoever holds them: hardware still in your stock is in your practice’s register, and a delivered unit moves into the client’s own register. Each client’s workspace has its own Assets section, and the practice-level Assets pages list every client’s assets together.

What each plan includes

Capability	Home Lab, Essentials, Enterprise	MSP
Purchase orders, receiving, supplier bills, returns	Yes	Yes
Stock items, locations, transfers, reorder	Yes	Yes
Assets, warranty lookup, refresh forecast, staff equipment	Yes	Yes
Distributor connections and ordering	Yes	Yes
Pax8 and StreamOne subscriptions	Yes, subscriptions and their bills	Yes
Agreement quantities from subscriptions, monthly reconciliation	No	Yes
Sales orders, deposits, delivery invoicing, margin	No	Yes
Quoting tools (Quoter, Salesbuildr, QuoteWerks)	No	Yes
Opportunity workflows	No	Yes
API keys and outbound webhooks	Yes	Yes
From the refresh forecast	Draft purchase order	Quote replacement

Remote Outpost does not include any of these features.

Permissions

Nine permissions control this area. Assign them through roles. See Roles and permissions.

Permission	Allows
procurement:read	Reading suppliers, purchase orders, receipts, supplier bills, returns, and subscriptions
procurement:write	Creating and editing suppliers, purchase orders, supplier bills, and returns
procurement:approve	Approving purchase orders and supplier bills, submitting orders to distributors, placing subscription orders, and changing procurement settings
procurement:receive	Receiving deliveries and reversing receipts
inventory:read	Reading stock items, locations, levels, and movements
inventory:write	Managing stock items and locations, adjusting and transferring stock, and delivering sales orders from stock
assets:read	Reading the asset register, staff equipment, and warranty status
assets:write	Managing assets, checking equipment out and in, and refreshing warranty status
integrations:admin	Managing distributor and warranty connections, API keys, and webhooks

The owner holds all nine. The Field Technician and Support Manager roles hold assets:read, assets:write, and inventory:read. Accounting holds procurement:read, and on the MSP plan Sales holds procurement:read and assets:read. A Purchasing role holds everything a buyer needs: all four procurement permissions, both inventory permissions, and assets:read.

Related

• Purchase orders
• Inventory
• Assets
• Distributor connections
• Sales orders
• API keys and webhooks