Purchase orders

A purchase order is what your organization asks a supplier to sell you. This page covers raising one, the optional approval step, ordering it by email or through a distributor, drop shipping to a client, and closing it out. When the goods arrive, see Receive deliveries.

Before you begin

• Raising and editing purchase orders needs procurement:write. Approving them, and submitting them to a distributor, needs procurement:approve.
• Add the supplier under Procurement > Suppliers. To email orders, enter the supplier’s Orders email.
• Add at least one stock location. See Inventory.

Set up purchasing

Select Procurement > Settings. Changing these settings needs procurement:approve.

Card	Setting	Default
Numbering	Purchase order prefix, Receipt prefix, and Return prefix	PO-, RCV-, and RMA-
Approval	Purchase orders need approval before they are ordered, and From a total of. Orders under that total are approved as they are finished. 0 sends every order for approval.	Off
Bill matching	Price tolerance, percent and Freight tolerance. See Supplier bills.	2 percent and $25.00
Stock	Default receiving location, Draft purchase orders every hour for stock below its reorder point, and Hardware refresh age, months	No default, off, and 48

Add a supplier

1. Select Procurement > Suppliers, then New supplier.
2. Enter the Name, and optionally Our account number, Orders email, Phone, Website, and Payment terms.
3. If you order from this supplier through a distributor connection, choose it in Distributor connection. New purchase orders to the supplier then offer to submit through it. See Distributor connections.
4. Select Save supplier.

Currency is for reference only. Every amount in Outpost is in your organization’s one currency, and nothing is converted.

What a supplier charges for an item is recorded on the item, on its Suppliers card. See Inventory.

Raise a purchase order

1. Select Procurement > Purchase orders, then New purchase order.
2. Choose the Supplier, and enter the Supplier reference if they gave you a quote or order number.
3. In Ship to, choose One of our stock locations and pick the Location. To have the supplier ship straight to a client, see Drop ship to a client.
4. Optionally, enter the Expected date, the Tax the supplier adds, and Notes, which are printed on the purchase order.
5. If the supplier has a distributor connection, Order through shows it. Choose Email the supplier to send the PDF instead.
6. Under Lines, select Add a line for each item. Pick the stock item, or Not a stock item for something you do not keep in stock, and enter the Description, Supplier SKU, Unit cost, and Qty. Picking a stock item fills in its name, part number, and last cost. When the line’s supplier SKU or cost is empty, Outpost fills them from the item’s recorded cost for that supplier.
7. When you have a distributor connection, the Find at distributors panel searches the synced distributor catalogs. Enter a SKU, a manufacturer part number, a UPC, or words from the description, select Search, then Add on a result to add it as a line with the distributor’s SKU and cost. Costs and stock are as of the last catalog sync. See Distributor connections.
8. Select Add freight or Add a fee for charges that are not goods.
9. Select Save draft.

Estimated total, with tax shows what the order comes to. Nothing has gone to the supplier yet.

A purchase order also starts as a draft when it is raised from a sales order with Buy for this order (see Sales orders), drafted by the reorder run (see Inventory), or built in a distributor’s PunchOut catalog with Shop at on the Find at distributors panel (see Build an order in PunchOut).

Get it approved

On the draft, select Request approval. When the approval step is off, or the total is under From a total of, the button reads Approve and finish, and the order is approved at once.

A purchase order that needs approval shows Waiting for approval until somebody with procurement:approve selects Approve, or Send back with a reason in Why, which returns it to Draft.

Editing a purchase order that is waiting for approval or already approved returns it to Draft and clears the approval. It must be approved again before it is ordered.

Order it

An approved purchase order is ordered in one of two ways.

Send by email

Select Send by email. Outpost emails the purchase order as a PDF to the supplier’s Orders email, and the order shows Sent. Selecting it again sends it again. If the supplier has no orders email, add one on the supplier first. Select PDF to download the same document.

Submit to a distributor

When the order goes through a distributor connection and live ordering is on for that connection, select Submit to followed by the distributor’s name. The dialog shows the Expected total. Select I confirm this order to followed by the distributor and the total, then Place the order.

The order is queued, then placed with the distributor, and its Submission shows the result. A submission the distributor refuses, or that fails, returns the order to Approved with the error shown, so you can fix it and submit again. If the total changes after you open the dialog, the submission is refused, so the amount you confirm is always the amount ordered.

When live ordering is off, the button is replaced by Live ordering is off. Open the connection. See Turn on live ordering.

Caution

Submitting places a real order that costs money, and it cannot be called back from Outpost. To change or cancel a submitted order, contact the distributor.

Drop ship to a client

On the MSP plan, a supplier can ship straight to a client’s site. Nothing goes into your stock.

1. In Ship to, choose Drop ship to a client.
2. Choose the Client, and in Site the client’s site, or The client’s main address.

When the delivery arrives, record it on the receive page as usual. The units become assets in your register, then move into the client’s register as deployed when the sales order delivers them. See Receive deliveries.

Track the shipment

Shipments reported by a distributor appear under Shipments and tracking on their own. To record one yourself, select Add tracking, and enter the Carrier, Tracking number, Tracking link, Shipped on, and Expected delivery.

Cancel, close, or delete

Action	When	What it does
Delete draft	A draft	Removes the order.
Cancel order	Before anything is received, and before a distributor accepts it	Cancels the order. Enter a Reason, which is kept on the record. Cancelling an emailed order does not tell the supplier, so contact them as well.
Close	Partly or fully received	Cancels whatever is still due and clears backorders.

Purchase order statuses

Status	Meaning
Draft	Being written.
Waiting for approval	Sent for approval.
Approved	Ready to order.
Submitted	Submitted to a distributor.
Sent	Emailed to the supplier.
Partly received	Some of it has arrived.
Received	Everything has arrived.
Closed	Finished.
Canceled	Canceled before anything arrived.

A submitted order also shows its Submission: Queued, Submitting, Accepted by distributor, Rejected by distributor, or Submission failed.

Verify

• After approval, the order shows Approved, with who approved it and when.
• After sending, it shows Sent and the time under Emailed. After submitting, Submission shows Accepted by distributor and the distributor’s own order number.

Next steps

• Receive deliveries
• Supplier bills and the 3-way match