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Purchasing |
  
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Purchasing |
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An important part of your business is buying inventory from your vendors. POSitive has a comprehensive process for determining what needs to be ordered, placing the order with your vendor(s), and receiving the purchase orders into inventory. In addition, there are tools for handling Accounts Payable for vendors who provide products and for those who provide services only.
Benefits
POSitive can and should manage your purchases from your vendors to give you better inventory control. By using POSitive purchase orders, you will be assured of accurate stock counts, purchase histories, and profitability reports.
Whether you have a handful of vendors or hundreds, POSitive offers several time saving features.
| • | Your SKU = Vendor SKU - You can use the same SKU as one of your vendors uses. |
| • | Multiple Vendors - Each inventory item can be purchased from more than one vendor. You can choose which vendor to buy from while preparing purchase orders. |
| • | Primary Vendor - even if you designate one vendor to be primary, you can still order from other vendors |
| • | Vendor Comparison - If an item can be purchased from more than one vendor, you can compare pricing. |
| • | Alternate SKUs - You may assign more than one SKU to an inventory item to make lookups easier. |
| • | Quick Returns - entering a negative quantity into the purchase order will reduce your stock counts. This creates a paper trail of deleted inventory. |
| • | Landed Costs - freight charges can be capitalized into the cost of each item on the purchase order (see Landed Cost Setup ) |
When Not To Use A Purchase Order
There are times when you might not want to use a purchase order.
| • | Initial Stock Counts - When you first begin using POSitive, rather than trying to re-create old purchase orders, you can manually set current stock counts. However, some users recommend the use generic purchase orders even for these items because they are able to capture more tracking information. For example, Sales By Vendor reports will then be accurate from the beginning. |
| • | Manufactured Items - If you are your own vendor, creating your own end products, then you may choose not to use purchase orders. |
| • | One Of A Kind Items - If you are selling antiques or other one of a kind items it may not be practical to record your sources except on an "internal note." |
The Recommended Way To Handle Purchase Orders
There is a logical progression for doing purchase orders, but you may start in the middle or jump right to the end. The complete cycle consists of the following steps:
A) Prepare an Order List (Order List Management)
The Order List itemizes all inventory items needing to be ordered. You can manually add items to this list, or they can appear automatically based on minimum stock counts and special orders by customers.
B) Post from the Order List
Choose which items in the list will be ordered at a given time. You tag and post them to purchase orders for individual vendors.
C) Place the Purchase Order (Purchase Orders)
Items from the order list are not actually ordered until you contact the vendor and place the purchase order with the vendor. Before placing the order you can review product availability, current costs, and even add new products to the PO.
D) Receive the Purchase Order
When the items finally arrive from the vendor, you receive the purchase order. This automatically updates your stock counts, notifies you that customers waiting for these products can be called, and prepares pricing labels to be printed for the items just received.
Creating Purchase Orders from Inventory Center
You also have the option of creating a Purchase Order directly from the Inventory Center. Click here to watch our video.
Getting Started With Purchase Orders
Before you begin to use POSitive purchase orders:
| • | Consider your options in System Setup: Purchase Order Defaults. This can warn you when costs have changed and alert you when items received are fulfilling customer orders. |
| • | Create Vendors in POSitive in advance, however, this can be done on the fly. |
| • | Define categories to prompt for a vendor or automatically select a vendor when an inventory item is created. |
| • | Update the Vendor Inventory List so that your inventory items are linked to the vendor(s). |
| • | Consider importing vendor inventory lists and allowing POSitive to link your inventory to the vendor inventory. |
Special Help: If you need to track a Duty Tax on Purchase Orders contact POSitive support for more information.
Use The Tools of the Purchasing Master Menu
Order List Management
This opens the Order List. This list includes items which are
| • | below minimum stock levels, |
| • | special orders for customers, and |
| • | manually added items in anticipation of an upcoming sale event. You tag items to be ordered from vendors now and POSitive generates purchase orders for each vendor. You could have a choice to create new purchase orders or append the items to existing purchase orders still waiting to be placed with the vendor. |
Purchase Orders
Purchase orders in development are created and retained here in the Purchase Order Center. You have easy access to
| • | POs To Place |
Purchase orders listed here are those which are still being created; the order has not yet been sent to the vendor. You may edit these POs until you are ready to submit them to your vendors. When you finally place the PO, it will be removed from this section and transferred to the "POs To Receive" list.
| • | POs To Receive |
Purchase orders listed here are those which have been sent to the vendor either by e-mail, fax, phone call, or special transmittal and you are waiting for product to arrive.
Receive Without PO
Choose "Receive Without PO" whenever you are about to accept delivery of inventory without having prepared a purchase order in advance. This is a common occurrence in many businesses.
You will be creating and receiving a purchase order all at the same time, thereby saving some steps as listed above.
Research Tools
Items On Order - The status of inventory currently on purchase orders yet to be placed or received. (see Items On Order)
PO History - displays all vendors and all purchase orders (see PO History By Vendor)
Print Labels - (far left) to print Inventory pricing labels on demand. (see Inventory Labels)
RMA (Vendor Returns)
Not a Feature of PFR
RMA stands for Return Merchandise Authorization. There are some vendors who allow you to return products to them for repair, replacement, or credit. RMAs are frequently done in batches to save time and money. POSitive can automate the procedures involved. Contact POSitive support for more information.