knowledge base

A Purchase Order is a document that represents an order placed by you to one of your vendors, where you ask them to supply you a certain set of products or services at a certain price. In inFlow Inventory, all of the work related to a purchase order is saved alongside the order, including receiving goods, payment, and possibly returning products. This makes it easy to find all the order information in one place and see the order status at a glance.

To create a new Purchase Order, click the inFlow Menu button, select Purchasing and then select New Purchase Order.

Alternatively, you can click the New Order link from the Home Page

Entering Header Information

The Header of the Purchase Order contains the common information about the order that is visible throughout the Purchasing Workflow.

The following fields are in the Purchase Order Header:

Vendor – (Required) Here you should select the Vendor to whom you are placing this order. This will usually be the name of the company. How to select a vendor.

Contact – The contact person at your vendor regarding this order.

Phone – A phone number you can call at your vendor's place of business.

Vendor Address – The address to which this purchase order should be sent. These addresses are filled in from vendor information. You can use the dropdown to select other vendor addresses. You can modify an address by clicking into it or tabbing & typing.

Location - The inventory location associated with this order. Items will only be picked and restocked into this location by default.

Order # - A unique Purchase Order number by which you can refer to this order. This will be automatically filled in the first time you save your order. You can edit this Order # directly, or set the pattern of how order numbers will be created under Company Settings. If Order # is set before saving order, no number is generated.

Date – The date of the order, usually the date on which the order was placed. You may change this date.

Status – A short description of the status of this purchase order. See possible statuses and what they mean.

Showing/Hiding Shipping Information

You can hide the shipping information from the order by clicking the No Shipping link. You can't do this when Freight, Vendor Order Number or requested ship date have been set. When shipping information is hidden, the Terms and Vendor Order # fields will be removed from the header and the freight fields (order, payment & return), requested ship date, due date, vendor order number, terms and carrier are also hidden.

If you want to turn it back on, click the Add Shipping link and it then shows up both on screen and in printed documents.

Ship-To Address - The address to which the vendor should ship the goods for this order.

Terms - Payment terms for this order, i.e. an agreement between you and your vendor about how you should pay them for the order. You can select from a list of existing payment terms or add a new type by selecting <Add New…> from the dropdown list.

Vendor Order # - An order number that your vendor may use to refer to this order.

You may also add up to three custom fields into Purchase Orders. These will show up underneath the Vendor Order # field. More information.

Working with Addresses

For the Vendor Address, you can select from one of addresses defined for this vendor in the Vendor Information by clicking the small arrow next to the address field, and selecting the address to use.

For the Ship-To Address, you can select from the addresses you have set up in your Company Information or Receiving Addresses under Company Settings. You can also add a new receiving address here by selecting Add New Address from the dropdown.

To edit the vendor or ship-to addresses, move your mouse into the main address field and then click. A popup will appear allowing you to edit the various parts of the address.  Changes to the address can be saved back to the main vendor information by answering yes when prompted by the program.  Simply make the necessary changes to the vendor details within the purchase order and when you save it, inFlow will ask you if you would like to save any changes and provide you with an easy to navigate list of the changes you have made.  This is also true of changes to item descriptions or vendor codes within your purchase order.

Entering the Main Order Contents

The main part of the purchase order is visible under the Order tab. To view this, click on the Order tab at the bottom of the Purchase Order screen.

The main Order table has the following columns:

Item – This is the item name or item code for the product or service being ordered. Items can be selected from the drop-down box or can be entered by scanning the barcodes. To do this, you have to setup product barcodes, click into the Item field and scan. The item will be selected. If the item is scanned repeatedly, then the quantity will be incremented accordingly.

Description – This is a text description of the product or service being ordered. This field will be shown, only if Show Product Description is set in the Settings. This will default to the description from the product information, but can be changed here.

Vendor Product Code – The item name of item code that the vendor uses for the product or service being ordered. This will default to the Vendor Product Code set up in Vendor Information for this vendor and product, or will be blank.

Quantity – This is the quantity of the item being ordered. This can be entered manually or selected from the drop-down box. Quantities can be entered in any UoM. Unit Price is per UoM displayed. Changing the UoM updates the Unit Price (e.g. changing to a pack of 2 doubles the unit price). This will default to 1 but can be changed to the actual order quantity.

Unit Price – This is the price per unit that the vendor charges you for this item. In order of priority, this will default to the Cost set up in Vendor Information for this vendor and product, then the Costing Method set up in Product information for this product, then the unit price you last purchased this item at, and then zero.

Discount - A percentage discount given by the vendor on the price of this item. This can be entered manually or selected from the drop-down box. Discount can be entered as a percentage or as a dollar amount.

This may be hidden, depending on your company settings. The Product Tax Code for this item determines if it is taxed in a special way, e.g. tax exempt. This defaults to the Product Tax Code in the product information for this product. More information on Product Tax Codes.

Sub-total – The total cost of this item for the quantity given and after applying discounts, but before applying taxes or freight. This is calculated based on the Unit Price, Quantity and Discount, and cannot be modified.

To add in a new line item, first select a product in the Item column. Then, you may choose to modify the other columns.

Foreign Currency Orders
If you are working in a currency other than your own, the order will appear in the currency which corresponds to the vendor’s pricing scheme.  However, if you would like to know what this order amounts to in your home currency (i.e. your company currency) holding your mouse over any of the totals will show a tooltip with the currency converted into your company currency.