This is an outline of the workflow for ordering products from your vendors. The process is tracked within a single entity in inFlow Inventory, the Purchase Order, making it easy for you to keep track of the order status and what needs to be done.

1.    You place a Purchase Order to your vendor

A Purchase Order is a request to your vendor or supplier to send you some products at a certain price. inFlow can help you create Purchase Orders and print or e-mail them to your vendors.

More information on Purchase Orders..

2.    You Receive products from your vendor into your warehouse

After you have placed the order, the vendor will ship the products to you. When the products arrive at your warehouse, you need to receive those products into your warehouse, putting them away into storage locations, and verify that the quantity received matches the quantity ordered.

More information on Receiving..

3.    You Pay the vendor for the goods received

Once you have received the goods, you need to pay the vendor for the purchase order. You can keep track of when you have paid the vendor and the payment methods using inFlow.

More information on Payment..

4.    (Optional) You may Return some items to the vendor

If some of the items you have received are defective in some way, you might request a refund from the vendor for those items.

More information on Returns..

5.    (Optional) You Unstock the returned items

For the items you have returned, you can remove them from your inventory if they are defective or need to be sent back to the vendor.

More information on Unstocking.

Note, steps 4 and 5 are often done at the same time, and can be done in either order.

Receiving without an Order

In some cases, you might receive products without having placed a formal Purchase Order. In this case, you can also choose to fill in the information on Receive first, and then the Order information such as pricing after.

Marking an Order as Fully Received

Once you have received all the expected goods from the vendor and agreed upon the price to be paid for the order, you can mark the order as Fully Received to finalize the order. The products that have been received must match the products that were ordered. To mark the order as Fully Received, click the Complete button on the Receive tab of the Purchase Order.

Order Cancellation

You may choose to cancel a Purchase Order once it has been saved. This can be done by clicking the Cancel Order button from the Order tab. If this is done after any items have been received or payment made, then the inventory movements and payments will be reversed. You may choose to re-open a cancelled at a later date by clicking the Re-open Order button, which replaces the Cancel Order button once the order has been cancelled.

Order Status

inFlow Inventory uses a detailed Order Status to quickly describe the state of an order. The following are the possible status values for purchase orders:

• Open – when the purchase order has been placed but nothing has been received yet.
• In Progress – when the purchase order has been placed and some receiving information has been entered.
• Fully Received – when the purchase order has been marked Fully Received but has not yet been fully paid.
• Paid – when the purchase order has been marked Fully Received and has been fully paid.
• Cancelled – when the purchase order has been marked cancelled.