Inventory and purchasing

Products

Each product carries its codes, description, unit of measure, brand, pricing per tier and its stock settings. Two flags do most of the work: whether the product is bought, sold or both, and whether its stock is tracked. Those two decisions determine which pickers it appears in and whether it has a quantity at all — see Getting started for the detail.

Bills of materials

A bill of materials lists what goes into a manufactured product, and BOMs can nest — a component can itself have a BOM. Costs roll up through the levels, so changing the price of a raw material updates the cost of everything built from it rather than leaving you to recalculate by hand.

BOMs are what let a work order know to consume components and produce a finished item. See Production.

Stocktake

A stocktake is a counted snapshot. You capture counted quantities against expected ones, review the variances, and post the result — at which point stock is adjusted to what you actually counted and the variance is recorded. This is also how you establish opening balances when you first go live.

Adjustments

Adjustments handle the stock movements that are not sales, purchases or production: breakage, samples, write-offs, corrections. Each carries a reason, so the stock history explains itself later. Adjustments are logged — this is precisely the area an auditor asks about.

Branch transfers

If you hold stock in more than one location, transfers move it between them and keep both sides balanced. Stock in transit is visible rather than briefly vanishing from both branches at once.

Purchase orders

A purchase order records what you have committed to buy from a supplier: lines, agreed prices, expected delivery. Pricing defaults from the supplier where you have it, so repeat buying does not mean looking up last month's price.

Receiving against a purchase order is what brings stock in. Partial receipts are normal and supported — the order stays open for the balance, the same way partial deliveries work on the sales side.

Purchase orders can also carry transport and settlement-discount terms where those affect the landed cost of what you are buying.

Supplier credit notes

When goods go back to a supplier or an invoice was overstated, a supplier credit note records it and feeds through to what you owe them. Returns adjust stock as well as the balance — a credit for goods you still hold would leave both figures wrong.

Deciding what to buy

Products on Order shows outstanding customer demand per product. Read it alongside stock on hand and what is already on order from suppliers, and the buying decision becomes arithmetic rather than instinct.