What are suppliers and purchase orders?

Suppliers are the companies you buy from, and purchase orders track what you have on order with them, from first draft to paid bill.

A supplier is a company you buy from, with its contacts, terms, lead time and currency. A purchase order is one order placed with one of them: Fairgreen Golf Co.'s spring knitwear from Kaimen Knitwear, say, or a run of polo fabric from Portside Mills.

Both live in the Buying area of the menu, alongside the bills those orders turn into: Purchase orders, Suppliers, Bills, Approvals, Buying calendar and Data feeds.

Why keep this in Tideswell rather than a spreadsheet?

Because a purchase order spreadsheet knows an order exists and nothing else.

Fairgreen ran theirs in a sheet for two years. It could not say that the merino was down to eleven days of cover while the order covering it was three weeks late, or that one mill had been late on six of its last ten deliveries.

Here those connections are ordinary. A supplier's lead time decides how urgently its products are flagged on Selling › Inventory, and every delivery you book in scores that supplier's on-time record.

That last one changes conversations. "You are usually about nine days late" is a different negotiation from "this feels slow".

When would you use it?

Before a season's buy, to see what is running low, draft the orders and check what the season commits you to spend each month.
Every week, to chase what is late and make the revision decisions that fall due before a supplier's cut-off.
When goods arrive, to book them into your Shopify stock and check the supplier's bill against what actually came.

What is the shape of the work?

Roughly in order:

Add the supplier and record their terms and lead time, so the dates and quantities elsewhere are right.
Decide what to order on Selling › Inventory, which can draft the orders for you.
Write the order, put products on it, and move it through your stages, with sign-off where an order needs it.
Send it to the supplier and record what they confirm. Their rep can also confirm it themselves, if you give them access.
Track the shipment on its way and receive it when it lands, which updates your Shopify stock.
Check and pay the bill the supplier sends.

What decides what to order in the first place?

The stock screen. Selling › Inventory ranks what is running out, suggests quantities and can draft one purchase order per supplier from the list. Buying › Replenishment fills one supplier's order up to minimum and maximum stock limits you set.

See How to find out what you need to reorder and How to set stock limits and reorder up to them.

When should you use something else?

Use a wholesale order instead when you are the one selling. A purchase order is stock coming in from a supplier; a wholesale order is stock going out to a dealer. See What is wholesale?.

Use a special order instead when one named customer is waiting for one item. See What are special orders?.

Use a production order instead when you make the product yourself. A purchase order buys finished goods or components from a supplier; a production order turns components into finished units and adds them to your stock. See How to run a production order.

What is easy to mix up at first?

Two things: a supplier and a vendor profile, and the currency an order is in.

A supplier and a vendor profile are two different records. The supplier, under Buying › Suppliers, is the company you pay, with the full contact and terms record. A vendor profile belongs to the vendor name typed on an order and holds its revision window, lead time, rep, email and payment terms.

An order keeps the currency it was created in. It takes the supplier's currency at that moment and keeps it, so changing a supplier's currency today leaves last year's orders priced as they were. Totals across the book are shown per currency, side by side.

Your workspace may use its own words for purchase orders and suppliers; Settings › Terminology shows both.

What has to be switched on?

The Store module, plus Purchase orders and Suppliers, each its own switch in How to switch parts of Tideswell on and off. Purchase orders opens Purchase orders, Bills, Approvals and the Buying calendar; Suppliers opens the supplier list.

Making your own products adds two more switches: Production orders opens Buying › Production orders, and Bills of materials opens Buying › Bills of materials. Both come on with the Vertically integrated operating model.

Who sees each page is set in Settings › Permissions, by the rows View purchase orders and the buying calendar, View suppliers and View bills. Signing orders off is Approve purchase orders. All four start at lead.

To change who has them, see How to set who can do what.

Read this section in order

Start with the supplier:

Then the order itself, from writing it to sending it:

Then the goods and the money:

And the weekly view across every order:

If you make products yourself:

Read How to receive a delivery carefully before you use it, as it writes to your live Shopify stock.

What are suppliers and purchase orders?

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