---
title: What are suppliers and purchase orders?
url: https://tideswell.xyz/docs/purchasing
description: Suppliers are the companies you pay. Purchase orders are what you have on order with them, from writing one to booking it in.
---

> Documentation index: fetch https://tideswell.xyz/llms.txt to discover every page before exploring further.

# What are suppliers and purchase orders?



A **supplier** is a company you buy from, with contact details, terms and a currency. A
**purchase order** is one order placed with one of them.

Between them they answer the questions a brand lives on: what is on order, when is it
arriving, has it arrived, and does this supplier actually deliver when they say they will.

Both live under **Store** in the sidebar, as **Suppliers**, **Purchase orders** and
**Approvals**.

## Why keep this in Tideswell rather than a spreadsheet? [#why-keep-this-in-tideswell-rather-than-a-spreadsheet]

Because a purchase order spreadsheet cannot tell you what it means.

Fairgreen Golf Co. ran theirs in a sheet for two years, and it knew an order existed.

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 this mill has been late on six of its last ten deliveries.

Here those connections are ordinary. An order's units count as **incoming** on the stock
screen, so the reorder suggestion knows about them.

A supplier's lead time drives how urgently their products get flagged, and deliveries score
that supplier's on-time record as they arrive.

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

## What is the shape of the work? [#what-is-the-shape-of-the-work]

Roughly in order:

1. **Add the supplier** and record their terms, so the maths elsewhere is right. See
   <Ref to="purchasing/add-a-supplier" />.
2. **Write the order** and put products on it. See
   <Ref to="purchasing/write-a-purchase-order" />.
3. **Move it through your stages**, with approval if the order warrants it. See
   <Ref to="purchasing/move-a-purchase-order" />.
4. **Send the revision** to the supplier and record what they confirm.
5. **Receive it** when it arrives, which is what updates your Shopify stock. See
   <Ref to="purchasing/receive-a-delivery" />.

## What decides what to order in the first place? [#what-decides-what-to-order-in-the-first-place]

The stock screen, not this one. **Store › Inventory** ranks what is running out and suggests
quantities, and it is where a purchase order should start.

See <Ref to="inventory/find-what-to-reorder" />.

## Two things worth understanding early [#two-things-worth-understanding-early]

**A supplier and a vendor profile are two different records.** The **supplier** is the company
you pay, with the full contact and terms record. A **vendor profile** is keyed on the vendor
name typed on an order and holds the revision window and lead time. Both exist, and they are
edited in different places.

**Currency is copied onto an order when it is created, and never re-resolved.** That is
deliberate: changing a supplier's currency today does not re-price orders you placed last
year. Totals across the book are shown per currency and never added together.

## What has to be switched on? [#what-has-to-be-switched-on]

The **Store** module, plus **Suppliers** and **Purchase orders**, which are separate switches
in <Ref to="workspace-admin/modules" />.

With one of them off, its pages are unreachable rather than merely hidden, so a bookmark stops
working too. Viewing suppliers, viewing purchase orders and approving orders are each their
own permission.

## Read this section in order [#read-this-section-in-order]

<Ref to="purchasing/add-a-supplier" /> first, because the terms recorded there drive dates and
quantities everywhere else. Then <Ref to="purchasing/write-a-purchase-order" /> and
<Ref to="purchasing/products-and-columns" /> are the order itself.

<Ref to="purchasing/receive-a-delivery" /> is the one to read carefully before you use it, as
it writes to your live Shopify stock.