Automatic Purchase Orders

Automatically creating purchase orders based on existing stock levels can save you a great deal of time. Using the Low Stock Report you can monitor your stock levels and then go on to automatically generate a purchase order based on the minimum level you would like to keep in stock and the re-order quantities set by your supplier. Before reading about creating automatic purchase orders you should learn about how to set up your products in order to use the Low Stock Report.

Learn more about the low stock report

How are order quantities calculated?

Brightpearl can automatically calculate the number of each product to order by using the minimum stock level and reorder quantity set up against each product. If no minimum stock level is set the product will not be listed at all and if no reorder quantity is set you will have to manually enter the quantity when you create the purchase order, so it is best to enter "1" than nothing at all!

Occasionally, the calculated order quantity will take you above your minimum stock level, this is because of the minimum reorder quantities set by the supplier. Take the following example:

For one of your stocked items, you want to keep a minimum of 10 items in stock at any one time. Your supplier will only provide the item in sets of 3. During the week you have sold a number of these items and stock levels have fallen to 5. Using the Low Stock Report to create a purchase order the order quantity is 6. This will raise your stock levels to 11. Brightpearl calculates that you need to order 2 sets of 3 in order to meet you minimum stock level.

Create an Automatic Purchase Order

To automatically create a purchase order follow these steps:

1. Go to Products > Low inventory report.
2. Filter the report by supplier (and warehouse if you have more than one).
3. Each product will now be listed with a suggested order quantity in the Actions column (a value of "NaN" indicates no reorder quantity has been set up on the product).
4. Amend any of the figures as needed.
5. When you are happy with the quantities, click the Create Purchase Order button.
6. The purchase order is created and displayed; you can still make changes at this stage. If you make changes remember to click Save.
7. Send your purchase order to your supplier using your normal routine.