There are several ways that you can create a new Purchase Order. The following method uses the Purchase Orders screen found under the Inventory Control tab.

Firstly, click the New PO button on the top right of the screen to be presented with the New Purchase Order screen.

From here, fill in the required fields including Purchase Date, Expected Delivery Date, Supplier, the Location the stock will get delivered to and the Supplier Reference number. The PO number is your own order reference while the Supplier reference is the reference you receive from the supplier.

One way you can add items to a Purchase Order is by clicking the Add New Item button. This will present you with a search window where you can find items based on filters that you want to search by. You can search by typing the name of the product and clicking Find as well as filtering by Only Supplier or Cheapest Supplier. Selecting Only Supplier will show you only items which that supplier stocks while Cheapest Supplier will show you the cheapest supplier for the items you’re searching for.

 Double clicking on an item adds it to the purchase order, with an initial quantity of 1, but you can also add multiple products by clicking the select column for your required items and clicking the Select button.

When adding items to a Purchase Order you can specify the quantity to order by using one of four stock level conditions:

To Min Level

Selecting this option will bring the stock level for the item up to the minimum stock level.

Fulfil Orders Orders

Enough stock to be able to ship current orders.

Optimal Stock Level

Optimal stock level is worked out by AVG(Weekly sales) x AVG(Lead_Time_In_Weeks) where AVG(Weekly sales) is the average weekly consumption of the product and AVG(Lead_Time_In_Weeks) is the average known lead time for the given supplier. Sales spikes are not omitted from average weekly sales, so watch out for standard variation. Selecting this option will order stock to meet this optimal stock level.

Optimal + Safety Stock

This option takes the Optimal stock level and adds a Safety Stock Level using the following formula:

                Safety Stock Level = Maximum historic weekly usage x (Maximum lead time – Average lead time)

Again, sales spikes are not omitted from the average weekly sales, so if standard deviation is high then the Safety stock level will be high.

Linnworks automatically works out what you need to reorder from the supplier based on the method of calculation you have chosen.

Another way you can add items to a Purchase order is by clicking the Supplier Items (Reorder point) button. The Supplier Products screen shows you a list of products from the Supplier you specified in the New Purchase Order screen and you can also filter these based on the four stock level conditions. Double-click an item to add it to the Purchase Order.

Once an item has been added to the New Purchase Order screen, you can specify the quantity to order by modifying the quantity value for each individual item.

You can set a Purchase Order to be either pending or open when you create it using the Pending PO checkbox on the New Purchase Order screen.

Click the Save button to save the Purchase Order to the list of Purchase Orders.

Once created, you can make changes to the Purchase Order by highlighting the particular order you wish to modify and clicking the Edit PO button. Once an order has been delivered (partially or fully) you cannot edit items that have already been marked as delivered. You can however add more items to the Purchase Order or edit items that have not been marked as delivered.

Once a Purchase Order has been set to Open, you can begin to mark items as delivered. This is done by clicking the Edit PO button, highlighting the item you wish to book in and clicking the Deliver button. From here you can enter the quantity of that item that you have received before clicking the Deliver Button to mark that item as delivered. Once an item is marked as delivered it’s details will be struck-through.

Alternatively you can click the Deliver All button to mark all Purchase Items as delivered, with the quantity delivered being set to the number ordered.