The purchase module offers an integration with our store ideal for effective control of stock and warehouses. In addition, keeping a record of purchases will help us to produce effective statistics of, for example, profit margins, purchase and sales history among many other features. To access the different purchasing options, click on the “purchases” tab in the top menu bar.
The suppliers
The suppliers are the companies that supply us with products, this management coincides with the prestashop supplier management. If you press the “Suppliers” button, you will see the list of suppliers.
As in other management of the application, we have a complete toolbar to operate with the records, which we will detail:
- Validate changes: This button is used to validate changes we have made directly in the data grid.
- Delete, edit and new: Controls how to add or modify data.
- Transit Time: Used to indicate the transit time required by the supplier for the shipment of the goods.
We can create new suppliers with “New supplier” and edit them with “Advanced edition“. In the list the images of the logos are shown, to reload them and take last modifications that have been made, use the button “Reload images”.
- Supplier name: The name of the supplier.
- Phone: A contact phone number
- Description: Rich text description of the supplier.
- Multistore: Stores in the multistore where the supplier is available.
- Image: The image or logo associated with the supplier.
- Country: Country of the supplier
- Address, city, zip code: Details of the supplier’s address.
- Goals: Data for positioning and supplier meta-tags.
- Active: This indicates whether the supplier is active or not.
The manufacturers
Manufacturer management is similar to supplier management, in fact both data handling and input are very similar. To access the manufacturers, we will use the button “Manufacturers” from the menu on the left.
- Validate changes: This button is used to validate changes we have made directly in the data grid.
- Delete, edit and new: Controls how to add or modify data.
We can create new manufacturers with “New manufacturer” and edit them with “Advanced edition“. In the list the images of the logos are shown, to reload them and take last modifications that have been made, use the button “Reload images”.
The data capture form is similar to the one for suppliers:
- Manufacturer name: The name of the manufacturer.
- Telephone: A contact telephone number
- Description: Long description of the manufacturer in rich text
- Short description: A shorter description
- Multistore: Stores of the multistore in which the manufacturer is available.
- Image: The image or logo associated with the manufacturer
- Country: Manufacturer’s country.
- Address, city, postal code: Details of the manufacturer’s address.
- Goals: Data for positioning and manufacturer’s meta tags.
- Active: This indicates whether the manufacturer is active or not.
The orders to suppliers
In Innovacommerce we have called “orders to suppliers” to all the management of the goods really, that is to say, with this option we will be able to manage the orders to suppliers, but it goes much further, it serves us to do also entrances and exits of goods and transfer between stores and/or warehouses of the same store, it is very powerful and takes into account the type of stock of the products and, in case of using advanced stock, in which warehouse the product is stored. We will call this type of task “goods operations” or simply “orders to suppliers” because it is the most common management task. Let’s analyze its operation carefully.
First of all, it should be noted that the operations have two basic management states, besides their internal states. An operation can be “done” (green cross), which indicates that the stock of that operation has already been inserted, removed or transferred and the only thing we can do with those operations is to check them or print a document, it will not be possible to edit them except for some very specific fields.
The operations with the red cross, are pending to be finished, several reasons can be behind an unfinished operation, but the most usual is that it is incomplete and you want to complete it another time, or it comes from some other branch of your chain of stores and it is pending to be reviewed by the storage team.
Creating a new order for goods movements
We must consider a purchase from a supplier, a return, a departure by decrease or a transfer as a “movement of goods”, this management in innovacommerce is done all from the same window and depending on the management we will make, there will be a workflow or other, we will explain here those “workflows” more usual and how to perform such tasks.
- Workflow: Order from a vendor (the goods have not yet arrived, we want to order from the supplier)
- Step 1 – the introduction of the products we want to order.
We will click on “new operation”
We will see that a small wizard appears, we will click on “Goods receipt or order to supplier”, with this option, the management of “goods receipt” is already active by default on the right side of the window, although we are not going to enter goods yet, but it will be our final goal in this workflow.
At this point, we will give a name to the operation in “Operation reference”, a date for the operation (normally it will be today’s date) and a supplier from whom we are going to order the goods. We can check the box “notify if the product to be added belongs to the supplier” if we want extra security when entering the items.
Before we start introducing the products we want to order, we can take a look at the “advanced options” tab in order to set other parameters for our operation, such as a “note to the supplier” or “an approximate date of receipt”
To add products to the list, we have several ways.
- Through barcodes (automatic and manual mode)
At the top of the list, you have a box called “load by barcode”, this box is intended for reading the barcode of a product, if you know it clearly, this option is useful if the order to supplier is being made in your same warehouse by chopping those products you want to order specifically. If it is in “automatic” mode, a unit of that product will be added to the list. If it is in manual mode, the focus will go to the “units” quadrant and then to the “cost” quadrant so that you can enter the units you want to order and the cost of the agreed product (if it is different from the one in the database)
The check “take cost of parent product” makes the cost price of a combination take the cost price of its parent product, if it is not checked, the cost price will be set to that of the combination. This option is not relevant if we do not use combinations of products.
- Through the button “all supplier products”
This button will add ALL the products from the selected supplier setting 1 unit for each one.
- Upload from file
It is possible to read a CSV file with 2 columns (barcode and units), so we will load the list quickly.
- Load from order
We can indicate a sales order ID to upload the purchase order, this option is useful for stores that for example ask their supplier when they sell their product.
- Upload through the search engine
With the button “add products” we will access the product search engine and add one or more lines as appropriate.
You will notice that the list is filling up, in the column “units” you can make all the modifications you want, this will be the column of units to order and finally they will be the ones processed in the second part of this workflow. If you notice, in the state of the operation is marked “In creation”, the operation must be in this state until we finish the task of entering products in the list to order from the supplier.
It is very important to know that the operation will only be finished if you check the box “execute after saving”, this will make the movements operations to be executed. Selecting the status “finished” in the drop down list, DOES NOT FINISH the trade.
Once you have finished step 1, no matter how many times you have to enter the management of the delivery note, you will change the internal status to “Pending receipt” and you will go to step 2 when you actually receive the goods. In the general operations screen, we have the button “print document” that will be used to send it to the supplier as an “order” or to keep a control on paper of what we are ordering.
- Step 2 – The reception of the goods, matching
In this step we can actually perform such reception on the spot, or set a new status to the operation called “received – pending to match”. Note that these states are only for internal use, is a way to quickly know what state is an operation if there are several people involved in the process, if only one person is involved, you can skip that state and go directly to “in marriage.
The “matching” state makes some new buttons appear and puts the operation in the “matching” state, matching is the verification that what we have received is what we have asked for, no more and no less.
When the operation is in “matching” mode, what we enter through the “load by barcode” box will be copied to the list of ordered products and their units. If we chop something that is not there, we will be notified. We can also manually enter the units received in the column “you received”, when we finish reviewing the products that we have received, we can click on “check” to be advised if there is something to review or not in the introduction of the goods.
The matching alerts us by means of colours those lines that are correct (green) and those that are not (red). And those that remain white are because they have not been read or have not been entered (it could be that they have not come because of a lack of stock at the supplier, for example).
At this point, we must match the column “UDS” with “UDS RECEIVED” to proceed to the third step. In this matching step we can also fill in the actual date of receipt and the supplier’s invoice number, if applicable.
- Step 3, the completion of the operation
Once the merchandise is received and married, the operation is ready to be executed (i.e. that you actually upload the merchandise to our store / warehouse), for this, it is not necessary to choose the status “finished” since innovacommerce selects it automatically when saving the operation with the check “execute after saving” activated. At that time, the operation is carried out and it is saved for later consultations.
- Workflow: Manual entry of stock without previous order to supplier
It is clear that at many times you may need to make a goods receipt manually without having a previous vendor order, in this case, the procedure is identical to the previous Workflow, except that it is not necessary to take into account the states or match the operation. Nor will the selected vendor matter. In these cases, the initial state will be “in creation” while we are creating the operation and once it is finished it will go to “finished”
As in the previous workflow, in the initial mini-assistant, you select “purchase orders to vendor or goods receipt” and then operate as if you were going to order from the vendor. When you finish, activate the check “execute now” and save the operation and it will add the stock to your store / warehouse of destination (the one you selected for management)
- Workflow: Stock removal
The out of stock can be motivated by a return to the supplier or, depending on the activity can be decreases, breakage, expiration or even theft. In any case, it is a “drop” from the stock of our store / warehouse. The procedure is identical to those explained (as far as the introduction of products is concerned), except that this time, we will mark the box “Store of origin (goods issue)
- Workflow: Stock Transfer
In the transfer of stock, both processes come into play. On the one hand, we establish the source warehouse and on the other hand, the destination warehouse, after completing a transfer operation, the stock is deducted from the source warehouse and added to the destination warehouse.
Converting an order to vendor operation into a supported invoice
The operations that have been “ordered from supplier” can be converted into “supported invoice” by clicking the “convert to supported invoice” button in the operation list. At that moment, those operations will be converted to a special status called “Supported invoice generated” and can be consulted in the section billing -> supported invoices.
