Orders and the customer's LPO

The Orders page

Procurement › Orders has two parts. Needs attention lists what is waiting on somebody, most urgent first — a quotation about to lapse, an LPO to chase, an order short of stock nobody has ordered, a supplier LPO waiting for approval or late, a delivery order not signed for, a draft invoice not issued — each as one sentence that opens the record it is about. All orders lists every order.

• Filter with Open, Enquiries, Quoted, Confirmed, Closed, Lost, Cancelled or All, and search by the order number, the customer's LPO number, what it is for, the site or the customer's name — or by the order's value: type 1,250 to find orders worth exactly that, VAT included.
• The list is Newest enquiry first. Sort gives Oldest enquiry first, Largest amount first, Smallest amount first, or the order number either way.
• Stage is where the order has got to commercially. Progress, once it is confirmed, says whether it is bought — In stock, To buy, Part bought, Bought — and whether it is delivered — Not delivered, Part delivered, Delivered.
• Value is at selling prices with VAT: the quotation's until the customer confirms, their LPO's after. Est. margin appears only for people who may see costs.
• Export downloads the orders as a spreadsheet (CSV), with the estimated cost and margin only for people who may see costs.

Register an enquiry

The order page

Open an order from the list. Next: at the top says in one sentence what happens now, with a button that takes you to where it is done — Prepare the quotation, Record the customer's LPO, Reserve stock or buy, Prepare a delivery order, Get it signed, Prepare the invoice, Record the payment, Close the order. When the step is done on another record — a delivery order to dispatch or get signed, the one supplier LPO to receive against — the button opens that record; otherwise it opens the step and lands on the button that does it. Below it, six steps show what is done, what is current and what is waiting: Enquiry, Quotation, Customer LPO, Stock and buying, Delivery orders, Invoice and payment. Press a step to open it. All of it is worked out from the records, so it cannot be out of date.

Procurement's pages keep themselves up to date. A delivery order signed on the customer's phone, prices a supplier sends from their link, goods a colleague receives, an invoice issued or a cheque cleared in Accounting — each shows on the page you have open within a few seconds, without reloading. A quotation you are in the middle of changing is not overwritten: if somebody else saves it meanwhile, the page says so and offers their version.

• Beside the steps: Order value (as quoted) — the same rows as its quotation: Subtotal, Discount when there is one on the whole quotation, Before VAT, VAT and Total — or (as confirmed) once the customer's LPO is in, with Before VAT, VAT and Total. A company that does not charge VAT sees no VAT rows. For people who may see costs, Estimated cost and Estimated margin, with what they are built on. Then the order's Delivery orders, and What happened — everything done to the order, by whom and when.
• Warnings above the steps name what to fix before it matters: a quotation line with no VAT code, a customer on hold in Accounting, a customer with no TRN on file (or one that is not 15 digits) for a VAT-registered company, and an estimated margin below the lowest your company set.
• The Enquiry step shows who asked, when and for what. Edit changes What it is for, the Site, Address, Who receives it, Their phone, Needed by, Their reference and Internal notes (never printed) — and the lines themselves while it is an enquiry with no quotation. Once the quotation exists, the lines are changed on the quotation and the order follows it, so there is never a second copy to keep in step. Papers go under Enquiry papers.
• Files are kept as a PDF or a photograph (JPEG, PNG, WebP or HEIC) up to 15 MB. On a phone, Attach offers the camera.

The customer can be changed only on an enquiry nobody has quoted yet; for a different customer, start a new order.

The quotation

When the customer answers, press Customer accepted or Customer declined; Undo the answer takes it back. Accepting does not confirm the order — the customer's LPO does. After a decline, revise the quotation or mark the enquiry lost. Revise starts the next revision of an issued quotation, and the order follows the new one. Each email sent is listed under the quotation, with whether it went.

Units on a line

An item can be sold in more than one unit — by the piece or by the box of 12, say — once its units are set up on Stock (see Stock). A line for such an item has a unit to choose, and its price follows the unit: the box's own selling price if it has one, otherwise the piece price times 12. Change a line's unit and it is priced again in the new unit. Stock is always counted in the item's own unit, so a line for 3 boxes sets aside 36 pieces. A line with no catalogue item keeps a unit you type, which is just a word on the documents.

Prices, costs and margins

A line nobody types a price on is priced for you, from what it costs at a margin, when its cost is known — its average cost in stock, a supplier's price or quotation, or its buying price. The margin is, most specific first: the order's own target; a target typed on the item; the margin the item's own buying and selling price make; your company's default. An item bought for 8.00 and sold for 12.50 makes 36%, so it sells for 12.50 whenever it costs 8.00 — and for 10.94 when a supplier quotes 7.00. With no cost, or no margin from any of these, a line takes the catalogue price for its unit. Each line says where its price came from: Catalogue price, From cost + margin, Typed, or As quoted. A price you type stays yours.

• Your company chooses how margins are typed: as a margin — profit as a share of the selling price, what an accountant means — or as a markup — profit as a share of the cost, “20% on top”. A 20% margin on a cost of 8.00 is 10.00; a 25% markup on the same cost is also 10.00.
• A margin is what a line makes after its discount, a discount on the whole quotation included: a line priced to 20% makes 20% once the discount is off.
• People who may see costs see the Pricing and margin panel on the order: each line's Cost each and where it comes from, Price each, discount, margin and Profit, what the line is priced to and why, and the whole order's margin and profit.
• Add margin puts that many points more on every line whose cost is known — a line at 20% goes to 25% for 5 — and names any line with no cost, which keeps its price. A minus takes margin off.
• Price lines to target prices every line whose cost is known to the order's own target, typed beside it — or, left empty, each item's own margin, else the company's default — and names any line it could not price, with the reason. While the quotation is a draft its prices change too; once it is issued, revise it first.
• A confirmed order's prices are the customer's LPO and never change; the panel still shows what the order makes.

Ask suppliers for prices

Ask suppliers for prices on the order starts a request for quotation from its goods lines: on an enquiry, to learn what the goods will really cost before you quote the customer; on a confirmed order, for what it is still short of. Choose the suppliers, which lines if not all, and when you need their answers by. The request opens under Supplier quotes (see Supplier quotations). When you choose a supplier there, the order's lines take that supplier's price as their cost and that supplier as the one to buy from, and lines priced to a target margin are priced again while the quotation is still a draft. The order lists its requests under Supplier quotes. Once the customer confirms, the order's Stock and buying step carries on from the request rather than asking again (below).

Record the customer's LPO

The customer's LPO — not the quotation, and not Customer accepted — is what turns the order into a contract.

The order is now Confirmed, and the step shows which LPO confirmed it. The LPO's quantities and prices are the contract: they are what is delivered and invoiced from now on. Where the LPO differs from the quotation, Different from the quotation lists each line that changed, with the quotation's figure and the LPO's — a quantity of 100 that became 80, say — so nobody has to compare two PDFs. An issued quotation is marked accepted at the same moment.

• The customer's LPO number becomes the reference on every invoice for the order.
• The same LPO number already on another of the customer's orders (other than a lost or cancelled one) is refused, in case it was entered twice. If it really is a second order on one LPO, press It is a second order on the same LPO — confirm anyway.

The credit check

Your company decides whether credit is checked, when — as the customer's LPO is recorded, as the goods leave, or both; as the goods leave is the default — and whether a problem warns or blocks. The check adds up Owed now (from the books), Draft invoices, goods Delivered, not yet invoiced, Other confirmed orders if your company counts them, and This order, into Total if it goes ahead.

It has something to say when that total goes over the customer's Credit limit (set under Customers), when the customer is on hold, or when they have an invoice overdue for longer than your company allows. Cheques in hand (not yet money) are shown beside the figures and never subtracted: until the bank pays, the customer still owes the money. On the Customer LPO step, any problem is shown before you confirm.

Stock and buying for the order

As the order is confirmed, whatever is free in stock is set aside (reserved) for it — so no other order can take it — from the line's location or your default location. Your company can switch that off under Procurement setup. Services, and lines with no catalogue item, never hold stock.

The Stock and buying step shows, for each line, To deliver, Set aside, Coming (on supplier LPOs), Short and In stock where. Set aside what is in stock reserves anything that has come free since. What is still short is listed under Still to buy, grouped by supplier, each with Raise a supplier LPO (see Supplier LPOs and goods received); somebody who does not buy is told a buyer raises them. Supplier LPOs for this order shows each one and whether it has arrived. Goods received from a supplier for this order are set aside for it the moment they arrive.

A request for quotation made while it was an enquiry carries on here. Supplier quotations for this order says where each request has got to — prices still coming, prices in and nobody chosen yet (Compare and choose), or chosen. A supplier chosen on one heads their group under Still to buy — Chosen on RFQ-00001 — and Raise the LPO at the quoted prices starts it at the prices and units they quoted. A line still being asked about says Asked on RFQ-00001 · nobody chosen yet. The LPO opens as a draft you can add to: more of an item for stock, or anything else from the same supplier.

Lost, cancelled and closed

None of these posts anything. An invoice already issued for the order stays under Invoices and is corrected there, with a credit note or a void, like any other invoice.

Example