Daily Operations
Purchase Orders
Core Plan Ultimate PlanPurchase orders in CloudBridal help you track your vendor orders through an intuitive status-based approach.
Contents
- Types of Purchase Orders
- Customer Purchase Orders
- Stock Purchase Orders
- Purchase Order Statuses
- Printing and Sending Purchase Orders
- Viewing Purchase Orders
Types of Purchase Orders
CloudBridal supports two types of purchase orders:
- Customer POs: Orders placed for one or more customer special orders. The PO is linked to their order and any status updates for the PO, such as moving it into the Arrived status will update the linked customer order.
- Stock POs: Orders placed to acquire new or existing inventory.
Customer Purchase Orders
Creating a Customer Purchase Order
- Navigate to the Purchase Orders page
- Click the New Customer Purchase Order button
- Now you can either search by an existing customer's name, or by a vendor if you would like to load all new customer orders for that vendor.
- Select one or more customer orders to include in the PO.
- Fill out any required fields as needed such as the status, notes, cost, etc.
- Create the actual vendor order based on your arrangements with your vendor. This could be through their online portal, via email, etc. Important: CloudBridal does not actually facilitate the vendor order or communicate with your vendor. Recording the PO in CloudBridal is purely used for tracking purposes, and you must actually order the item as required by the vendor.
- Update the PO status in CloudBridal any time something changes with the PO. For example, if the item is delivered to your store, you need to update the PO status in CloudBridal to Arrived.
Stock Purchase Orders
Creating a Stock Purchase Order
- Navigate to the Purchase Orders page
- Click the New Stock Purchase Order button
- Select the vendor that you want to create a stock PO for.
- Enter one or more items that you want to add to the PO.
- Fill out any required fields as needed such as the status, notes, cost, etc.
- Create the actual vendor order based on your arrangements with your vendor. This could be through their online portal, via email, etc. Important: CloudBridal does not actually facilitate the vendor order or communicate with your vendor. Recording the PO in CloudBridal is purely used for tracking purposes, and you must actually order the item as required by the vendor.
- Update the PO status in CloudBridal any time something changes with the PO. For example, if the item is delivered to your store, you need to update the PO status in CloudBridal to Arrived.
- When the order arrives and you move the PO into the Arrived or Partially Arrived status, you will be able to then Receive items in the PO. Receiving an item from a PO will automatically create or update the corresponding inventory item record in CloudBridal for you. That said, you will still need to enter additional details such as the desired retail/sale price of the item.
Label Printing for Received Items from a Stock Purchase Order
When receiving items from a purchase order:
- The label printing dialog will show only the received items
- You can print labels for the newly received inventory items
- This streamlines the process of getting items onto the sales floor
Purchase Order Statuses
Purchase orders follow this typical lifecycle:
- Draft: Initial state, the order has not been placed yet as you are still working on drafting it.
- Ordered: The order has been placed with the vendor.
- Ready to Ship: Order is prepared and ready for the vendor to ship (optional)
- Shipped: Order has been shipped by the vendor (optional)
- Partially Arrived: Some items from the PO have arrived but others are still pending
- Arrived: All items have been received
- Cancelled: The order has been cancelled
Printing and Sending Purchase Orders
After creating a PO, you can:
- Click the Print Purchase Order button
- Choose from:
- Personal Records: Includes customer information and internal details
- Send to Vendor: Excludes customer-specific information. This also allows you to email the PO to the vendor if that is a valid fulfillment method between you and your vendor. Note: When emailing a PO to your vendor, you should be diligent and obtain confirmation from the vendor, and follow-up with them if you do not receive confirmation. You should also not move the PO to Ordered until you receive confirmation.
Viewing Purchase Orders
Purchase orders can be accessed from several places:
- Purchase Orders Page: Orders are grouped by status for easy tracking
- Customer Order: Click the View Purchase Order button on a customer's order
- Vendor Details: Click the purchase order icon in the vendors list
- Inventory Item: Click the PO History button on an item's details page to see its purchase order history broken down by Stock or Customer PO