Inventory Planner allows you to create purchase orders for your suppliers/vendors based on replenishment suggestions. If you use an inventory management system (such as Skubana, QuickBooks Commerce, Linnworks, etc.), Inventory Planner can also synchronize purchase orders with that platform.
Workflow
A typical purchase order workflow consists of the following actions:
Creating a new purchase order from the Replenishment view or Stock Orders list, adding items to it, and saving it
(Optional) Saving a purchase order to your inventory management system. If you save a purchase order to an IMS, you will make any further adjustments and receive the order there, not in Inventory Planner.
Downloading the purchase order, or emailing the purchase order to your supplier
Receiving items (fully or in part) as they arrive, either manually, by importing a file, or by scanning barcodes
Closing the purchase order once it has been fully processed
Any changes to a purchase order will update the “on order” quantities and replenishment suggestions for any corresponding variants.
Integrating with a sales platform
If you use an ecommerce system that doesn’t provide full-featured purchase orders (for example, Shopify, BigCommerce or Magento), you can choose to increase stock in that system after receiving items in Inventory Planner.
Integrating with an inventory management system
Inventory Planner integrates with purchase order functionality in inventory management systems when available. After creating a purchase order in Inventory Planner, you can choose to push it to a connected inventory management system by clicking the “Save” button at the bottom.
Any further updates to the purchase order, including receiving items, must then be done in the inventory management system. If a change is made to the purchase order in the inventory management system, it will be reflected in Inventory Planner following the next sync.
Frequently Asked Questions
My inventory management system is set up to push and pull purchase order information, but when does the sync occur?
When you create a new purchase order in Inventory Planner, an option to push it to your IMS will appear immediately. That action should be more-or-less instant.
The purchase order should then be managed entirely in the IMS. Inventory Planner will automatically sync changes from the IMS on a nightly basis, or sooner if a full sync is triggered manually.