Ordering by the box

You count in pieces, but you buy in boxes. Reorder Alerts and Purchase Orders let you order in whole boxes while the app keeps the piece maths straight.

Reorder alerts

Inventory → Reorder Alerts lists every item at or below its Minimum for the shop you pick. Tick Include low stock to also show items that are low but not yet at the reorder point. When nothing needs attention the page says "All items are above their reorder point."

Each row shows the item, its status, On Hand, Min, Ideal, Suggested (pieces to get back to Ideal), an Order column, the vendor, Cost/Pack and when it was Last Ordered ("Never" if it has not been).

The Order column

What you see depends on the item's setup:

• An item that comes in boxes gets a Boxes input. It is pre-filled with enough whole boxes to cover the suggested pieces — never fewer than one. Underneath is the equivalence line, which updates as you type:

  3 boxes = 30 packs = 600 pieces · $80.00/box
  

  The packs term is left out for an item with no pack tier ("2 boxes = 100 pieces"). The cost per box is packs per box × the cost per pack from the item's setup.

• An item that does not come in boxes shows plain text — "4 packs" — with no input.

Boxes must be a whole number. Type "1.5" and the line turns red: "Whole numbers only". The list will not be created until it is fixed ("Enter a whole number of boxes for …").

Tick the items you want, then press Create List (3). You will see "Shopping list created with 3 items" and land on Purchase Orders.

Purchase orders

Inventory → Orders is where shopping lists live. Filter by shop and by status. A list is created in one of two ways:

• from Reorder Alerts, as above; or
• with Generate from Low Stock, which builds a list from everything currently low. If nothing is low you will see "Nothing is low on stock — no list created".

A list is in exactly one of three states:

Expand a list to see its lines grouped by vendor, each with Boxes, Packs, Pcs/Pack, Cost/Pack, a Line Total (packs × cost per pack) and whether it has been Received.

On a DRAFT list, the Boxes cell is an input with the same equivalence line underneath. It saves when you press Enter or click away. Once a list is past DRAFT the boxes are shown read-only, using the packs-per-box that applied when the order was placed — so the order still reads correctly if you later change the item's setup.

What receiving does

Press Receive All on an ORDERED list. You will see "Received 5 lines into stock" (or "Nothing left to receive on this order" if it had already been received).

Receiving:

• adds the pieces to each item's on-hand figure — packs ordered × pieces per pack, using the pack size on the order line;
• records a RESTOCK entry in the item's history, noted "Received from shopping list: …";
• updates the item's cost per pack to the price on the line, if the line had one;
• marks the list RECEIVED once every line is in.

Receiving never changes an item's packaging. The number of packs in a box and pieces in a pack are the item's definition; an order is a measurement against it. If an order was typed with the wrong pack size, the stock still lands using that line's size, but the item itself is untouched — fix the item through Edit setup on the master list.

Deliveries received this way are also what the Usage screen adds back, so a restock never reads as consumption.

Vendors

Inventory → Vendors holds your supplier contacts — name, contact, phone, email, website, an account reference ("Account number or label only — never store passwords."), what they are best for, and notes. Vendors are shared across the whole account rather than per shop, and only shop management roles can open the page. Set an item's vendor on its setup card; purchase orders group lines by vendor.

Related

• Inventory: boxes, packs and pieces
• Counting stock and reading usage