Managing purchases

The Purchase app covers the whole supply cycle: consulting vendors, ordering, receiving, checking and paying bills. It works together with Inventory for stock movements and with Accounting for the journal entries.

Configuring purchases

General settings

1. Open Purchase › Configuration › Settings.
2. Set the options according to your internal procedures: - Lock Confirmed Orders: prevents any modification after confirmation; - Receipt Reminder: automatically follows vendors up before the expected date; - Purchase Agreements: lets you consult several vendors for the same need and formalise negotiated conditions over a period; - Warnings: displays a message when entering an order for a given vendor or product; - Purchase Order Approval: sends orders above a Minimum Amount for approval.
3. Save.

The Logistics block gathers two options that connect purchases to sales. It only appears if the Sales app is installed.

Replenishing on order

The Replenish on Order (MTO) option triggers supply when a sales order is confirmed, rather than by rebuilding stock. Each sale directly generates the operation matching it, and the documents stay linked to one another.

It suits items that would be costly or pointless to stock: made-to-measure products, expensive references, slow-moving or perishable items.

Direct delivery by the vendor

The Dropshipping option has the goods shipped from the vendor to the customer, without passing through your warehouses. When a sales order is confirmed, Odoo draws up a request for quotation whose delivery address is the customer's.

Like the previous one, it then applies product by product. It also combines with it: direct delivery is a particular way of replenishing on order.

Bill control policy

It determines the quantity Odoo carries over onto the vendor bill: the one that was ordered, or the one that was actually received.

This setting is not made in the app settings but on each product, in the Purchase tab of its record, through the Control Policy field:

• On ordered quantities: the bill takes the quantity from the purchase order, whether the goods have arrived or not;
• On received quantities: the bill only takes what has been received.

What makes a contact a vendor

Odoo has no "is a vendor" box and no "is a customer" box. A single contact serves both roles, and nothing prevents it from holding both: a carrier who invoices you may buy your written-off equipment.

The distinction rests on two counters carried by the record: the supplier rank and the customer rank. The Purchase › Orders › Vendors menu does not display a category of contacts, it filters those whose supplier rank is greater than zero. The customers menu does the same with the other counter.

These really are counters, not indicators: a vendor you have worked with for years carries a high rank, an occasional vendor a rank of one. Odoo uses them to offer the most frequently used partners first.

Entering the vendor's conditions

1. Open Purchase › Orders › Vendors or the Contacts app.
2. Open the vendor's record.
3. In the Sales & Purchase tab, Purchase column, fill in: - the Buyer in charge of the account, carried over by default onto orders; - the Payment Terms applicable to the bills received; - the usual Payment Method; - the Supplier Currency if it differs from the company's; - the Receipt Reminder and the number of Days Before Receipt, to follow up automatically ahead of the expected date.
4. Save.

Grouping requests for quotation

The Group RFQ field determines whether several needs addressed to the same vendor give rise to a single document or to separate documents:

Value	Effect
On Order	Needs are grouped, except those coming from a replenishment on order, which stay linked to their sale.
Daily	Groups the needs whose arrival is expected on the same day.
Weekly	Groups by week. A Week Day field sets the reference day.
Always	A single document, whatever the expected dates.

Measuring punctuality

The On-time Rate smart button on the vendor record shows the share of quantities received on the promised date, over the last twelve months.

Linking vendors to products

1. Open the product record.
2. Select the Purchase tab.
3. Click Add a line and fill in, for each vendor: - the vendor's name; - the negotiated price and the currency; - the minimum order quantity; - the delivery lead time; - the product's reference at that vendor.
4. Save.

Ordering

Creating a request for quotation

1. Open Purchase › Orders › Requests for Quotation.
2. Click New.
3. Select the Vendor: their payment terms apply automatically.
4. Check the Expected Arrival date.
5. Add the products, line by line, with the quantities wanted. The price and the lead time come from the product record when the vendor is referenced on it.
6. Save.
7. Click Send RFQ to send the request to the vendor.

Having the quantities to order computed

Rather than entering the quantities by hand, Odoo can propose them from the consumption observed over a reference period. The method suits regular purchases whose demand is relatively stable: consumables, standard components, everyday materials.

1. Create a request for quotation and select the vendor.
2. Click the Catalog button, below the order lines.
3. In the side panel, enable Suggest and set the three parameters: - Replenish for: the number of days of consumption to be covered; - Based on: the reference period: Forecasted, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 3 months, Last 12 months, Same month last year or the matching quarter of the previous year; - the correction factor, expressed as a percentage: 100 to carry forward the observed consumption, 120 to anticipate a 20% increase.
4. Odoo displays the suggested quantity for each product in that vendor's catalogue.
5. Adjust the quantities if necessary, then close the catalogue: the lines are carried over onto the request for quotation.

Confirming the order

1. Open the request for quotation.
2. Adjust the prices and lead times according to the vendor's reply.
3. Click Confirm Order.

The request becomes a purchase order. A receipt is automatically created in Inventory, reachable through the Receipt smart button.

Receiving

Validating a full receipt

1. From the purchase order, click the Receipt button.
2. Check the products and the quantities announced.
3. Click Validate.

The quantities enter stock and the purchase order moves to the received status.

Handling a partial receipt

1. Open the receipt.
2. In the quantities column, enter what was actually delivered.
3. Click Validate.
4. In the window offered, choose to create a backorder.

Odoo generates a second receipt carrying the missing quantities, which stays pending until the follow-up delivery.

Checking and paying vendor bills

Uploading the bill received

The bill starts from the document sent by the vendor, not from a blank draft.

1. Open the confirmed purchase order.
2. Click Upload Bill and select the file received: PDF or image.
3. Odoo creates a draft bill taking the lines from the order, with the vendor's document attached to the record.
4. Fill in the Bill Reference (the number carried by the vendor's document) and check the Bill Date as well as the Due Date computed.
5. Compare prices and quantities line by line against the attached document.
6. Click Confirm.

Entering a bill without a digital document

When the bill arrives through another channel, or covers several orders at once:

1. Open Accounting › Vendors › Bills and click New.
2. Designate the vendor.
3. In the Auto-Complete field, choose the purchase order to be taken over. The lines fill in on their own.
4. Repeat the operation to attach a second order to the same bill.

Recording the payment

1. Open the vendor bill, in the Posted state.
2. Click Pay.
3. Fill in the amount, the Payment Date, the bank Journal and the Payment Method.
4. Click Create Payment.

The Amount Due shown at the foot of the bill follows the payments recorded: it falls to zero once the bill is settled.

To settle several bills from the same vendor in a single operation, go through Accounting › Vendors › Payments.

Automating replenishment

The replenishment screen

Inventory › Operations › Procurement › Replenishment brings together everything that is missing: the products whose forecast stock is insufficient, and the quantity that would have to be ordered to put that right.

Each line shows the On Hand stock, the Forecast taking current orders into account, the Min and Max thresholds if any exist, and the To Order quantity computed.

The Horizon field in the side panel sets the depth of the analysis: at three hundred and sixty-five days, the screen takes into account every known need of the year; reduced to thirty days, it shows only the immediate urgency.

Handling a line

Three actions sit at the end of each line, and act on that line only.

Action	Effect
Order	Launches supply for that line only: a request for quotation if the product is bought, a manufacturing order if it is produced. The line disappears from the screen, the need being covered.
Automate	Turns this one-off need into a permanent rule, then launches supply. The product will from then on be monitored continuously, without going through this screen again.
Snooze	Hides the line until a chosen date. The need is not handled, merely set aside from the list, useful for a product whose replenishment you know is already under way elsewhere.

Setting a permanent rule

A product with regular consumption is better monitored continuously than examined on each visit to the replenishment screen.

1. Open Inventory › Operations › Procurement › Replenishment.
2. Click New.
3. Fill in: - the product concerned; - the Min threshold, below which replenishment is triggered; - the Max level, to be reached when replenishing.
4. Display the Trigger column using the column selector, to the right of the table header: it is hidden by default.
5. Switch the trigger from Manual to Auto.
6. Save.

Analysing purchases

Analysis report

This is the purchase analysis tool, available on any database where the app is installed.

1. Open Purchase › Reporting › Purchase.
2. Cross the data by vendor, product, category or period, using Group By.
3. Switch between graph view, pivot view and list view as needed.

The measures available cover the amount purchased, the quantities ordered and received, the confirmation lead time and the receipt lead time. Crossed with a grouping by vendor, they give the most useful reading: who weighs most in spending, and who keeps to their lead times.

Indicators to follow

• Average delivery lead time per vendor and adherence to the lead times announced.
• Gap between the negotiated price and the price billed.
• Purchase concentration: share of spending made with the main vendors.
• Delivery conformity rate.

Subcontracting an operation

When all or part of a manufacturing operation is entrusted to a third party, subcontracting combines the Purchase, Inventory and Manufacturing apps: the components are sent to the subcontractor, the transformed product is received like an ordinary purchase. The full implementation is described in chapitre 17.

Good practice