If you have a multi-store environment but wish to control all purchase ordering from one centralised location, this article will guide you through how you can do this in Cloud POS.

In principle, we will create a demand for the items at the central location by transferring out the stock to the stores that actually need it.  This allows us to generate purchase orders at the central location, based on the need to obtain the stock to fulfil those transfers.

Creating the demand

In this stage of the process, we are going to transfer out stock from the main location to the stores that require those items.  What we are doing at this stage is creating a demand at the main location to order the necessary stock from the suppliers, in order to be able to fulfil the transfer requirements we have created.

In the Cloud POS group we'll use for this example, we have two stores, and we'll use 'Citrus-Lime Cycles' as our main location.  So, this store is where we want to run our purchase ordering and receive stock, for later distribution to the other store.

We are using two stores and a single item for the sake of simplicity, but the same processes can be applied across any number of stores and any quantity of items.

Our Manchester store advises that they need 5 of item 4657RedL to replenish their stock – they've therefore set the minimum restock point for this item to 3, and the maximum restock level to 5. We have no stock of this item within the business, so we'll need to place an order with the supplier.

To create the demand at our main location, we'll create a Transfer Between Stores from the Ulverston store to the Manchester store, using the Inventory-Based Restock transfer type.  Here is how we'd set this up:

Note the section highlighted in the screenshot above. By deselecting the box marked Only transfer when sufficient stock is available, we will create the demand at the Ulverston store to order the necessary items.

We can then click on Create Transfer(s), check that the suggested quantities will meet the needs of the Manchester store, and mark the transfer as placed:

In a regular Transfer Between Stores of stock which we physically held, we would go to Goods Out and send the stock to the store.  However, we currently have no stock of the item to send. In simple terms, at this point, the Ulverston store now 'owes' the Manchester store 5 units of item 4657RedL.

Ordering the Goods

Now that we've created the demand for the goods at the Ulverston store, we need to order them from the supplier.  We do this from the Purchase Orders section in the Back Office.

Firstly, we create a new purchase order and select the Ulverston store as the store we are purchasing for.  Next, we set the supplier from whom we'll purchase the goods.

The next step is to set the type of purchase order we want to create.  Here, we can select either the Inventory-Based or the Customer-Specific options:

On the Allocations & Item Restrictions tab, there are some further options we can select. What we choose here will depend on the individual circumstances of the order we need to make. In this example, we are instructing the platform to disregard whether the items are already included on any other open purchase orders we might already have:

Once we've clicked to create the purchase order, we can then review the items that the platform has calculated we need to order from the supplier, based on our customer requirements.  In the process we're following here, the Manchester store is effectively the customer of the Ulverston store.

In the example above, we can see that Cloud POS has calculated that we need to order 5 of item 4657RedL from this supplier.  If we click the ‘?’ icon next to the Quantity, we are shown the reason that the item has been added to the order:

We are now in a position to mark the purchase order as placed and request the goods from the supplier.

Receiving the Goods (Part 1)

When the supplier sends us the goods we ordered, we need to book them into stock in Cloud POS.  This is done at Goods In, and we'll find that because we marked the purchase order as placed, there is already a corresponding entry for our order in the Goods In list:

We can then open the Purchase Order to enter the quantity for the stock the supplier has sent, check our cost for the items and update this if necessary, then commit the stock:

In doing this, we've now booked the stock into our Ulverston store, so the next step is to send the stock to the Manchester store, which we do at the Goods Out stage.

Transferring the Goods

When we originally created the Transfer Between Stores of the goods from Ulverston to Manchester, this process will have automatically generated an entry in the Goods Out section of the Back Office.  Now that we have the goods in stock at Ulverston, we can send the stock to Manchester:

After setting the Units Sent column to match the item quantity, clicking Commit Stock will issue the goods to the Manchester store:

Receiving the Goods (Part 2)

The final stage in the process is for the receiving store (Manchester) to book the goods into stock.  Here, we go back to the Goods In section of the Back Office:

In effect, we are repeating the process we carried out when we received the goods from the supplier to the Ulverston store – set the received quantity and commit the stock.

We'll now see the stock quantity update for the Manchester store:

Summary

By following this procedure, we've enabled purchase ordering to be centralised, by creating a two-tier ordering system that creates the requirement for the item at individual store level, and the means to fulfil this requirement from our main location.