When you're working on Purchase Orders, you may find that you've started creating one based on your sales within a certain period, and then think that you might as well look at any open customer orders while you're here. Or you might already be looking to fulfil customer orders, but you also want to top up your inventory levels according to your reorder points.

With the new Add Items from Recommendations feature, you can combine the different types of Purchase Order that you might want to create into one comprehensive Purchase Order for that supplier.

Creating a list of recommended items

To find this option, look for the Actions button:

N.B. This panel can be collapsed, and it can be moved around the screen (although it's usually at the bottom). If you can't find the Actions button, look for a small menu like the one below and click on the arrow to expand it:

Click on Add Items from Recommendations:

This will bring up a pop-up, where you can choose the type of recommendations you'd like to use:

What are my options?

You can choose from:

• Inventory-Based Restock – this will suggest lines based on your reorder levels, including any items on customer orders.
• Customer-Specific – this will look at all customer orders and suggest any items that need stock to fulfil those orders.
• Sales-Based – this will suggest lines for all items from this supplier that have sold between the dates that you choose:

• View All Customer Order Requirements – this will look at all customer orders for items with no available stock. If any of those items are available from this supplier, you can then add them to this Purchase Order.

Once you've chosen the criteria you want to use, click Generate to produce a list of suggestions. If there aren't any items that fit the criteria, you'll see a message like this:

If there are items that fit the criteria, you'll see a list of suggestions looking something like this:

You can untick any items that you don't want to add to this Purchase Order using the tickboxes on the left.  You can also use the On Other Orders column see if these items are already on other Purchase Orders, or the Quantity Committed at Store column to see if any stock is currently committed at the store.

Once you're happy with the suggestions (remember that you can adjust the quantity of each item after you've added them), you can click Add Items to Purchase Order. Or if you don't want to use any of these suggestions, just click on the cross in the top right to clear them.