Purchasing & Procurement

The Purchasing module handles everything on the buying side of your store: the suppliers you order from, the prices they charge you, the purchase orders you send them, and the goods you receive back. When stock arrives, your inventory and your accounts are both updated automatically.

Purchasing is part of the Business plan. Open it from eCommerce → ERP in your WordPress admin, then choose Purchasing in the sidebar.

note

Purchasing is one of the ERP modules included in the Business plan. See Plans & Features for the full comparison and how to upgrade from Starter.

The module has four tabs — Purchase Orders, Suppliers, Goods Received and Price Lists. A summary strip at the top always shows your total purchase orders, how many are active (sent or partly received), how many are fully received, the total value of your orders, and how many suppliers you're ordering from.

Suppliers

The Suppliers tab is your address book of the companies you buy from. Suppliers are shown as cards you can search and filter by Active or Inactive.

Adding a supplier

1. Go to ERP → Purchasing → Suppliers.
2. Click + New Supplier and fill in:
   • Name and Code — both required. The code is a short, unique reference for the supplier (for example ACME); it's shown next to the name throughout Purchasing.
   • VAT Number, Email, Phone, Contact Person.
   • Address, City, Postal Code, Country (two-letter code, defaults to GR).
   • Payment Terms — free text, such as Net 30 or COD.
   • Notes — any internal reference you want to keep.
   • Active — leave ticked for suppliers you currently order from.
3. Save.

Add an email so purchase orders can be sent

When you send a purchase order, it is emailed to the supplier's email address. Add an email here so your orders go out automatically.

Editing and removing suppliers

Use Edit on any supplier card to update its details. To stop using a supplier without losing its history, edit it and clear Active — it stays on record but drops out of the active list.

You can Delete a supplier only if it has no purchase orders against it. Once a supplier has orders, mark it Inactive instead of deleting, so your purchasing history stays intact.

Price Lists

The Price Lists tab stores the prices each supplier charges you, per product. Keeping prices here means they are filled in for you automatically when you build a purchase order.

Viewing a supplier's prices

1. Go to ERP → Purchasing → Price Lists.
2. Choose a supplier from the dropdown to see their price list.

Each row shows the product and SKU, the purchase price, the minimum quantity the price applies to, the dates it is valid from / until, your current retail price for that product, and the resulting margin. The margin is colour-coded — green for a healthy margin, amber for a slim one, red for very low — so you can spot poor buys at a glance. A price whose valid until date has passed is marked Expired.

Adding a price

1. With a supplier selected, click + New Price.
2. Search for a product by name or SKU and pick it. (Your store's selling price is suggested as a starting figure — change it to the real cost.)
3. Enter the Purchase Price, an optional Min Quantity (defaults to 1), and optional Valid From / Valid Until dates.
4. Click Add Price.

You can also Edit the price and minimum quantity, or Delete an entry, directly from any row.

Prices flow into your purchase orders

When you add a product to a purchase order, its unit cost is filled in automatically from the selected supplier's price list. If there's no supplier price on record, your store's selling price is used as a starting point, which you can override.

Purchase Orders

The Purchase Orders tab is where you create and track the orders you send to suppliers. You can filter the list by status or supplier, or search by PO number.

Creating a purchase order

1. Go to ERP → Purchasing → Purchase Orders and click + New Purchase Order.
2. Choose the Supplier and the Warehouse the goods will be delivered to — both are required.
3. Set the Order Date (defaults to today) and, optionally, an Expected Date for delivery.
4. Add line items: search for each product by name or SKU and add it, then set the quantity, unit cost and VAT %. The unit cost is pre-filled from the supplier's price list where available.
5. The Net, VAT and Total update as you go.
6. Add any Notes, then click Create.

Each order is given a unique PO number automatically.

Purchase order lifecycle

A purchase order moves through these stages:

Draft → Sent → Partial → Received
   ↘ Cancelled ↙

• Draft — created but not yet sent. Only draft orders can be edited or deleted.
• Sent — sent to the supplier. Sending emails the order to the supplier's email address.
• Partial — some, but not all, of the ordered quantity has been received.
• Received — every line has been fully received. The order is complete.
• Cancelled — a draft or sent order you no longer need.

The actions available on each order depend on its stage:

Stage	Available actions
Draft	Edit, Send, Delete
Sent / Partial	Receive, Resend (email the supplier again), Cancel (sent only)
Received / Cancelled	None — the order is closed

Overdue orders are flagged

A sent order whose Expected Date has already passed is shown as Overdue, so late deliveries are easy to spot in the list.

Goods Received

When products arrive, you receive them against their purchase order. This records what actually turned up, raises your stock, and updates your accounts — all in one step.

Receiving goods

1. On the Purchase Orders tab, find the sent (or partly received) order and click Receive.
2. Each line shows the quantity Ordered, already Received, and still Remaining. The Receive Now column is pre-filled with the remaining quantity — the common case where a delivery arrives in full.
3. For a partial delivery, type the actual quantity received on each line. You can't receive more than the remaining amount. Use Receive All Remaining to reset every line back to its full remaining quantity.
4. Add optional delivery notes, then confirm.

When you confirm:

• Stock goes up automatically in the order's warehouse by the quantities received.
• The order becomes Partial if anything is still outstanding, or Received once every line is complete.
• A Goods Received Note (GRN) is created as the record of that delivery.
• Your accounts are posted automatically — the value received is debited to Inventory (with purchase VAT) and credited to the supplier. See Accounting for the full picture.

You can receive against the same order more than once — for example, when a supplier ships in several deliveries. Each delivery adds to the received quantities until the order is complete.

The Goods Received tab

The Goods Received tab lists every goods received note, newest first, with its GRN number, the purchase order and supplier it belongs to, the received date, and the number of items. Click any row to expand it and see exactly which products and quantities were received. You can filter by warehouse or search by GRN or PO number.

note

This page describes WP eCommerce Core 9.8.0. Because the ERP shares your store's database, receiving goods updates your inventory and your accounts at the same time — there is nothing separate to sync.