View PDF flowchart of full purchase order workflow.
Before you can start building out purchase orders, we need to get your catalog data synced from your Lightspeed Retail account into your Enhanced PO app. The data the app pulls includes Shops, Vendors, Products, Tags, Brands, and Categories. For details on preparing your Retail data and the first sync, checkout the "Setup" steps of this guide.
To complete the initial sync of data, after you login to your Enhanced PO account, simply click the "Sync All" button offered in the Dashboard view. This will immediately begin to pull in the necessary data from your Retail account. Depending on the size of your Retail catalog, the initial data sync can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. Once the sync completes, and you've finished the other setup steps necessary to fully utilize your Enhanced PO account, you can begin creating purchase orders!
Now that you have all your data pulled in from your Retail account and you've completed the basic setup steps in your Enhanced PO account, you can start generating POs!
To begin, navigate to the "Drafts" PO list, and from there you have two methods for starting a new PO: 1) Create a PO from scratch using the app interface, or 2) import a spreadsheet of items to kickstart a new PO.
Creating a PO within the app interface is simple as clicking the "Create PO" button at the top of the Drafts list. This will present you with the needed fields to start a new PO, including:
...along with some more standard fields you'd expect for building out a purchase order (Expected Date, Reference Number, etc.). After you've filled in any required fields, click "Proceed" to start adding items to your new purchase order.
If you choose to import items you'd like to start the PO with, checkout the section in this guide for Importing PO items via CSV which will provide you with the rules and required formatting for the spreadsheet. Once you've built out the spreadsheet, click the "Import" button above the Drafts list, select the spreadsheet file to upload and proceed. Once the import file is validated and uploaded, a new PO will be generated for you in the Drafts list. You can click to edit this new PO to manage required fields that need to be filled out and to add/adjust any items on the PO.
Once you're happy with the draft PO you've built, you can send it to your vendor...
Enhanced PO offers two methods for sending orders to your vendors: Email or FTP/SFTP.
If using email, an email will be generated and sent to your vendor's email address with the PO contents in the email body and a CSV version of the PO attached to the email.
If sending via FTP or SFTP, a CSV version of your order will be uploaded to your vendors FTP server.
To send a draft PO, you can either have the app "Send Now" - in which case the app will immediately email or upload the order to your vendor - or you can choose to "Send to Queue". The PO queue allows you to build a list of orders that will be automatically sent at a particular interval (e.g. once a day, every other day, once week), so you can start an order for a vendor, queue it to send, and if you find you need to add to it before it sends, you can do so.
When your order is sent from Enhanced PO to your vendor, the app will also generate an identical PO in your Lightspeed Retail account AND inventory transfers (if needed) to move inventory from the shop you receive the PO at to the specific shops you ordered items for!
When you receive a shipment from a vendor for an order you sent via your Enhanced PO account, you can manage receipt of that shipment by locating the matching order in the "Sent/Receiving" list and clicking the "Receive" button. This will open the order up in the receiving screen, allowing you to indicate how much of each item was received in the shipment. When you've completed marking the received amounts from the shipment, click the "Receive" button to update both the status of the PO in the app AND the matching PO that was created in Lightspeed Retail.
As is often the case, when you receive a partial shipment from a vendor (i.e. only containing some of the items from the order you placed), after clicking "Receive" in the app, the PO's status will be updated to "Partially Received". Once you received all the items from an order, you can following the previously outlined steps (enter amounts received and click Receive button) or simply click the "Received All" button. This will mark the order as fully received in the app, moving it to the Received orders list.
Now that you've fully received an order, you'll want to login to your Lightspeed Retail account (Enhanced PO will provide a URL link to the order in your Retail admin) to ensure the items have been added to inventory and that the order is marked as "Finished". Once marked as finished in Retail, the app will ensure any inventory transfers that were created are sent (so items intended for other shops are transfered to those shops).
And that's it, you've completed the PO workflow! Of course, there are many more details to learn about and settings you can utilize to increase flexibility of your workflow, all of which we'll cover in this guide. We are also available to customize the app if you have unique needs, just reach out and let us know!