Introduction to Purchases

Objectives

Once you've completed this tutorial, you'll be able to:

✔ Add a purchase for a material

✔ Choose the correct unit for new quantities of stock

✔ Mark an purchase as received

✔ Increase your material stock on hand

This tutorial should take approximately 15 mins to complete.

What are Purchases?

Purchases (or Purchase Orders - POs) are the record of purchasing your materials. They are the mechanism you'll want to use whenever you buy raw materials and want to add them to your inventory.

By adding purchases, you'll be able to automatically increase your material stock levels and track your exact unit costs.

Adding new Purchases

For this tutorial, we will assume that the material already exists, so the guide below will take you through the process to restock a quantity of a material.

To get to your new purchase form, the fastest way is to click on your + menu option in the top navigation bar and select the "Add Purchase" menu option. This option is best if you have many different materials to enter from the same purchase.

Alternatively, to have an purchase already populated with the material you wish to add to your inventory you can navigate to your material's detail page, then click on the  Purchases tab and then the + Add Purchase button.

Now that we are on the purchase form page, let's take a closer look:

The first field, Purchase Date,  is for the date that you purchased the items. You can either type a date here, or select from the calendar view.

The next field, Code, is an optional field that you can use for any numbers or codes that help you to identify the purchase. This can be the code that the vendor provided to you, or can be your own. You can search via this code in your lists so it can be a good way to quickly locate your purchases.

Crafybase will automatically number your purchases for you if you don't enter anything in this field.

The Vendor field is for adding information about the company you purchased your material from. This is an optional field, but it is useful for keeping complete purchase histories from your vendors. You can either use the search box to search through your existing vendors, or create a new vendor on this page by clicking the New Vendor link to the right of the box.

From here, let's move on to the purchases items section of the form where you will enter your materials. Select the Add Purchase Item button here and you will see a new window open. This is the Add Expense Item form: lets go through the fields on this page in a little more detail:

The Category selection allows you to select the category for this particular purchase item. An purchase can have many different line items and each line item can have a different category if required.

You'll notice that the Materials option has been pre-selected for you: this is the category you will use for any material purchases. If you wish to rename this category to better represent the way you categorize your material expenditure you can do so at any time via your settings pages.

The Material category is the only one that will allow you to link directly to a material - if you switch this category to a different one, you'll notice that the material search box will disappear and other fields will appear.

The next field is to link a Material in your inventory to this purchase item: this is a search-enabled box that allows you to find any Material in your list. If you have navigated to this page via a material page, you'll see that it will have been prepopulated for you with the material you wish to add an expense for. Otherwise, it will be blank ready for you to search to find a material that already exists in your material list.

If you need to add a new material (i.e. this is the first time you have purchased this material) then click the Add new material link to the right of the search box - this will load the new material form for you to add your details and then shift back to your purchase, without losing any of the details you have added so far.

Now onward to the Quantity and Cost fields. These allow you to define exactly how many you purchased of this item and how we should increase your inventory levels from this purchase.

If you have defined a Purchase Quantity for the Material, you will notice that you will see an extra box called Purchase Quantity here (if you don't see this, you might like to go back and add in a Purchase Quantity and Multiplier first).

You don't need this, but it can be a convenient shortcut if you purchase in different units to the ones you manufacture in. The Purchase Quantity field essentially allows you to enter in the quantity in the purchase quantities you have defined - when you change this quantity, you'll see that the Tracking Qty box will update with the correct unit quantity you will be increasing.

You can choose to ignore the Purchase Quantity and instead enter the Tracking Quantity in directly if you have this information at the ready - in this case, your purchase quantity will adjust accordingly for you.

Your Unit Cost is the amount it costs to purchase a single unit in the tracking unit you have defined. Remember: this is not the purchase unit price. When you adjust the unit cost, you'll see that your Total Cost will be calculated automatically for you. Likewise, if you change the Total Cost you'll see that your Unit Cost will be recalculated. This gives you a huge amount of flexibility to enter in your purchases in a variety of different units and prices.

The next section immediately below your quantity and costs is your restocking advice: this shows you the total quantity that will be restocked into your inventory and how it will change your curerent stock on hand. You can choose to unselect the Received? checkbox: if the item is still on order, then uncheck this box and your stock will not yet be increased.

When you receive the item, edit the expense and then mark it as received, and your stock will be increased. If you toggle this checkbox, you'll see this in action - the New Stock on Hand will recalculate to include and exclude the current expense quantity.

Finally, you'll see a small field for adding any notes you wish about the line item itself. Enter any notes you want to keep here, then click the Add Purchase Item button to move this item into your Expense form.

You'll now see that you have an item under the Purchase Items section with the details you have just filled out. You can make any last-minute adjustments here if you like, or add another line item by clicking the Add Purchase Item button.

Now that we have our purchase entered, let's move to the totals area.

The first row is your Item Total and is calculated from all items within the purchase. As we only have the one item in this purchase, this will be the same as the item total. If you have multiple items in the purchase, it will be the sum of all line item totals.

Next is a Discount textbox to enter any savings you have been given for this particular purchase. This will be removed from your grand total and will be proportionally calculated for each of the items in your purchase.

Tax and Shipping are on the following rows, and like the Discount field above they are proportionally calculated onto every purchase line item. Tax and Shipping are added to your purchase total.

The last row shows the Grand Total which is your calculated using the following formula: Item Total - Discount + Tax + Shipping.

The next field is Notes and is for any additional details you wish to store about this purchase.

The Paid? checkbox allows you to mark if an purchase is still to be paid for - this will be displayed with the Paid / Unpaid flag on the Purchases list view.

Once you are happy with the details on the purchase form, click the Save button, and you'll be returned to the material page. It is at this point that all inventory calculations will be made, so you'll now see your newly increased stock levels appear.

Have some questions?

If you have any additional questions, please get in touch and we'll be happy to give you a hand.