Good purchasing is a chain: someone asks for something, you get prices, an order goes out, goods arrive, a bill comes in, and you pay. Each link should be recorded and linked to the one before. When buying lives in email and spreadsheets, links break, and you pay for things you did not order or never received.
Requests: who needs what
A purchase starts with a need. It may come from the shop floor, the warehouse or the office. Capture it as a request with the item, the quantity and the reason, so the buyer is not working from a phone call.
This step matters most in businesses where many people ask for things. It stops duplicate orders and gives the owner a way to say no before money is committed.
Quotes and vendor prices
For anything not bought regularly, ask more than one vendor. Record each answer next to the request. For regular items, keep the agreed price and usual lead time on the product, so the buyer starts from known terms.
Vendor records are worth keeping tidy. One entry per vendor, with contact details, usual products and what you agreed, saves a great deal of searching later.
Purchase orders
The purchase order is the promise to the vendor. Create it in the system and send it from there, so the order you sent and the order on record are the same thing. Check each one for:
- the right vendor and the right product
- the quantity and unit, which is where many mistakes hide
- the expected delivery date
Approvals
Not every order should go straight out. Decide who can order and who must approve. A common approach is that small orders go ahead and larger ones wait for a second person. Choose the line that suits your business, write it down, and set it up so the system enforces it rather than relying on memory.
Approvals work only if approvers are quick. If an approval waits for days, people will find a way around it.
Receipts: check what arrived
When goods arrive, record the receipt against the order. If a delivery is short or damaged, the record shows it at once. This is the step that protects you from paying for things you did not get, and it also keeps stock correct. Our post on why system and shelf stock disagree shows what happens when receipts are skipped.
Vendor bills: match before you pay
A vendor bill should be checked against two things: what you ordered and what you received. If all three agree, pay. If not, find out why before money leaves. Bills that arrive with no matching order are a warning sign worth chasing.
Involve your accountant when setting this up, so the entries and the approval of payment follow the way they work.
What to check in your own process
- Can you see every open order and what is still to arrive?
- Can you tell which vendor gave the best price last time?
- Can you find who approved an order, and when?
- Do you know which bills are unmatched?
If the answer to most of these is “I would have to look through email”, the process needs structure before it needs software.
Start with your top vendors
Do not load every vendor on the first day. Begin with the ones you order from most, run real orders through the new flow, and widen from there.
Review vendors now and then
Once orders are recorded, you can see which vendors deliver on time, which short-ship and which send bills that do not match. Use that to renegotiate or to move an order elsewhere, rather than relying on impressions.
Where Teapot Techies fits
We set up Odoo purchase so requests, approvals, orders, vendor prices, receipts and vendor bills sit in one place, and we test the flow with your own team on real orders. See purchase on Odoo for the detail, or read about Odoo implementation.