Tracking Customer and Purchase Orders

Acumen does not normally link a purchase order to a customer order except where the stock in question is a miscellaneous product or is ordered via the Customer Order screen (Purchase button). This means that, in general, a purchase order is placed to cover a requirement for stock, and not for a specific customer order. This allows you to place one purchase order that covers a multitude of customer orders. It also allows a purchase order to allocate goods to customer orders in order of priority at the time the goods are received, which may be substantially different to when the goods were originally ordered. It prevents the need to reallocate a purchase order if a customer order for which it was purchased should be cancelled or altered.

You can however use the Acumen purchasing system to manually link purchase order lines to customer order items if you so desire. When you do this the purchasing system will give that customer order priority on those goods before any other.

In order to track the status of a customer order use the Stock availability facility as described in Reviewing Stock Availability under Orders and Quotes in the Sales chapter. This facility will incorporate both stock on hand and purchase order details in considering if the items on the customer order are or will be available for delivery by the estimate date.

To view the purchase and customer orders placed for a product use the Product Order List facility. This facility provides a list of customer orders and purchase orders in progress for a given product. Purchases are displayed in estimated delivery date order and customer orders are displayed by priority allowing you to assess timing considerations and which orders are likely to be satisfied next.