How to Create a Purchase Order (PO) or Work Order (WO)
PLEASE HAVE EVERYONE ON YOUR TEAM WHO DEALS WITH INVENTORY STUDY THIS COURSE.
We also highly encourage you to book your one-on-one onboarding call WITH YOUR TEAM so everybody is trained. :) Schedule an onboarding call.
There are multiple ways to make a PO or WO in SoStocked. This video tutorial walks you through various ways.
NOTE: If you have existing POs that are already in production, then please watch this tutorial first.
Overview
SoStocked uses a Purchase Order (PO) system with lead times for all new inventory orders. And we use a Work Order (WO) system with transfer times for transferring inventory from a warehouse or prep center to Amazon FBA. Without POs or WOs, there is no way to track inventory throughout your production, delivery, or warehousing process.
How to Reconcile FBA Shipments SoStocked SOP Document
Purchase Order vs Work Order
Purchase orders are for new inventory only (when you're purchasing new inventory from a supplier or from a manufacturer).
Work orders are for transferring inventory from a warehouse or telling a freight forwarder or a prep center what to do with the existing inventory.
Different Ways To Create A Purchase Order or A Work Order
The first way to create a purchase order or a work order is to click this green "+" button on the upper left side of any page on SoStocked.
Now, let's try to create a PO -- click on "PO (purchase order).
From here, you'll have to give it a P.O. number, select the supplier since it's a purchase order (warehouse if it's a work order), choose the product, the number of units to ship, and the cost per unit.
Now, click on your lead time.
Your lead time tells SoStocked where the inventory is going and how long it takes to get there. So, if you've set up your inventory and your suppliers correctly, you should have multiple lead times that you can choose from for this particular purchase order.
Once you're done with your lead time, you'll now have to select the marketplace. You can also choose if it's automatically being tracked in our order tracker or if you want to manually move it through the order tracker.
Automatic mode means it's simply moving through the order tracker based on the lead time -- whatever portion of the lead time it's on, it will follow through that lead time and move the card directly through the order tracker.
You can also choose to switch to Manual mode and then you have to choose manually which portion of the lead time it's in and that will determine where it shows up on the order tracker.
Take note that if you choose Manual mode, you will have a little lock icon up here and you can click on the card to change the status.
From here, you can switch to Automatic mode or you can move it step by step through and save it for each portion of the lead time.
When you're done choosing between Automatic and Manual mode, scroll down, and you can put your payment termsin here. You can also put any additional notes down here.
Once you're done, you can click on "Save & Preview" and then it will have your preview page. So that's one way on how to create a purchase order.
Split Shipment
On the purchase order, you can also choose to split your shipment by clicking this green drop-down button here.
You can split shipment in 3 different ways -- you can add a new blank shipment which will create another shipment down here. Choose the product and put zero units.
You can also split the shipment in half where it will take this portion up here and split it exactly in half.
You can also bulk edit shipments by clicking this "Bulk Edit Shipment" button here. So you can bulk download products or bulk upload products here. Now, let's try to click on the "Download Products" button.
Make sure you watch this video first and follow all the instructions.
Now, creating a work order is exactly the same thing -- you just click on this "Work Order" button up here.
From here, create your work order number and choose the warehouse or prep center that it's coming from. You should also tell SoStocked what you want to do with the inventory -- whether it's combining products, or if it's shipping to a new location. Most of the time, you're going to be shipping it from a warehouse into Amazon FBA, but you could just have it go from your supplier and actually just have your warehouse store the inventory.
Similar to the purchase order, you can also bulk edit shipments -- so you can download the products and upload the products into the work order as well.
Another way to create a purchase order or a work order is from your Forecast page -- basically, the green buttons are for purchase orders, and the blue buttons are for work orders and they will automatically fill the supplier, the units, and the lead time based on the preset for that product. So for example, if I wanted to place an order for these 7900 units here, I'd click on the green button.
As you can see, it will auto-fill the supplier, the product, the number of units to ship, and the lead time because this is all preset and defaulted based on that forecast.
The same thing goes with the warehouse transfer.
You can also create a purchase order from the Inventory page -- simply put a check mark on the products, and click on "Bulk Actions".
Then, click on " New PO".
As you can see, it will also auto-fill the supplier and those products.
In this case, these products have different lead times, so it's actually splitting the shipment.
The last place where you can create purchase orders is through your " Bulk Export/Import" on your Settings page.
Select " PO Bulk Upload Template" from the drop-down menu here, and make sure to watch the video tutorial about "Bulk Import Multiple POs or Work Orders to SoStocked". Then, you can just download the template, follow the instructions from the video tutorial, and upload it here.
So those are the different ways you can create purchase orders and work orders from SoStocked.