Planning supplier orders for pre-orders

What the page shows

Customers can pre-order products marked back-order or made-to-order (see Selling pre-orders). Some suppliers are ordered from for each customer order; others only once enough pre-orders are collected to fill a shipment. This page is for grouping them.

Each supplier is one row, with the suppliers whose order-by date comes first at the top:

• Pre-orders — how many customer orders are waiting on this supplier.
• Quantity — how much of their SKOs is waiting, in SKO units.
• Sales value — what the waiting items sell for, in the organisation's currency.
• At supplier cost (approx.) — the waiting quantity at the supplier's current price, in the supplier's currency. Next to it is the supplier's minimum, green when it is reached and red when it is not.
• Order by — the date the supplier order should be placed.

Click a supplier to see each waiting line: the order, the shop, the customer, the product and SKO, the quantity, when it was ordered, when the supplier order was placed and the date it should be dispatched by.

A pre-order waits on the preferred supplier of each of its SKOs. When one order waits on two suppliers, it appears under both.

Setting the minimum and the order-by date

Both are on the supplier: Minimum order in its purchasing settings, and Order by date and the pre-order lead time under Pre-orders. The lead time is what customers are told to expect, so keep it realistic: it is the time from the customer ordering to us dispatching.

Placing the supplier order

When you have ordered from the supplier, press Mark supplier ordered on that supplier's row. It marks every pre-order in the group that is not marked yet.

This matters to the customer: a trade customer can cancel a made-to-order item for free until the supplier order is placed. From then on, cancelling keeps their deposit. Mark it on the day you order, not before.

When the minimum is not reached

If the pre-orders do not reach the supplier's minimum by the order-by date, the buying team decides:

• Order anyway — place the supplier order and mark it as above.
• Cancel them — press Cancel all, full refund. Every pre-order in the group is cancelled and every customer gets everything back, deposit included, to their account balance. They are emailed.

You can also cancel a single pre-order from its order page.

When the goods arrive

You do not need to do anything here: when the stock is booked in, the pre-orders waiting for it take it, oldest first, and they leave this page. The customers are asked for their balance, and each order goes to the warehouse once it is paid.