Raising a purchase order and receiving the goods

Suppliers and agents

Every supplier your organisation buys from directly lives in Procurement → Suppliers. Each supplier's page gives you a Purchase Order button to start a new order, plus a side menu with Products, Purchase Orders and Stock Deliveries so far.

Some suppliers are only reachable through an agent - a person or company who buys on your behalf rather than shipping to you directly. Agents have their own list under Procurement → Agents. An order through an agent is one purchase order per supplier, numbered in the agent's series and sent to the agent. See placing an order through an agent.

Raising a purchase order

From the supplier's page, press Purchase Order. This creates a new order in the In process state - it exists, but nothing has been sent to the supplier yet.

While it is in process:

• Use Add Product to add a line for a product you want, one at a time.
• Each line can be adjusted while the order is still in process.
• Delete removes the whole order, as long as nothing has been sent to the supplier yet.

Once you have added everything you want, press Submit. This sends the order onward and moves it to Submitted.

Suppliers who sell in another unit

Some suppliers quote and invoice in a unit that is not ours - incense by the kg that we count in 500 g bags, for example. On the supplier product's Edit page, set Supplier sells in (kg, g, litre, metre, pack, set, dozen or piece) and Our units in one supplier unit (2 for a 500 g bag sold by the kg, 0.2 for a 5 kg pack sold by the kg). If you choose kg or g and leave the number empty, aiku works it out from the weight of the trade unit, and the field's help text warns you when the number you typed does not match that weight.

Quantities are still stored in our units. The supplier unit only changes how you type and read them:

• On a purchase order in process, the Ordering supplier units tab lets you type the quantity in the supplier's unit, and every line shows it next to units, SKOs and cartons (for example 160u. | 160sko. | 1.6C. | 80 kg).
• The purchase order PDF sent to the supplier shows those lines in the supplier's unit and price per unit (80 kg at 253.00 / kg).
• The stock delivery shows both units, and the invoice check on the Costing panel converts the invoice's kg into our units before comparing.

Placing it through your AI assistant

If an administrator has switched on order placing for you, your AI assistant can raise and submit the order for you, also for suppliers bought through an agent. Tell it the supplier and what you want, for example "order 144 CIC-25 and 20 TIB-134SET from RME".

• It first shows the order: the supplier, the agent, each line with units, cartons and cost, the total, and any order already being prepared for that supplier.
• Quantities are in units and are rounded up to whole cartons, and never below the supplier's minimum carton order.
• Only after you confirm does it add the lines (to the order being prepared, or a new one) and Submit it. It does not email it: send it to the supplier from the purchase order page.
• The order is logged with your request but cannot be undone from the AI changes log: use Undo Submit or Cancel on the order.

What the states mean

A purchase order moves through a short, deliberate chain:

• In process - you're still building the order. Add products, submit, or delete it.
• Submitted - the order has gone to the supplier. You can Confirm it once the supplier has agreed to it, Undo Submit to pull it back to In process if something needs changing, or Cancel it altogether.
• Confirmed - the supplier has accepted the order. You can set or change the Delivery date (the estimated arrival), and press New Delivery to create the stock delivery that will receive the goods. Until a delivery exists for it, you can also Undo Confirm to send it back to Submitted.

From here the order settles on its own as its stock deliveries progress - there's nothing further to click on the purchase order itself. It ends up Settled once everything has arrived, or Not Received/Cancelled if it didn't work out.

The stock delivery: recording what arrived

Pressing New Delivery on a confirmed purchase order creates the stock delivery for you, already linked to that order's lines. You can also start one from scratch under Procurement → Stock Deliveries, which just asks for a delivery number and date.

A stock delivery's page has tabs for its Items, the Pending Items still to deal with, Done Items, Under/Over delivered items once it is booked in, Customs once it has been dispatched, Attachments, and History.

The delivery then moves through its own states:

• In process / Confirmed / Ready to ship - while it's still on its way, you can press Mark as Dispatched once the supplier has sent it, Mark as Received if it's already arrived, or Delete if it was created by mistake.
• Dispatched - the parcel is on the road. Mark as Received once it lands at your warehouse, or Unmark as Dispatched to undo that if it hasn't actually left.
• Received - the goods are physically at the warehouse. From here you check each item against what was ordered; the delivery becomes Checked once that's done, or you can Unmark as Received or Cancel the whole delivery.
• Checked - if nothing has been placed into stock yet, you can still Cancel here.
• Booking in / Booked in - the checked quantities are being booked into the warehouse's stock.
• Booked in - press Place to put the received stock away. This is the delivery's final working state.

For deliveries created from 12 October 2026, the costs come before the goods: marking a delivery as received while its costs are missing asks for a reason, and its goods can not be put away until the invoice, the shipping and the duty each have an amount, an estimate or N/A. See costing a stock delivery.

Checking an item means confirming how much of each line actually arrived - not every order arrives complete, and short or extra quantities show up on the Under/Over delivered items tab so nothing gets lost in the gap between what you ordered and what showed up.

Under the checked quantity, Batch records the batch code and best-before date printed on the goods. One line can hold several batches: press Add batch and split the quantity between them. When you place the stock, the batches go onto the shelf in the order you entered them, so the warehouse knows which batch sits where and the inventory reports can show best-before dates. Families marked Batch tracked (on the stock family's edit page) show a warning until every checked SKO has a batch, and flag a batch with no best-before. Nothing blocks the booking in, so a delivery without printed codes can still go on the shelf. A batch that is already on a shelf cannot be cut below what was put away; undo that put-away first.

When what arrived differs from what was expected

The Under/Over delivered items tab lists every line whose count differs, with the difference in units, SKOs and value, and a Flag:

• Under delivered or Over delivered - a real difference.
• Possible unit mismatch - the count is a clean multiple of what was expected (2×, 5×, 10× and so on, either way). That is almost always a supplier invoicing in another unit, not goods going missing, so check the unit before claiming anything.
• Within tolerance - small enough to show but not to flag. Administrators set the tolerance (a percentage, an amount, or both) under Organisations → the organisation → Edit → Procurement; it starts at 0, so every difference is flagged.

Press Resolve on a line and pick what happened:

• Recount - the warehouse gets a task to count the line again. You are told when they close it; then come back and pick one of the other outcomes.
• Unit error - correct what was expected (in our units, or in the supplier's unit when one is set) and the line's value. What was counted is never changed. If a real difference is still left, the line stays flagged so you can claim it - a line expected as 80 kg of 500 g bags becomes 160 bags expected, and 120 counted shows as 40 short.
• Supplier claim - only for a short line. Enter the units and value claimed and add photos from goods in; they go on the delivery's attachments. The claim starts Open: click it in the Outcome column to mark it Sent to supplier, Credit received (with the credit note number, amount and date) or Rejected. A claim is tracked only - it does not change the delivery's costing.
• Accept surplus - only for an over line: keep the extra units.

Correcting a unit error on a placed delivery re-prices the stock that was put away from it, so do it before the costing is finished; once costed, the costing has to be reopened first.

Customs lines and duty

On the Customs tab, copy the import declaration: its MRN, Release date and its tariff lines, each with the tariff code, duty %, customs value, duty and import VAT. aiku never changes the declaration; that stays with the customs agent.

When you save, each item is matched to the line with the closest tariff code to its trade unit's, and you can change that per item. The delivery's duty cost is then shared line by line: each item takes its share of its own line's duty, by value among the items on that line, so a duty-free line takes none. Items on no line share whatever duty the lines do not account for. Import VAT is recorded only; it is deducted in the VAT return and never costed. A supplier claim shows whether its line paid any duty, so nobody asks for a customs amendment on a duty-free line.

Putting it together

In short: raise the order against the supplier, submit it, wait for the supplier to confirm, then create the delivery from the confirmed order. Mark the delivery dispatched when the supplier ships it, received when it lands, work through checking each item, and finally place it - at which point the stock is in the warehouse and ready to sell.