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Practical guide / Free to read

Get what you need and keep work moving.

Make supplier choices, orders, deliveries and unfinished promises easier to follow—from a first purchase to repeat business.

Begin where the purchase actually stands

You might need packaging for your first sale, materials for a customer job, a contractor’s help, replacement equipment, or a better record of an order already placed. Start with that work. A purchase already made does not need an invented quote-request history.

Write what is needed, why, where it will be used, and how you will recognize an acceptable result. Separate what you know from an estimate or unanswered question. The planner lets unknown quantities and dates remain blank.

Choose a supplier for the whole job

Price is one part of a supplier decision. NIST’s supplier-selection guidance also considers capabilities, capacity, quality and communication. Use evidence relevant to your particular purchase: a sample, a confirmed specification, a checked reference, or the supplier’s response to a practical question.

Keep usual lead time separate from the date promised for this order. Record minimum quantities and pack sizes explicitly. A supplier can have several contacts or locations, each serving a different purpose.

Background: NIST: Eight ways to improve supplier selection

Compare offers on an understandable basis

Retain the supplier’s reference and revision, included work, quantity and unit, price, charges, available date, payment terms, exclusions and open questions. A lower unit price may cover a different pack, specification or service result.

The planner keeps currencies separate and makes no automatic pack conversion. Unknown freight, tax or quantities leave a total incomplete. Enter zero only when the charge is known to be zero. Offer comparisons can include as many entries as the work requires within the stated file limits.

When selecting an offer line for an order, the planner retains its original contents. A later offer revision cannot silently change that selection. You may divide a requirement among suppliers and select partial quantities.

Make the agreement clear before relying on it

Record the buyer, supplier, reference, goods or services, specifications, quantities, location, required and promised dates, payment terms, and acceptance criteria. For outside services, explain the result or milestone and how it will be reviewed. Keep a reference to the actual agreement rather than treating a draft order as proof of acceptance.

Draft, internal review, actually placed and supplier acknowledged are different positions. A downloaded purchase order is a document; it does not send itself or establish acceptance. Record the actual event date and evidence. A changed arrangement needs its own explanation, while a record correction should be identified as a correction.

Background: SBA: Manage your business

Record arrival and acceptance separately

A delivery may be short, damaged, substituted or awaiting inspection. Record the physical quantity that arrived first. Then record what was accepted, rejected or still awaiting a check. ERPNext’s purchasing documentation distinguishes accepted and rejected quantities and supports receipts for part of an order.

Use separate entries for each delivery and separate lines where timing or acceptance criteria differ. For services, the unit might be a milestone, hour or completed result. Submission is not the same as acceptance. Name the reviewer and retain the actual result or evidence.

Excess or substituted goods need an explicit acceptance decision. For hired equipment, keep collection and return condition, the due-back date, actual return and any security deposit issue visible.

Background: ERPNext: Purchase Receipt

Follow the problem through to its actual resolution

An issue needs an affected line, evidence, consequence, requested resolution, supplier response, next action, owner and check date. A defect discovered after acceptance may make previously accepted units unusable; check any customer-job allocations before correcting that supply.

A return request, authorization, dispatch and acknowledgment are separate events. Replacement receipts link back to the original issue and do not increase the original order quantity. ERPNext also treats purchase returns as linked transactions rather than simply deleting the receipt.

Keep a promised credit or refund open until the actual document or receipt is recorded. A credit document and a cash refund are different outcomes. Record any accounting follow-through still needed; this planner does not create accounting adjustments.

Background: ERPNext: Purchase Return

Review bills against the agreement and the work

Compare the supplier’s bill with the agreed order and the received or accepted work. Check references, quantities, unit prices, charges and agreed billing milestones. One bill can cover several orders, and an order can have several bills; allocate the amounts explicitly.

Billing before receipt is not automatically a mistake. An agreement can include advance or milestone payments. Odoo’s purchasing documentation distinguishes ordered-quantity and received-quantity billing controls. The appropriate check depends on the actual terms.

Keep the full purchase cost separate from prepayments already made. Applying a prepayment reduces the remaining amount to pay; it does not create another purchase cost. The Spending handoff prepares an unconfirmed full-bill cost draft, and deliberately does not export a prepayment as an extra cost. Review existing entries and record actual payments in Spending.

Background: Odoo: Vendor billing controls (official documentation source)

Connect supply to the customer work it supports

Allocate accepted quantities to identifiable jobs. The same accepted units cannot be allocated twice. If an acceptance record must be reduced, resolve affected allocations first so the customer plan remains honest.

Review a copy into the existing Job & Delivery book. The receiving requirement stays waiting unless you explicitly review it as ready. A purchase’s arrival alone does not complete the customer job.

Selected receiving instructions can become a fresh checklist or a draft routine. Selected document pointers can become a Records collection, and hire, warranty or notice dates can become unconfirmed Deadlines entries. Each transfer preserves its source reference and needs a review; these files do not synchronize automatically.

Return to the unresolved work

Use the attention view for missing next actions, expired offers, missing acknowledgments, overdue or undated supply, pending inspection, supplier issues, bills to review and hire or notice dates. Search by the words, supplier, order, job or owner in the records.

Archiving keeps history and does not erase unfinished promises. Before closing an order, resolve outstanding quantities, inspection and open issues. Use the dated attention reading copy in your weekly review.

Download the complete JSON purchasing book after changes and reopen it to continue. PDF and CSV copies help with reading or sharing; they do not contain the complete editable relationships and history. Review the supplier-facing preview before sharing, including any information you entered into ordinary agreement fields.

Try it in your own situation

Take one purchase through the next useful step

  1. Describe the goods or result you need and what acceptable means.
  2. Record the supplier and the offer or agreement you actually have.
  3. Add order lines with explicit units and known or unknown prices.
  4. Record placement and acknowledgment only when they happen.
  5. Record each receipt, inspection and service result separately.
  6. Give each shortfall or issue an owner, next action and check date.
  7. Review bills, prepayments and job allocations without counting the same amount or units twice.
  8. Preview any shared document and download the editable book before closing.

Keep exploring.

Keep the promise through to delivery. Explore Running a business
Sources and further reading

Original Brass Charter examples and exercises, with background reading from the sources below.

Keep your open draft?

Continuing will discard your unsaved changes. You can return to the draft and save or download it first.