Purchasing and Production

This is where the plan stops being a projection and becomes an order somebody has to fulfil.

The production-order matrix shows which finished-good variations belong to each order and how many units each one carries.

The purchase order

One or more shipment plans can be rolled into a purchase order. The plans carry the Sales SKU, channel, quantity and arrival week that created the demand; the PO translates that demand into the production SKUs and quantities the factory receives. A plan remains editable after PO creation until its goods ship.

The plan and PO are linked records, not the same object. Keeping that link is what lets a PO found later be traced back to the shipment demand and projection that caused it.

The plan, its two minimum checks, and the order it is about to become.

The two checks before a PO exists

The panel above the button is not decoration. It is the pair of checks that decide whether this plan can become an order at all:

Check	What it asks
Per-SKU minimum	Does every production SKU in the plan reach its own minimum run?
Total-order MOQ	Do the production units across all production SKUs reach the manufacturer’s minimum order?

Both are shown as a fraction, so a plan that fails tells you by how much. That is usually the difference between “wait another week” and “add one more Sales SKU to this run”. The panel turns green and reads Ready to create the PO only when both pass.

Working the plan lines

Each line is Sales SKU · Channel · Quantity · Cartons. The quantity is in units, and the cartons column shows how it rounds to whole cartons. Every column sorts. While the plan is open you can edit a line’s quantity or delete the line; when the plan already has a PO, the PO quantity follows.

PO Number is required and Production Partner names who is making it. The table under them is the order as the manufacturer will read it: one row per Production SKU, its order quantity, and a total.

When the App adds to an existing plan it fills only the remaining gap — it does not duplicate a line you have already put there.

An approved PO. The bar reads the order’s state, and the line below it says what is left.

One production run, several Sales SKUs

The production run is one number. What comes out of it is several Sales SKUs.

Make 1,000 production units and pack 400 as singles and 300 as twin packs, and the run stays a single figure while each sales SKU takes its own share. This keeps the conversation with the manufacturer in the units they work in, and the projection in the units you sell in.

Following the order

Open a PO to see PO details. A bar across the top reads how much of the order is shipped, and a Next step line says what is left: production has not started, units are still at the factory, or everything received is in shipments. While a PO is approved and has no lots yet, Undo PO removes it and returns the plan to a draft.

A PO in production, with every unit still at the factory.

1. Choose Start production when the factory begins making the order.
2. Create the shipment on Amazon, Walmart or TikTok as usual. After the next sync it appears in the PO under Shipments matching this PO’s plan.
3. Choose Pair on that shipment. Check the quantity per SKU, then confirm. The units you put on the shipment are recorded as delivered by the factory, so you can ship part of an order while the rest is still in production. Anything you leave out stays in the plan for a later shipment.
4. When the factory is done, close production from More actions: Confirm Full PO when it delivered everything, Close PO — factory won’t deliver more when it fell short, or Edit delivered quantities to type the real figures.

If the channel has no shipment yet, Create shipment manually in More actions puts the goods on an App shipment instead; link it to the marketplace shipment later from the Inbound Pipeline.

Goods the factory has made that are not on a shipment yet are Processed Stock. The products table in PO details shows, per product, what was Ordered, Received and is In shipment.

A finished PO. Received units stay here as Processed Stock until they go on a shipment.

Pairing with the marketplace shipment

Pairing fills shipment demand that already exists: only plan lines that already have a PO can be paired. The App records the quantities you entered and never more than the marketplace shipment holds. If they differ from the shipment, it shows the difference and asks once; the marketplace shipment keeps its own quantities, and the difference shows when the warehouse receives it. The App never writes quantities back to Amazon.

Payment

PO details & payment records the goods amount, VAT, discount, any extra charge and what you have Paid. The Production orders view shows Paid and Remaining for each order. Mark as paid sets the paid amount to the full total. A PO moves to Closed only when everything is shipped and it is paid in full; until then it stays under Current.

From the shipment to a tracked lot

Each paired shipment becomes a lot in the Inbound Pipeline, mapped to the real shipment with a pickup date and an estimated arrival. You can also inspect its register row in Shipments. From that point the projection stops being an assumption about incoming stock and starts reading a shipment that actually exists.

Considerations

• Production and transit time feed the order dates in Order Planning. Keeping them accurate is what keeps the dates honest.
• A lot that slips changes the projection for every week after it. Update the arrival date rather than leaving the grid optimistic.