Supplier Management

Purchase orders: manual and auto-PO

Create POs by hand or let the daily auto-PO engine draft them for you based on reorder points, lead times, and sales velocity.

Creating a PO manually

Go to Admin → Purchase Orders → New. Pick a supplier, the destination warehouse, an expected ship date, and start adding line items. The line-item picker filters to SKUs that are mapped to the selected supplier and auto-fills unit cost, MOQ, and case pack from the SKU map. Totals, taxes, and freight estimates update live. When the PO looks right, save it as draft (no email sent) or send (PDF emailed to the primary supplier contact and pushed to their portal).

The auto-PO engine

A daily cron at 6:00 AM UTC evaluates every active SKU and drafts purchase orders for anything that has fallen below its reorder point. The engine groups draft lines by supplier so you get one consolidated PO per supplier per day, not a flurry of single-line orders. Drafts land at /admin/purchase-orders/drafts for review.

How ROP is calculated

The reorder point (ROP) formula in plain English: lead time in days × average daily sales + safety stock. So if a SKU sells 4 units a day, has a 21-day lead time, and you keep a 14-day safety buffer, its ROP is 21 × 4 + (14 × 4) = 140. Whenever on-hand + on-order drops below 140, the engine drafts a reorder. Daily sales is a 30-day trailing average, recomputed nightly. Lead time comes from the supplier default or the per-SKU override, whichever is set.

EOQ (optional order-size optimization)

By default the engine orders just enough to get back to the target stock level. Turn on EOQ mode per supplier if you want it to size orders using the Economic Order Quantity formula instead—balancing the cost of placing an order against the cost of holding inventory. You'll need to enter per-supplier ordering cost (admin time, freight minimums) and holding cost (warehouse rent allocation as a % of unit cost). EOQ tends to produce fewer, larger POs—great when freight minimums dominate.

Reviewing drafts

Open /admin/purchase-orders/drafts each morning. Each draft shows the trigger (which SKUs fell below ROP), the recommended quantities, and the resulting cost. Approve to send, edit to adjust, or dismiss to skip the cycle. You can also enable per-supplier autosend: drafts for that supplier skip the review queue and email out automatically at 7:00 AM UTC. Use autosend only for low-risk suppliers—everything else benefits from a human eyeballing the totals.

FAQs

Can I run auto-PO on demand instead of waiting until 6 AM?
Yes. Click "Run Auto-PO Now" on the drafts page. It scans the same SKUs immediately. Useful right after onboarding or after a big inventory adjustment.
What happens if a supplier doesn't acknowledge a PO?
After 48 hours without acknowledgement in their portal, ShipWave sends a reminder email. After 5 days it surfaces on the supplier health dashboard. You can also configure escalation contacts on the supplier record.
How does the engine handle seasonality?
The 30-day trailing average smooths gentle ramps but doesn't predict step changes (Black Friday, product launches). For known spikes, temporarily increase the safety stock multiplier on the affected SKUs.
Can I exclude a SKU from auto-PO?
Yes. Set <code>autoReorder: false</code> on the SKU. Useful for special-order items, end-of-life products, or anything you only restock by hand.
What if my primary supplier is out of stock?
If you've configured fallback suppliers (priority &gt; 1) and their live feed shows stock, the engine drafts against the fallback automatically and notes the failover in the draft summary.

More in Supplier Management

  • Supplier management overview

    When to use suppliers vs. warehouses, and how ShipWave models dropship, wholesale, and hybrid fulfillment.

  • Adding suppliers and mapping SKUs

    Create a supplier record, attach contacts and ship-from addresses, and map your internal SKUs to the supplier's codes and UPCs.

  • Receiving purchase orders

    How to receive POs in part or in full, how received quantities flow into inventory, and how the receipt audit trail works.

  • The supplier portal and dropshipping

    Send suppliers a portal link, see what they see, and route dropship orders with three flexible ship options.

  • Supplier delivery formats

    Five ways to deliver orders to a supplier: portal login, CSV email digest, SFTP file drop, signed webhook, or pull API.

  • Supplier feeds and live inventory

    Pull live inventory from suppliers via SFTP, HTTPS, or API. Map fields with drag-and-drop. Drift detection blocks bad data from hitting marketplaces.

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