Reorder Suggestions
When stock drops to its reorder point, the Purchasing page shows what you're short on — already grouped by supplier, with a Draft PO button that opens a purchase order filled in and ready to review.
What appears
An item shows up when all of these are true:
- It's active and has low stock alerts switched on
- It has a reorder point above zero
- Quantity on hand has dropped to or below that point
An item with no reorder point set never appears here, no matter how low it goes — the reorder point is how you tell Iraca what "low" means for that item.
This is a stricter rule than the Low Stock widget on your dashboard, which falls back to a threshold of 5 for products with no reorder point set. The Purchasing page only suggests ordering things you've actually given a threshold to.
How items are grouped
Each group becomes one purchase order, so groups are split the way orders are:
- By supplier — an item's Preferred Supplier, set on the product or supply. Fill this in and your shortages sort themselves into one order per vendor.
- By warehouse — a purchase order is received into one warehouse, so the same item short in two warehouses is two separate orders.
Items with no preferred supplier are not hidden. They collect in a "No preferred supplier" group at the bottom, and the button there opens the order with the supplier field left for you to fill in. Setting a preferred supplier on those items is what moves them up into a real group next time.
Preferred supplier keeps itself up to date
You rarely have to set it by hand. Whenever you receive a purchase order, every item accepted on it has its preferred supplier set to that order's supplier — so it always names whoever you last actually bought from, and an item you have never bought stops being an item with no supplier the first time stock arrives.
Two things worth knowing about that:
- It is last used, not a standing choice. Buy once from a backup because your usual vendor was out, and that item's suggestions point at the backup until the next receipt. Set it back on the product if that isn't what you want.
- Only accepted units count. A delivery you reject in full doesn't claim the item, so a bad shipment can't redirect your reordering.
How the quantity is worked out
The suggested quantity is what it takes to get back to the reorder point:
reorder point − quantity on hand − what's already on order
Three details worth knowing:
- Stock already on its way is subtracted. An item covered by a purchase order that hasn't arrived yet drops off the list entirely, so you don't order the same thing twice. A partly-received order only counts for the part still outstanding.
- Items bought by the pack round up to whole packs. If you're 7 bags short and they come 5 to a box, the suggestion is 2 boxes, not 1.4 — and the quantity box shows boxes, priced per box, the same as entering the order by hand.
- An item sitting exactly on its reorder point suggests 1. Reaching the point is the signal to buy, so the suggestion is never zero.
How the price is filled in
Iraca uses what you last paid — the price from the most recent purchase order for that item. If you've never bought it, it falls back to the item's unit cost.
A previous pack price is only reused if it was for the same pack size. If you used to buy boxes of 500 and now buy boxes of 100, the old price isn't carried over.
Every figure is a starting point. Nothing is sent to a supplier until you review the order and confirm it.
After drafting
Draft PO opens the normal New Purchase Order dialog, already filled in. Nothing is created until you submit it, and you can add lines, change quantities, or pick a different supplier first.
Once the order exists, its quantities are subtracted from the suggestions, so the item stops appearing until it's short again.
Items you make rather than buy
A product with a recipe is replenished by a production run, not a purchase order, so it's left out of the suggestions.
The exception is a product with a recipe and a preferred supplier. Naming a supplier is taken as saying "this one is bought" — which is how a product you sometimes make and sometimes buy in gets handled.