Artisan has a feature called Purchase Requests which helps track products that need to be ordered from your vendors. This feature is very helpful when you create special orders or sell products you do not have in stock.
Basically, a Purchase Request is just that, products your customers have ordered and you as the merchant need to order them from your vendors.
The process is:
Special Order Created => Generates a Purchase Request => You can check on what your Purchase Requests are at any time and when you decide to buy from the specific Vendor, these products get included on the Purchase Order.
Now let’s go over creating an actual Special Order in Artisan and using Purchase Requests
Creating the Special Order
Let’s start by creating a Special Order
1. We create a Special Order the same way we do a regular sale. The only difference is selecting the Special Order option from the drop-down menu. (See image below)
2. Every time a Special Order/Layaway is created, a customer needs to be assigned to it so Artisan POS can keep track of the entire process. If a customer is not selected at the beginning, Artisan will prompt you when finalizing the sale.
3. When taking the payment on the Special Order/Layaway, by default Artisan will take 25% of the total amount. But this setting can always be anything you’d like, 0%, 100% or anything in between.
4. Once the sales have been saved under the customer name, it will appear on the customer’s records so Artisan can remind you of this order for him/her. By glancing at the activity area for the respective customer, it is shown that the customer has a waiting order. (See image)
Checking Purchase Requests
Now is when Purchase Requests become useful. It is basically an area where you can look at items that customers have requested or items that were not in stock when they were sold and now need to be ordered from your specific vendor. You can look at Purchase Requests by going over to the Main Menu => Purchasing => Purchase Requests
From this list, you can look at items requested and if you go into F4 – Edit this record you can see more details about it and add a Needed Date.
Creating the Purchase Order
Now we have the ability to create the purchase order for this vendor from the Purchase Requests. Press Enter on items to move to the Purchase Order.
Then select the option that best suits your needs on the prompt.
Now just finish creating the Purchase Order as normally done.
Receiving the Items
When the items are received, Artisan will let you know that they are reserved items, and will also show you the name of the customer.
Now, the status of the order will changed to “Ready” under the customer name. If the order has been paid in full, the customer just needs to pick it up. If not, he/she must pay the remaining balance before it becomes ready for “Pick Up.“
The great thing about Special Orders and Purchase Requests is that they all work together to produce a seamless experience and keep track of the items being ordered, as well as notifying you when the order is ready, thus avoiding delay of items.