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Purchasing

Buy propane, equipment, parts and outside work from your suppliers, and see what is on order at a glance.

Purchasing is where the office buys what the business runs on: transport loads of propane for the bulk plant, tanks and cylinders, regulators and fittings, truck parts, and outside work such as cylinder requalification. The purchasing page opens on a summary of what is waiting on you, and its left-hand menu leads to every purchasing list.

What the purchasing page shows when you open it

  • Three summary cards. Active Supplier Quotes, Open Purchase Orders and Open Purchase Invoices, each with a count and a link to the matching list.
  • A chart of one measure over time. Pick the measure: supplier quotes, purchase orders or purchase invoices by count, or purchase order or purchase invoice amount. Pick the period (week, month, quarter or year) and either one supplier or all suppliers. Export CSV downloads the numbers behind the chart.
  • Recently Created. The newest purchasing documents with their status and supplier.
  • Assigned to Me. Documents assigned to you, including purchase orders and suppliers waiting on your approval when your company uses approval rules.

The menu on the left has three groups:

groupentries
ManageSuppliers, RFQs, Quotes, Orders, Returns
PlanningMaterial Planning
ConfigureTypes (supplier types; shown to employees only)

Saved views you create on any of these lists appear under that list in the menu. Supplier bills are not under Purchasing: the old Purchasing → Invoices address opens the purchase invoice list in Invoicing.

How to buy a transport load of propane when the bulk plant runs low

AimRack does not keep a running count of the gallons in a bulk plant's storage tank: a delivery ticket bills the gallons it delivers without taking them out of any stock. Read the plant's tank gauge to decide when to order. Set the propane you buy up once as a part counted in gallons with Tracking Type Non-Inventory, so each load is recorded without building an on-hand number that deliveries never draw down.

  1. Open Orders and select Add Purchase Order.
  2. Choose your terminal supplier, and set Delivery Location to the bulk plant that will take the load.
  3. Add a line for your propane part, with the quantity in gallons and the price per gallon the supplier confirmed.
  4. Select Finalize to lock the order and send it to the supplier.
  5. When the transport unloads, select Receive on the order to record the load on a receipt.
  6. When the supplier's bill arrives, select Invoice on the order to start the purchase invoice.

For example, a 30,000-gallon load from Mont Belvieu Terminal Partners is one order with one line of 30,000 gallons at that day's price. The purchase order guide covers every field and status.

How to find the best price when several suppliers could fill the order

Use a request for quotes when the price is not already agreed, for example a truckload of 500-gallon tanks or a year of regulators:

  1. Open RFQs, select Add RFQ, and list the items, quantities and suppliers. The RFQ guide explains each step.
  2. Finalize the RFQ. AimRack creates one supplier quote per supplier and can email each supplier a private link to enter their prices.
  3. Compare the quotes that come back, and turn the winner into a purchase order.

When you already know the price, skip the RFQ and add the purchase order directly.

How to restock parts and equipment when you use material planning

Material Planning lists every item you buy rather than make, for one location. Each item shows:

  • On Hand and one column per week, starting with Present Week.
  • The item's Reorder Policy and its suggested Qty to Order.
  • Its preferred Supplier and that supplier's Lead Time.

To place orders from it:

  1. Select an item to open its ordering panel. The panel shows the item's reorder settings (Reorder Policy, Reorder Point, Reorder Quantity, Safety Stock, Minimum Order, Maximum Order, Lot Size, Maximum Inventory, Accumulation Period), its suppliers with their unit price and purchase unit, and the quantity to order.
  2. Adjust the quantity and due date, or pick a different supplier. Add Supplier links a new supplier to the item.
  3. Select Order Parts. AimRack adds each line to an existing draft or planned purchase order for that supplier, or starts a new one, at the status Planned.
  4. Review the planned orders under Orders and finalize them.

The weekly columns count down from the quantity on hand by the demand forecast entered on each item. Open sales orders and open purchase orders are not counted in them, so check incoming orders before you trust a shortage.

How to group suppliers when you want to filter or report by kind

Open Types under Configure and add a type, such as Propane terminal, Tank and cylinder vendor, Parts or Service. Pick the type on each supplier's Details tab. System types are protected and cannot be renamed or deleted, so add your own type instead.

Where this fits

Purchasing sits between knowing what you need and paying for it: