The September inventory release added stock tracking, and PO fields were added to assets and licenses. There are still gaps in the purchasing workflow.
Current State:
Products track stock quantity, location, and type
Stock decrements when invoiced
Assets and licenses have PO reference fields
Expenses track vendor payments
Missing Pieces:
No product_cost field on products (only selling price)
No purchase order module exists
Can't track orders placed with vendors
Multi-product purchases require multiple expenses or manual tracking
Real World Example: Order 30 laptops from distributor - 10 Lenovo, 10 Dell, 5 HP, 2 Asus, 3 Macbooks. Currently have to create 7 separate expenses and manually calculate costs, or create one expense and lose the per-product cost tracking.
What Would Help: Purchase order module that follows the quotes/invoices pattern:
Create PO with multiple line items (different products, quantities, costs)
Send to vendor
Mark as "Received"
Updates product stock levels and costs
Creates single expense record linked to PO
Additionally, @johnny mentioned you can link stock to an expense - would be good to confirm if this feature exists and works as described.
@johnny - You mentioned the PO approach would require "quite some overhaul" but it should be done at some point. Still thinking this direction? Would you prefer this as core functionality or could it work as custom pages?
In the meantime: If full PO module is too heavy, even just adding product_cost field would enable profit/loss tracking on quotes and invoices. As @ErskineTech mentioned in the Finance/Quote Features discussion - "quote generation should allow me to enter the raw cost and present me with profit (clearly this would not go out on the Quote but be used to work out the profitability of the job)"
Why This Matters:
Multiple products in one purchase requires separate expenses or manual cost tracking
Can't see actual profit margins on jobs
Workaround with spreadsheets defeats having everything in ITFlow
Related discussions: