Odoo 14 - Module purchase
Simple administration of quotation requests and procurement orders
7 January, 2021 by
Odoo 14 - Module purchase
manaTec GmbH, Tom Pohling
 

To map our purchasing processes, Odoo offers us our own application with its Purchasing module. The purchasing module integrates very well into our overall company process through the connection to other modules, such as sales, warehouse or production. Furthermore, the module offers us numerous possibilities to adapt to our internal processes. So in today's blog, we are going to look at the Odoo Purchasing module.

There are three different access rights in the Purchasing module. If a user does not have access rights, the module will not be displayed to him in the dashboard and he will therefore not have access. The users of the rights group "User" can access all procurement orders as well as the products. The users of the right group "Administrator" have the complete access to the module, including reporting and configuration.

In the main menu of the module we find four menu items, orders, products, reporting and configuration. The Orders menu item takes us to the overview of all quote requests and procurement orders, as well as the overview of our suppliers. In addition, Odoo shows us within the overview of our quote requests a small statistic about the quote requests, the order values and the lead time until the procurement order.

The overview of all quotation requests and employment orders.
The overview of all quotation requests and employment orders.

Quotation requests and procurement orders are the same object in Odoo, just with different statuses. The overview of our suppliers references the Contacts module and shows us all our suppliers with the appropriate filter. In the next menu item Products we have the possibility to create our products in Odoo. With the appropriate configuration, we can also find the submenu for defining product variants.

In reporting, we can find various statistics about our procurement orders, which we can customize with the filters we already know in Odoo. We will go into how we generate meaningful KPIs from our purchases in one of our future blog posts. Within the configuration, we can create and edit the supplier price lists and also find numerous options to customize our purchasing process in the general module settings. For example, as mentioned earlier, we can enable the Product Variants option. In addition to this, we can, among other things, define a manager's order confirmation from a certain purchase value, activate the option to map tenders and framework agreements, or use dropshipping.

Once we have made the most important settings for our purchasing process within the configuration, we define our products. Here it is important that we create all products that we want to buy or sell in Odoo as a separate object.

The configuration of a product.
The configuration of a product.

In purchasing, Odoo also distinguishes between three different product types, service, consumables and storable products. Depending on the product type, we have different effects in other modules in the further process. Service products can be linked to the project management module and can generate new projects or project tasks after the sale, for example. Consumable products generate a goods delivery after purchase. Putaway products have a strong link to the Warehouse module and trigger both a warehouse movement and a goods delivery after purchase.

In the "Purchasing" tab within the product configuration, we can now store price lists of our suppliers. In doing so, we specify, for example, the price, the quantity or the delivery time. Specifying a default tax rate for our product makes it easier for us to create the quote request later on, because the tax specified in the product is automatically applied to the quote request.

In the next step, we navigate to the Orders --> Request for Quotation menu item. Via the button "Create" we have the possibility to create a new quote request in Odoo.

The creation of a new quotation request.
The creation of a new quotation request.

Within the quote request, we first select the supplier. This field references the contacts module. If a supplier contact does not yet exist, we can create it directly here. The payment terms that are stored in the contact are transferred directly to the quote request in the "Additional information" tab and can still be customized there.

Furthermore, we specify the desired delivery date and can configure an automated order confirmation for this order. In doing so, the supplier receives an e-mail at the defined time in which he can confirm or adjust the delivery date again. Thus we have at any time an overview, when which orders are delivered and whether the delivery dates are kept by the suppliers. Via Action --> Send reminder, the reminder can also be sent manually to the supplier at any time.

Next, we edit the product lines of our quote request by adding products, sections and notes. If we want to select a product that does not yet exist in Odoo, we can create the product here. Finally, we can still specify the buyer in the "Additional information" tab. By default, the user who created the quote request is stored.

Once we have entered all the products and information in the quote request, we can confirm it manually or send it to our supplier directly from Odoo via email. This opens the email wizard with an email template already selected and the quote request attached as a PDF file. The status of the quote request changes to "Request sent".

The E-mail to the supplier is sent directly from within Odoo.
The E-mail to the supplier is sent directly from within Odoo.

After the supplier's confirmation, the status of the request changes to "Procurement order". Depending on the product type, Odoo now generates, for example, a goods delivery for consumables or a warehouse movement and a goods delivery for putaway products. There are two ways to generate the supplier invoice in Odoo. We will show how we assign the supplier invoice to the procurement order via the Documents moduel in one of our next blog posts.

Alternatively, we click on the "Generate invoice" button in the procurement order. This creates a new Incoming Invoice object in the Invoice module , which is linked in the Procurement Order. Once the invoice is paid by us, we can record the payment and thus mark the invoice as paid.

The invoice for the procurement order.
The invoice for the procurement order.

Analogous to the Sales module, the work in the Purchasing module is also enormously facilitated if the supplier contacts and the products are cleanly created in Odoo. Here, too, the more information these objects contain and the better this data is maintained in Odoo, the faster and more effectively we work later in the actual purchasing process. The configuration options already mentioned help us to map our purchasing process individually in Odoo.

Do you also want to edit your purchasing process in Odoo and have questions about the configuration or functionality of the purchasing module?  Contact us now and we will be at your side as a competent Odoo partner!


Sources: www.odoo.com

 
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