How Purchasing & Procurement Works
Purchase requests, purchase orders, goods receipt, supplier management, and how purchasing connects to inventory and accounting.
What Purchasing does
Purchasing manages the procurement of goods and services from suppliers: raising purchase orders, receiving goods, matching supplier invoices (bills), and managing vendor relationships. It sits between Inventory (which needs stock replenished) and Accounting (which needs to record the liability and payment).
The procurement workflow
Purchase Request → Supplier Quote → Purchase Order → Goods Receipt → Bill → Payment
1 — Purchase Request (Procurement module) Anyone in the organisation can raise a purchase request: "I need 10 units of item X from supplier Y." The request goes through an approval workflow before a PO is raised.
2 — Supplier Quote Get a quote from one or more suppliers. Compare quotes side-by-side. Select the winner.
3 — Purchase Order The approved PO is sent to the supplier (by email from the platform). The PO records the items, quantities, agreed prices, delivery address, and expected delivery date.
4 — Goods Receipt When the goods arrive, record a goods receipt against the PO. Quantities received are matched against the PO. The stock level in Inventory is updated automatically.
5 — Bill (Supplier Invoice) When the supplier sends their invoice, enter it as a Bill in Purchasing. Plenix performs three-way matching — checking that the bill matches both the PO (what was ordered) and the goods receipt (what was received). Discrepancies are flagged for review.
6 — Payment Approved bills are paid via the Accounting module. The payment records against the bill, and a journal entry is created.
Vendor Management
Purchasing → Vendors is the master list of your suppliers:
- Company name, contact details, payment terms, currency
- Default tax and GL account codes for bills from this vendor
- Purchase history and spend analytics
Vendor records keep your supplier relationships centralised — no need to re-enter supplier details on each PO.
How Purchasing connects to the rest of the platform
Inventory: Goods receipt from a PO automatically updates stock levels. Low-stock alerts in Inventory can auto-generate purchase requests.
Accounting: Approved bills create accounts payable entries. Payments create bank entries. The full P&L impact of purchasing is reflected in Accounting without manual work.
Procurement: The Procurement module handles the pre-PO phase — purchase requests and quote comparison — feeding approved requests into Purchasing for PO creation.
ERP: Project-related procurement can be linked to an ERP project, tracking project spend against the project budget.
Where to go next
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