Procurement and inventory

Vendors, purchase orders, goods receipts, stock items and movements, and how receiving posts into finance.

Operations guide for day and boarding schools.

Last updated August 29, 2026

These are two registers with a one-way link. Procurement records what the school agreed to buy from a named vendor, and inventory records what the school currently holds. Receiving an order is the join: it creates stock rows and an expense in one transaction. Nothing flows the other way, so a stock count never changes an order and a low quantity never raises one.

Do the setup in order, because each step is created by the one before it. A vendor without an email address can never be invited to the portal later; an order raised without a budget cannot commit spend when it is received; and an order can only be edited or deleted while it is still PENDING. Inventory has no item code field at all, so agree a naming convention before the first receipt lands, or the register fills with near-duplicates that nobody can tell apart.

Screen	Path	What you do there
Vendors	/vendors	Supplier master, contacts, GST, portal invite
Vendor detail	/vendors/[id]	Contacts, payment terms, invite or revoke portal access
Procurement	/procurement	Order list, create, approve, receive
Order detail	/procurement/[id]	Line items, status history, printable goods receipt
Inventory	/inventory	Stock rows, category and condition filters, CSV export
Item detail	/inventory/[id]	Movement history, adjustment and disposal
Vendor portal	/vendor-portal	The vendor reads their own orders and submits bills
Vendor bills	/finance/vendor-bills	Finance three-way match and payment

Who owns each half

Task	Who can do it
Vendors, orders, receiving	Platform Admin and Support Staff - Purchasing. No other role can open the screens at all
Approve or reject an order	Not the creator. Platform Admin, Principal or Vice Principal below 25,000 rupees; Principal or Vice Principal at or above it
Create items and record stock movements	Platform Admin, Support Staff - Purchasing, Support Staff - Facilities
Read inventory without changing it	Principal and Vice Principal, who see the register with a read-only notice

What receiving actually writes

A goods receipt numbered GRN-<order number> with one line per item and the quantity you entered.
The received value committed against the linked budget, if the order has one.
A paid expense titled Procurement · <order number>, dated today, recorded as a bank transfer.
One new inventory row per line for the quantity stocked, in the OTHER category with the vendor as supplier.
Nothing at all if the calendar month of the order date has been closed in finance - receiving is refused rather than posting into a closed period.

Stock movement rules worth knowing

Every quantity change is a movement with a reason code, so the register can be reconciled against a physical count afterwards.
Any movement other than a stocktake that lands on zero deactivates the item; a stocktake counting above zero brings it back.
A stocktake is the only movement accepted on an inactive item.
The item detail screen offers adjustment and disposal only. Stocktake, transfer, custody and write-off exist in the API but have no control yet.

Limits

No item codes, barcodes or serial numbers in inventory. Laboratory equipment is the only place serials are tracked.
The supplier field on an item is free text, so inventory cannot roll up spend by vendor. Use expenses and vendor bills in finance for that.
No stock issue and return cycle. Custody is a property of the item, not a loan with a due date.

Common questions

Quick answers in plain language.

Who can open /procurement, and who actually approves an order?+

The page admits Platform Admin and Support Staff - Purchasing, plus vendor portal users scoped to their own orders. Approval is a separate finance decision: the creator may never approve their own order, and anything at or above the high-value threshold of 25,000 rupees needs Principal or Vice Principal - neither of whom can open /procurement. In practice a Platform Admin approves in the app.

Does receiving a purchase order top up the stock item we already have?+

No. Each received line creates a brand new inventory row in the OTHER category with the vendor name as supplier and condition GOOD. Merging or reclassifying those rows is manual housekeeping, and there is no item code to match on.

Can I set a reorder level so somebody is told when stock runs low?+

No. The low-stock badge on /inventory is a fixed threshold of five units for every item, with no email, notification or draft order behind it. A minimum-stock field exists in the database but nothing in the application reads or writes it.

We received an order by mistake. How do we undo it?+

Cancel the order. Cancelling from RECEIVED deletes the linked expense, hands the committed amount back to the budget, and writes a disposal movement against every stock row that receipt created before zeroing and deactivating it. Receiving again will not correct the first attempt, because receiving is idempotent.