Inventory is purchased and brought into Sprout using a Purchase Order (PO). Each purchase order is issued to a specific vendor and assigned a unique, consecutive purchase order number.

Purchase orders are primarily used to purchase inventory items that will later be received into the system and added to available inventory.

Purchase orders may also be created for non-stock or expense purchases, such as utility bills, uniform purchases, or other operational expenses. These types of purchase orders do not result in inventory being received.

Sprout also supports Purchase Order Sets, which allow multiple purchase orders to be grouped together logically. A purchase order set typically represents a single inbound shipment or truck.

Purchase order sets are commonly used to allocate freight and other additional costs across multiple purchase orders. These costs may be distributed:

• across all purchase orders in the set
• across all items in the set
• across selected items within the purchase orders

Freight and additional costs can be allocated based on:

• weight
• cube
• item count

Once inventory is received, the base item cost plus any allocated add-on costs are reflected in the total cost of the lot. This total cost is then used for inventory valuation and may also be used in sales price calculations.

For purchase orders that represent expenses or non-inventory items, there is no physical product to receive. These purchase orders are completed by closing the PO rather than receiving inventory.

The sections below describe how to create purchase orders, add items, manage purchase order sets, and adjust purchase orders after inventory has been received.