Purchasing: Suppliers, Orders, Costs and Job Profit

What Purchasing Is

Purchasing, under Money in the menu, is where the office buys and pays for things for its jobs. It has three tabs: Purchase orders, Suppliers and Expenses. What arrives against an order goes onto the job as a part used, so it reaches the invoice like any part an engineer records, and the cost of the job is worked out from what was actually billed.

• Suppliers, Purchase orders and Expenses are for the owner and office. An engineer sees only the orders and costs of the job they are on, in the check or the job report, and never a price from an order.
• The profit of a job, its margin and the cost price of a part are for the owner only. The office sees the orders, costs and parts of a job, never the margins.
• Nothing here changes an invoice by itself. A part booked onto a job waits for invoice review like any other, and an approved cost is a cost of the job, not a line on the invoice.
• A firm that does not use any of this can switch it off: the owner turns off Purchasing and job costs under Settings, Organisation, Features your firm uses. Purchasing then leaves the menu, its pages take you to Work with a notice that Purchasing is switched off and where an owner can switch it back on, the job page loses its Profit card, purchase orders and costs that are not parts (parts used stay), the check page loses Orders and costs, and engineers see no orders or costs on the web or the app. The job profit report stays under Reports. Nothing is deleted, so switching it back on shows everything again.

Suppliers

Keep the merchants and wholesalers you buy from once, and choose them on an order.

• Suppliers, in Purchasing, lists them with a search and an Active or Archived filter. A supplier has a name, your account number with them, a contact, an email, a phone number, an address, payment terms and notes. The email is where purchase orders are sent. Saving a change to a supplier says Supplier saved. once the page shows it. A value over its limit (notes allow 2,000 characters, the address 500) is flagged on its own field with Keep it to 2,000 characters or fewer., and the cursor moves there.
• A supplier you no longer use is archived, not deleted, so an order keeps the supplier it was raised to. Archive supplier, on the supplier’s page, asks first, and Restore supplier brings it back. Delete is offered only while nothing refers to the supplier.
• Import CSV, on the Suppliers page, loads a list in bulk. The template has name, account_number, contact_name, email, phone, address, town, postcode, payment_terms, status, notes and source_ref. A supplier is matched on its source_ref first and then on its name (capitals do not matter). Choose Skip duplicates or Update existing, which writes only the columns the row states. A status of inactive archives the supplier. The preview lists the rows that are refused and why, and the whole import can be undone from the result screen; a supplier that an order refers to is kept.
• On the Van stock page, a part can name its usual supplier. The purchase order form offers the parts from the supplier you chose first.

Raising and Sending a Purchase Order

• The statuses are Draft, Sent, Part received, Received, Cancelled. An order moves to Part received and then Received as deliveries are booked in.
• Let the engineer on the job mark items as collected, a box on the order form (it needs a job chosen in For a job), lets the engineer on that job mark the items they collected from the merchant; the order’s page shows it as Engineer may collect. It is off unless you turn it on, order by order.
• The PDF names the supplier, the job reference, the delivery note and the lines with their totals. It never names the customer.

1. 1Open Purchasing, under Money (it opens on Purchase orders), and choose New order, or New order for this job on the job’s own page.
2. 2Choose the supplier. Choose the job the order is for, or leave it as stock for the van. Add a reference, the date you want it by (the Wanted by column shows a dash when it is left empty; a date before today is kept, and the form says This date is in the past first) and a delivery note, such as the address to deliver to. Cancel on the order form leaves it, and asks first when you have typed something that is not saved.
3. 3Add the lines (up to 50): what you are ordering, the supplier’s own code if you have it, the quantity, the cost of each one before VAT and the VAT rate. Pick a part from the list to fill the description and cost in. The net of a line is its quantity times its cost, and its VAT is worked out line by line, to the penny, exactly as an invoice does it. Leave the cost blank if you do not know it yet: the line is saved with no cost (never as £0.00), prints as TBC on the PDF and is left out of the totals until the delivery is booked in.
4. 4Choose Save draft order. It takes the next number in your own series, PO-00001 upwards (the screen says Draft order PO-00001 saved), and you can edit it freely while it is a draft. A save is made against the copy you opened: if someone else changed the order in the meantime nothing is saved and you are asked to reload it, so one person’s change never overwrites another’s.
5. 5Choose Send to supplier, which opens a panel with an Email it to box (the supplier’s email, or one you type). Email the order sends it as a PDF on your letterhead, from your Manifold email branding, with your reply-to address. If the email cannot be sent the order stays a draft, so it is never shown as sent when the supplier did not get it. Mark as sent without emailing, a button in that same panel beside Email the order (not on the order page itself), marks the order sent without emailing anything, for an order you phoned in or handed over.
6. 6Email it emails an order you marked as sent without emailing; once it has been emailed the button reads Email again, and Email it again in the panel it opens sends it a second time. Download PDF saves it. Return to draft takes a sent order back while nothing has arrived against it, and Cancel order cancels it (you can say why). Cancel order asks first, and Keep the order closes the question and leaves the order as it was.

Booking In a Delivery

When the goods arrive, open the order, fill in Book in a delivery and choose Book it in; the screen says Delivery booked in. One transaction records what arrived, what was billed and where it went.

• For each line still to come, enter how many arrived and the cost each, before VAT, that the supplier actually billed. It starts at the ordered cost. Fill in everything outstanding puts the full quantity still to come on every line (the costs stay as they are). More than is outstanding is refused. A line ordered with no cost and booked in with none has No cost recorded: it is left out of the job’s profit, and the profit says so, until you set the cost.
• Submitting twice, a double tap or a repeat after a lost answer, books the delivery once. A delivery lists each line once: if you have entered a line twice, add the quantities together.
• Enter the supplier’s invoice number if you have it. It is kept with the delivery so you can match it to their invoice.
• Choose where the delivery goes. Onto the job as a part used: it goes to invoice review with the job’s other parts, so you can charge it on. Into an engineer’s van stock: it is counted into that van and costs the job nothing until a part is used from it. A cost of the job, not a part: a delivery charge or a subcontractor, with no part made. An order that is not for a job can only go into stock.
• Booked in lists every delivery with where it went and the cost billed, flagged when it is not what was ordered. Set cost (or Change cost) puts the cost from the supplier’s invoice on a delivery, or corrects one entered wrongly; each change is written to the audit log with the old and the new cost. For a delivery into a van it also gives the van part that cost if the part has none, so a part used from the van is costed; a cost the van part already has is left alone. Undo takes one back: the part comes off the job (not while it is on a quote or an invoice, take it off there first), or the count comes off the van (not once some of it has been used).
• The order’s status follows the deliveries. A second delivery for the rest is booked the same way.

Costs That Are Not Parts

Expenses, in Purchasing, is for a cost on a job that is not a part: skip hire, parking, subcontractor, equipment hire, waste disposal, something else. Each has an amount, the VAT in it, the date, who was paid and a photo of the receipt.

• The engineer adds a cost from the job on their phone (see On The Phone below). It waits as Waiting for the office until you decide it. The office adds its own from the Expenses page (Add a cost to a job) or from the job’s page, and a cost the office adds is approved as it is entered.
• Under Expenses, what is waiting is listed first, with the receipt photo, the job and who added it. Choose Approve, Not approved, Back to waiting, or Remove. Not approved opens a box asking why, and the note is required: the cost is not refused until you write one, and the engineer sees it on the cost. The number waiting shows on the Expenses tab. The statuses are Waiting for the office, Approved, Not approved.
• Only an approved cost counts in the job’s profit, and it counts at its net, before VAT, unless your business is not VAT registered, when it counts with its VAT. A cost waiting or not approved is shown, not counted.
• The office enters the amount before VAT and the VAT as they are printed on the receipt, so a receipt with two rates is entered exactly. A correction is made by removing the cost and adding it again.
• A receipt is a JPEG, PNG or WebP photo. It is kept with the cost in the private photo store, never in the job’s photos, so it never appears in a job report or to the customer. Only the office, and the engineer who entered that cost (or uploaded the photo), can open it: another engineer or a customer’s portal login cannot list, open, replace or delete it. Removing a cost removes its photo, and so does deleting the property.
• A cost is dated today or earlier and no more than a year back (366 days), whoever enters it. The database holds the same line, so a date outside it is refused wherever it comes from.

A Job’s Orders, Costs and Profit

Every job has a page of its own, and owners and office users find its money there. Open it by choosing the job on Work, or its address in the detailed job list (for a gas safety check, Orders and costs on its row under Recently completed, or on the check’s page), or from the job named on an order or a cost.

• Under 02 Visits & costs, the job’s page lists its purchase orders (Purchase orders for this job, with New order for this job), its costs that are not parts (Costs that are not parts, with Add a cost) and the parts used on it (Parts used on this job), whether recorded by an engineer or booked in from a delivery.
• For the owner, a Profit card shows what the job earned. Invoiced (before VAT), less the parts at cost, less what was ordered for the job, less the approved costs, less labour, is the profit. The margin is the profit as a percentage of what was invoiced. While nothing has been invoiced for the job, Invoiced and Profit read a dash (not £0.00), the margin reads No margin yet and the card says Nothing has been invoiced for this job yet, so there is no margin to work out. Costs alone are never printed as a loss against no sale.
• Revenue is the invoices issued for the job, the same net the VAT figures use. A draft, a void invoice and an invoice imported from your old system are not counted, and the card says how many were left out.
• Nothing is counted twice. A part a delivery put onto the job is costed from the delivery, at the cost billed, and its part row is not counted again; it counts however the part is later treated (removed, dismissed from invoice review or returned), because the money was spent. To take that cost off the job, Undo the delivery on the order. A delivery put into van stock costs the job nothing until a part is used from it, and the van part is costed at the cost billed, with the order line’s VAT added if you are not VAT registered, like a delivery onto a job. A part or a delivery with no cost recorded is counted as nothing and the card says so, in words, so the profit reads as unfinished rather than the item as free.
• Labour is the time the team recorded on the job: finished travel and on-site time from the Time card, each stretch at that person’s hourly cost on the day it was worked (Timesheets, then Cost rates, which only the owner sees). It counts as soon as the timer is stopped, whether or not the office has approved the day, and if a day is sent back and corrected the profit follows. A timer still running is not counted until it stops. Time against a gas safety check counts for that check’s job, once. The card shows the labour and the hours behind it, never anyone’s hourly cost.
• Labour not costed: a job with no finished time recorded on it, or whose time has no hourly cost, shows Labour not costed and the profit is before labour. It is never read as labour being free.
• Time worked when a person had no hourly cost in force (before their first rate, or no rate set yet) is counted as nothing and is counted in minutes: the card, the report, the file and the emailed report say, for example, that 90 minutes have no cost rate. Set the rate from the day they started, under Timesheets, then Cost rates, and the profit follows. Job profit is worked out when you look at it, so a rate dated before work already done costs that work, while a later rate never changes it.
• A VAT registered business reclaims the VAT on what it buys, so its figures are before VAT. One that is not VAT registered cannot, so its costs are counted with their VAT (an approved cost’s amount plus its VAT, a delivery’s cost plus its order line’s VAT) and the card, the report and the file say Costs include VAT (not VAT-registered). A part an engineer recorded is counted at the cost entered. The setting is the same VAT registration your invoices use, under Settings.
• The parts and the costs a delivery made are the office’s: an engineer who reads the part on their check sees no cost on it, and its note names only the order number, never the supplier, their invoice or the price.

The Job Profit Report

Reports, Job profit, is for the owner. It adds the jobs up so you can see what is paying.

• Choose the period (This month, Last 3 months, Last 6 months, Last 12 months) and group the jobs by month, engineer, client or job. A group is the plain sum of its jobs, so it always agrees with the job pages. A job counts in the month it was completed, and in the month it was booked for only until it is. Jobs that have not been invoiced and have cost nothing are left out before anything else is counted, and the invoices imported from your old system stay out of the revenue, with a note saying how many.
• The table ends with a Total. Download CSV saves the same table as a file, with money as plain numbers and the margin as a percentage number, so a loss stays a number in a spreadsheet. The notes that qualify the figures follow the Total in the file as lines of their own, the same sentences as the page.
• Labour is its own column. A line where no labour is costed says Not costed on the page and is blank in the file, never nought. The file also has Jobs with no labour cost and Minutes with no cost rate columns, and the notes under the table say the same in words, so you can see how much of the profit is before some labour.
• A month, engineer or client is one line however many jobs it holds, so those views always cover every job. The job by job list shows the newest 1,500 jobs that have money; if there are more it ends with a line, Truncated: N more jobs not included, in the page, the file and the emailed report, and the Total is the jobs listed. A period with more than 5,000 jobs gives no figures at all rather than part of them: choose a shorter period.
• Job profit is also a saved report (Reports, Saved reports, Set up Job profit): one line per job and a Total, with a Labour column and a Minutes with no cost rate column, which you can download and have emailed on a schedule like any saved report. Name it up to 80 characters. It is the owner’s alone: the office cannot see it, open it, change it or schedule it, and a schedule pauses if the person who set it up can no longer see job profit. Because it carries each job’s labour, which would let a reader work out an hour of someone’s time, it can be emailed to you and to people outside your organisation whom you confirm, such as your accountant, but never to your office team or engineers: the schedule will not save with their address, and a send leaves it out.
• Emailed on a schedule, the report says in its subject and at the top of the email how many jobs it lists and how many it left off (for example 1,500 jobs, 7 more not included), or, for a period with more than 5,000 jobs, that no figures were produced. That email is sent even if the schedule is set not to send empty reports, because an empty report with no figures to show is not a quiet month.
• Downloading the report is written to the audit log.

On The Phone: Orders and Costs On A Job

The engineer sees this on the web check and job report and in the native app, with the same words.

• Orders for this job, the section after More for this job on a check (shown once the office has ordered something for the job) and after Photos in a job report, lists the orders the office has sent for the job: the order number, the supplier, what was ordered and what has come in. There are no prices. Neither this nor Costs on this job shows when the owner has switched Purchasing and job costs off.
• If you have ticked Let the engineer on the job mark items as collected on an order, and the job is booked for them, the engineer can enter how many of each item they collected and choose Mark collected. The items go onto the job as parts used, ready for invoice review, with no cost the engineer can read: the cost billed stays on the delivery, which only the office sees. They cannot choose another place or another cost. A second tap, or a repeat after a weak signal, collects once.
• Costs on this job lets the engineer add a cost: what it was for (Skip hire, Parking, Subcontractor, Equipment hire, Waste disposal, Something else), what it was, who was paid, the date, the total on the receipt and the VAT in it (20% VAT, 5% VAT, No VAT), and a photo of the receipt. The total is split into the amount before VAT and the VAT in whole pence. The photo is sent after the cost is saved, so a photo that does not send never loses the cost; the cost offers to add it again.
• The engineer can remove their own cost, or add or replace its photo, until the office has looked at it. After that it is the office’s. If the office does not approve it, the note shows on the cost.
• Both need a signal. The list is read when the panel opens and a cost is saved when there is signal; nothing is queued on the phone. With no signal the panel says so.
• A cost can be dated today or up to a year back (366 days), and not in the future.

Troubleshooting Purchasing