This article describes the steps required to create a Purchase Order using a .csv file.  If you place orders online with your suppliers, many supplier B2B websites will now allow you to export a .csv file of the items you have placed on the order with them.  

The ability to then use this .csv file to create a Purchase Order in Cloud POS, is a useful feature which can help you to save time and reduce the chance of errors.  

You can also manually create a .csv file to create a Purchase Order using the same functionality.

How to import a Purchase Order CSV

1) In the Back Office, from the menu on the left, expand the Purchasing & Transfers heading, then select Purchase Orders:

2) Click New in the top left of the grid:

3) Choose Import From CSV from the Purchase Order Type dropdown:

4) Select your store from the Purchasing Store(s) drop-down list:

5) Select the suppliers you have order from – you can select from one to all:

6) On the Forward Order Setup tab, you can add some additional settings to the items on your Purchase Order. For example, you can make the items on this Purchase Order available for preorder on your Ecommerce site:

7) On the Additional Information tab, you can change the title of the purchase order, and give it a supplier reference and a comment – these are optional.  You can also override the due date for when you expect the shipment to arrive.

8) Click on Create Purchase Order(s) in the bottom right to create your purchase order. One order will be created for each of the suppliers you specified at Step 5.

9) From the following page, you can then click in the green box to open File Explorer and find the .csv file you wish to upload from your computer, or you can drag and drop the file onto the green box.  Note the information on the left of this page, which describes the format of the file you can import.

10) If the .csv file you have does not match the format of either Supplier Part Code, Quantity or Supplier Part Code, Quantity, Cost you will need to edit the file outside of Cloud POS to put it into this format.  Here is an example of a .csv file containing Supplier Part Code, Quantity:

11) If the supplier is one that you have a SIM license for, the top section of the screen will display this information:

12)  The items you have imported will now appear in the Import Preview below:

If you are happy with the information you see in the preview, you can click the Import to Purchase Order button.

13)  The items from your .csv file will now have been added to the Purchase Order.

14)  From here you can make any adjustments necessary and once complete, you can Mark As Placed to raise the purchase order in the system.  See the related articles for further information.

SIM Functionality in the Purchase Order

If you are raising a Purchase Order for a supplier for whom you have a SIM licence, there is some additional functionality which can help you to add items to your Cloud POS database using SIM.

At Step 17, once you have uploaded your .csv file, Cloud POS will identify which partcodes already exist in your Cloud POS database.

If there are items which do not exist in your Cloud POS database but can be found in SIM, you will be given the option to import these items to your database using SIM:

All you need do here is select the correct Department & Category from the dropdown in the menu and the item will be imported from SIM and added to your purchase order.