Stock control
Suppliers and ordering
Set up suppliers, review par levels and reorder suggestions across every supplier, and send purchase orders.
Suppliers and ordering
The Ordering screen is where restocking happens — reviewing what Stock thinks you're running low on, and turning that into a purchase order sent to a supplier.
Finding your way around
A sidebar runs down the left of the Ordering screen. At the top are the two screens that answer "what should I buy" — Reorder board and Par levels — then All orders, then every supplier you have set up, each with the number of orders still open with them.
Choosing a supplier filters the screen to that supplier rather than taking you somewhere else, so you can move between them without losing your place. The + beside a supplier's name starts a new order for them directly.
Whatever you pick is reflected in your browser's address bar, so a filtered view can be bookmarked or pasted to a colleague and it will open on exactly what you were looking at. On a narrow screen the sidebar collapses into a button at the top of the page, labelled with whatever you are currently viewing.
Suppliers
Add each supplier you buy ingredients from on the Suppliers screen, along with a primary contact and phone number. The email address is what purchase orders are sent to. Every ingredient can have a preferred supplier, which is how Stock knows who to send a reorder to. If you use Xero, each supplier's accounting details — their Xero contact, account code and payment terms — are set separately under Settings, in Xero Export; see Exporting to Xero.
Par levels
A par level is the amount of an ingredient you always want on hand. Set one on any ingredient you'd like Stock to actively manage, and Stock will flag it whenever what's available drops below it. Only ingredients with a par level are ever suggested for reorder. See Understanding on-hand vs available stock for how "available" is calculated, since that's the number par levels compare against, not just what's on the shelf.
Reviewing your par levels
Par levels, in the Ordering sidebar, is where Stock proposes changes to those numbers. It's a page of its own rather than one more thing in your recommendations inbox, because reviewing pars is a batch job — fifty small numbers to glance down — while a price rise or a dead-stock warning is read one at a time.
A proposed par is a week's cover, worked out from the last fortnight's average trade, rounded up to a whole unit. Each row shows the figures it came from, so you can see what's behind it rather than take it on trust. Ingredients are only listed when the gap is worth acting on: the proposal has to differ from your current par by at least a whole unit and by more than about 40%, so pars don't churn over rounding.
Two things that follow from "a fortnight's average":
- A fortnight is a short history. Two weeks won't have seen your seasonal pattern, and a quiet fortnight proposes a quiet par. These are suggestions to sanity-check, not a forecast.
- An average flattens a spiky week. If you trade mainly Friday and Saturday, fourteen days divided by fourteen is a number that happens on no actual day. Stock measures that shape and holds those rows back rather than quietly proposing a par that empties by Saturday lunch.
Most rows arrive ticked. Some arrive unticked with the reason beside them — trade landing on only a handful of days in the fortnight, one day far busier than the rest, or a proposal that more than halves your current par. Select all deliberately skips those, so ticking everything still leaves exactly the few rows that need a person. You can always tick one yourself after reading it. A cut is treated more carefully than a rise on purpose: a par set too high ties up cash and you'll see it at the next stocktake, while a par set too low empties a shelf mid-service — and because par is also what triggers a reorder, halving it doesn't just order less, it orders later.
Turning a suggestion down is remembered against that figure, not against the ingredient. So if you decide 50 is wrong for an ingredient, Stock stays quiet about 50 — but if trade doubles and the answer becomes 120, it will say so. A "no" doesn't silence an ingredient for good. Accepting needs no memory at all: once par matches the proposal there is no longer a gap to flag.
This page deliberately shows no stock levels. A par is a target derived from usage alone, and putting a second "how much have we got" figure here would be one more number to disagree with the reorder board. The board answers what to buy; this page answers what level to hold to.
If you'd rather set pars entirely by hand, switch the Par levels task to Off under Settings, AI & Automation, and the suggestions stop.
Order suggestions
Stock never asks you to buy something twice. Anything already on an order you have approved or sent is treated as stock on its way and taken off the suggestion, less whatever has already been delivered against that order — so looking again on Wednesday at an order you placed on Monday does not offer you a second one. Days of cover is left alone by this, because a delivery that has not arrived does not feed anyone: a line can say it runs out on Tuesday and still ask you to buy nothing.
What counts as on its way is stock on an order you have approved or sent — approving is what sends it — minus anything already received against that order. An order still sitting as a draft, or waiting for approval, does not count, because nothing sends a draft and nothing expires one: subtracting it would keep that ingredient off your orders indefinitely. Those are shown to you instead, on the line, so you can send that order, delete it, or order anyway.
This is a change you will notice. Suggested quantities are smaller than they used to be for anything you already have on order — previously the same stock could be asked for twice, once on each run before the delivery landed. Smaller is the correct number.
Every night, Stock reviews your par levels and the last fortnight's usage, and drafts purchase orders grouped by supplier — one line per ingredient that's running short, plus a few days' extra cover so you don't run out while the delivery is on its way. Each draft carries a short note explaining why it's suggesting that quantity. If a supplier already has a suggested order waiting, Stock won't create a second one.
Every one of those drafts is created awaiting your approval, and there is no setting that changes that. Approving an order is what sends it, so the approval is always a person's — see AI and automation in Stock for why the Order suggestions task is a simple On / Off switch rather than a list of levels. Turning it Off stops the nightly drafts being created at all; turning it On never makes them send themselves.
Approving and sending
Review a draft order, adjust quantities if needed, and approve it. Approved orders are emailed to the supplier automatically within about ten minutes, along with a document they can use to prepare the delivery. Approval is therefore the last chance to change anything — treat it as the moment the order leaves the building, not as a step before one.
Placing the order also creates the pending invoice you'll check the delivery against when it arrives — see Managing invoices.
Starting an order yourself
You don't have to wait for the nightly drafts. Choose a supplier on the Ordering screen — either their card or the + beside their name in the sidebar — and you land on New Order with a basket already worked out for them: every ingredient they supply that is at or below par, or due to run out inside their lead time, with a suggested number of packs.
Each line can show its working. Open the Why …? link on the line — it names the quantity it is explaining, so it reads "Why 3 packs?" — and you get the par level, the days of cover being bought on top of it, what is counted as being on the shelf right now, anything already on its way, and how that became whole packs — including whether anything was rounded up to fill one. If a quantity cannot account for itself, the breakdown is withheld rather than guessed at.
The On order column separates two things that look alike. Stock that is coming — on an order you have approved or sent, minus anything already delivered against it — has already been taken off the quantity beside it, so you are only ever asked to buy the remainder. Stock that is only proposed — on a draft, or waiting for approval — has not been, and the line says so.
Most lines arrive ticked. Some arrive unticked with a reason beside them:
- On an order nobody has sent — a draft, or an order still waiting for approval, already covers some of this. That quantity is not taken off the suggestion, because nothing sends a draft and nothing expires one, so subtracting it would keep this ingredient off your orders indefinitely. The amount is shown on the line with a link to the orders carrying it, so you can send that order, delete it, or decide here.
- Quantity cannot be explained — the number stands, but its working could not be reproduced, so nothing is claimed about it.
- Pack is far bigger than needed — the smallest pack this supplier sells is several times what you actually need.
Select all deliberately leaves those lines alone. To include one, tick it yourself.
If the supplier has a minimum order value and the ticked lines don't reach it, you'll see how far short you are — and, if accepting every suggested line still wouldn't get there, you'll be told that too rather than sent hunting for something to add. Where a line has no price on record, the total is shown as a floor rather than a figure.
Quantities aren't edited here, because each one is shown alongside the working that produced it. Create the order and adjust quantities on the order itself. You can also start an order containing everything the supplier stocks, which is useful for a top-up that has nothing to do with par levels.
The reorder board
New Order answers "what do I need from this supplier?". The Reorder board, in the sidebar of the Ordering screen, answers the other question: what do I need at all, and who sells it?
It lists every ingredient below par across all your suppliers — one row each, however many suppliers stock it — with the one closest to running out at the top. Each row shows the days of cover left, what is already on its way, and a Buy from picker listing every supplier who could fill it, best first, with the number of packs and the cost from each. Choosing a different supplier changes the quantity, because pack sizes differ: three 1 kg bags and one 5 kg sack are the same shopping trip. Each row can show its working, same as on New Order.
Rows arrive ticked except where there is a reason to look, exactly as on New Order, and Select all leaves those alone. When you are happy, one button raises the orders — one draft order per supplier, so a single pass over the board can restock from four suppliers at once. If a supplier serves more than one of your locations, you get one order per location, because an order belongs to a location.
The orders are created as drafts, so nothing is sent until you approve them in the usual way. If one of several fails to be created, you are told which ones did go through rather than left guessing.
Picking a supplier in the sidebar narrows the board to what that supplier can fill, rather than switching you away from it. The number beside Reorder board is how many ingredients are on it.
What the AI actually does when you're ordering
It is worth being precise about this, because the quantities look like the sort of thing AI would produce and they are not.
The numbers are arithmetic. On the nightly drafts, on New Order and on the reorder board alike, every suggested quantity comes from your par levels, your recent usage, the supplier's lead time and their pack sizes — plus whatever is already on its way. No model is asked what to buy, and there is nothing probabilistic about the figure. That is why each line can show you its working, and why a line that cannot account for itself says so instead of offering a number with a confident explanation attached.
What AI writes is the summary note — the one-line rationale that appears on the finished order. That is the whole of its involvement in ordering, and if the wording can't be generated the order still gets a plain summary and the quantities are completely unaffected.
Switching the Order suggestions task Off under Settings, AI & Automation, is a bigger step than losing that sentence: it stops the nightly drafts being created at all. You can still build an order yourself on New Order or the reorder board, where the same arithmetic runs and shows the same working. See AI and automation in Stock.