Understanding your product insights and what is coming in and when is a crucial aspect of inventory management. For this reason, we have added an additional card to the inventory dashboard that allows you to see insights about your "Active" POs.
In this article, I will provide a quick overview and a few tips on how to ensure the insights are accurate and displayed properly.
Overview:
The Purchase Order insights are insights pulled directly from the overview found within the PO tab. These insights are dependent on the information you include in each of your orders and the status that is applied to them.
If your PO's status is not set to an active/open state (i.e., sent to supplier, in delivery, or in production), then the information found within that PO will not be accounted for in the insights. This is to avoid overestimations and inflated numbers and to ensure you only see the right order information.
From the dashboard you can see:
Units in Transit - the total number of units coming in from all open orders.
Next Arrival Date - when you should be expecting the next order to be received.
Open Payments - any payments that have not been made but are reported in the order.
Next Payment date - the date when you are expected to make the next payment for an order.
Each of these data points is pulled directly from the overview section of the PO tab and is very easy to troubleshoot if they are not displaying correctly.
Resolving Display/Value Issues
If you find that, at any point, the information found in this section is incorrect or may be missing, there are a few different things you can do to remove any issues. To make any changes you will first have to navigate to the PO tab. This can be done by selecting the Purchase Orders tab on the side navigation, or by selecting the "View all purchase orders" button within the section itself.
Once you are in the PO tab, you can ensure the information for each order is correct.
1. Reviewing the status.
The first and most important step in ensuring your insights are accurate is to double-check the status of the PO. If you want the information from a PO to be included in the insights, the order needs to be in an active state.
Set to supplier
In delivery
In production
These three statuses, with an exception for "Partially Received," are the only statuses that indicate an active/open PO. If the order is in draft, canceled, or fully received, they will not be accounted for in the insights.
So, if you are noticing some units may not be accounted for, or you have an order that should be coming sooner than it is showing, checking the status of the order should be the first thing you do.
2. Correcting unit counts.
If your order is in the correct status, but you aren't seeing the correct units, you may need to review some of your orders to ensure they are properly configured.
Thankfully, you can look at the "Units" column for each order and see how many units are included. If you see an order with a lower number of units than expected, you can click on the order, review the units in more detail, and update accordingly.
3. Updating the estimated arrival.
When creating a new order, there are times when you may not be sure when an order is set to arrive, or an arrival date has not been provided by a supplier. In those cases, you may avoid adding an arrival date to an order initially. This may result in your insights not displaying an arrival date that you believe it should be.
If this is the case, you can identify the order with the missing arrival date by reviewing your list of orders and checking to see if all active orders contain an arrival date. This is a very identifiable metric when the order is in an active state, as you will have a blank spot in the "Next est. arrival" column (see image above).
Resolving this issue is very simple. First, you will want to select the order with the missing date; then, you will want to select "manage" on the Shipping card. This will open you to a new window where you can update and manage the information for your various shipments.
From this page, you will want to click "Edit" on the first shipment (if you have more than one, you will want to do this for all shipments), then add the estimated arrival date by manually entering the date or selecting it by using the calendar option. Once the information has been added, you can click apply and then save.
After the information has been saved, you can navigate back to the dashboard or the inventory tab to check that the date has been updated.
Remember that for the information to be shown in the overview and dashboard, the order must be in an active/open status (i.e., in production, sent to supplier, or in delivery).
4. Adding payment information.
Including payment information allows you to track what has been paid for, what hasn't, and when that payment is due. If you are seeing zero or no information displayed in the "Open payments" or "Next payment" sections, there is a chance this information was not added to the PO when it was created.
Just like the other metrics we have discussed, you can very easily identify what orders have payments associated with them and which do not just by reviewing the PO table. From this view, you can click into whatever order is missing these details, then click on the "Manage" button on the "Payments" card.
This will open a side-view window where you can add the associated payment information and the dates it should or has been paid. Once you apply that and click save, you should then see this information populate in the PO overview and the dashboard insights.
And that's all there is to it. If you aren't seeing accurate insights on your dashboard, it is important to verify that the correct information and status have been applied to your orders. Without accurate order information, you won't see accurate insights. So always double-check that the correct units have been added, you've input an arrival date, your payments are up to date, and the status has been set to active and you'll be set to leverage accurate PO insights from your dashboard.
If you're still having trouble seeing any of this information or it's not updating, please contact our support team. We're happy to assist.
Thank you for reading this Help Center article! Our goal is to help you become an inventory pro. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to our team, book a meeting, or explore more of our Help Center for more guides on navigating and configuring Genie.
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