Purchasing report

Analysis

Purchasing at Northwind Supply Co. is in good order on the record: suppliers delivered 99.9% of ordered value across 2,876 purchase orders since 2024-01-02, and delivered orders arrived a median 12 days after sending, 1% later than their due date. The exposures below are administrative rather than supplier failure.

Shortages: $0 is outstanding on 0 purchase orders marked backordered or for review that were never closed, and $2,644 on 47 where no credit was requested at all (Gulliver Goods, Quill & Feather first). A further $121 across 3 SKUs is short by exact multiples and needs pack sizes confirmed before it can be claimed.

Draft orders: 29 purchase orders ($106,393 of line value) have been in draft longer than 90% of this company's orders ever are; 10 are older than any draft that was ever sent.

Stock: 47 products are out of stock past their reorder interval, forgoing about $14,810 of gross margin per month, concentrated at Thistledown Fabric, Kestrel Distribution, Jesper Trading. 30 orders are outstanding with suppliers, 30 past the vendor's longest delivery on record.

This month's actions: 11 credit requests, 24 draft decisions, 47 reorder or discontinue decisions, 58 dormant products to confirm.

Recommended fixes

Shortages

• Procedure: a receipt with received < ordered on a PO not marked backordered or for review becomes a credit request to the vendor within the receiving cycle; a PO marked backordered gets a ship-or-credit request instead of a credit request. One pass over the current 0 open backorders clears the backlog.
• Automation: rule S4 reads po_line short_received events (received < ordered on arrival) over the last 60 days, excludes lines on related vendors (own brands, returns bin) and lines under $5, groups by PO, and drafts one itemized credit request per PO addressed to the vendor's contact from the vendor table; lines on backordered or review POs are drafted as ship-or-credit follow-ups instead. A case above 10× the median value is held for review before drafting. Nothing is sent without approval; a draft with no address or no approval cannot be sent.
• Pack sizes: record the pack size per SKU (Answers tab, or a pack-size field in the product table). The rule then compares ordered and received in pack units and the 3 exact-multiple SKUs leave the shortfall or become credit requests.

Draft orders

• Procedure: a draft older than the normal cycle is sent, revised or cancelled by its owner; vendor minimums are recorded in the vendor table so a bundling wait is distinguishable from a stall.
• Automation: rule S10 reads po created events with no sent, delivered or completed event and status not in {Cancelled, Closed, Received}, flags drafts older than 14 days, and posts an internal note to the purchasing owner asking send, revise or cancel; past 240 days (the median age of drafts that were never sent at this company is 239 days, against 67 for those sent) the note recommends cancellation. Internal only; nothing reaches a supplier.

Stock

• Procedure: products at zero stock past their reorder interval are reordered or marked discontinued in the product table; discontinued status removes them from every list.
• Automation: rule S1 reads po_line created events, computes each SKU's median interval between orders and typical quantity from at least 3 prior orders, and flags a SKU when the time since its last order exceeds 1.25× its median interval and is under 3× (beyond that the SKU reads as discontinued); products with status in {Discontinued, Inactive} are skipped. It drafts one PO line per SKU (quantity = typical quantity, cost = last cost) grouped by supplier for approval. Between 3× and 6× the SKU is listed for confirmation only. Stock is read from the products table but does not by itself trigger a reorder (the trigger is the reorder interval) because a stock trigger cannot yet be graded against history; a dated stock snapshot is now written on each run so that it can be.

Open orders

• Procedure: an order past the vendor's typical delivery time gets a status request; past the vendor's longest delivery on record it is escalated.
• Automation: rule S3 reads po sent events without a delivered or completed event, computes each vendor's median and maximum sent-to-delivered days from at least 3 prior deliveries, and drafts a status request past the median and an escalation past the maximum, from templates, for approval before sending. Hindsight across 110 cutoffs: 0% of flagged orders were delivered within 90 days.