Suppliers and purchase orders
Stock & Recipes is an add-on. See What's included, and what's an add-on.
Suppliers
Under Inventory › Suppliers, each supplier holds a name, email, phone and address.
Add the ones you actually buy from. Search runs across name, email and phone, so a partial match is enough to find one mid-order.
A supplier with purchase orders against it can't be deleted — Restodesk tells you how many. That's deliberate: the orders reference them, and the history is the point.
Purchase orders
A purchase order is what you asked a supplier for. Receiving it is what puts stock in.
Creating one
- Go to Inventory › Purchase Orders › Create Purchase Order.
- Choose the Supplier.
- Set the Order Date and the Expected Delivery Date.
- Add items — search, pick, then set Quantity and Unit Price. The subtotal builds as you go.
- Add Notes if there's anything the supplier needs told.
- Save.
It gets a PO number and starts as Draft.
The statuses
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| Draft | Being built. Not sent. |
| Sent | With the supplier. |
| Partially Received | Some arrived; some outstanding. |
| Received | All of it arrived. |
| Cancelled | Called off. |
Mark as Sent when it goes to the supplier. You can also Download PDF to email or print it.
Receiving a delivery
This is the step that matters, and it's the one to do at the door rather than later.
- Open the purchase order and select Receive.
- For each line you see Ordered Quantity, Previously Received and Remaining.
- Enter the Receiving Quantity — what actually arrived.
- Confirm.
Stock goes up by what you received. Not by what you ordered.
Count what's in the crate. Ordering 10 kg and receiving 8 kg is a normal week; recording 10 because that's what the paperwork says puts a 2 kg lie into your stock figures that only a physical count will ever find.
If part of an order arrives, it becomes Partially Received and stays open for the rest. Receive again when the balance turns up.
Automatic reordering
Items with a preferred supplier and a reorder quantity can have purchase orders raised when stock drops below their threshold — which is why those two fields are worth filling in. See Items, categories and units.
Treat what it generates as a draft to review, not an order to send blind. Restodesk knows your stock level; it doesn't know you've got a function booked on Saturday.
Finding orders
Search by PO number or supplier, filter by supplier, status and date range.
Two views worth checking regularly:
- Sent, not received — orders you're waiting on. A delivery that never arrived shows up here rather than as a surprise on a Friday.
- Partially received — outstanding balances that quietly never got chased.
Reading the numbers
The purchase order screen totals Total Orders, Pending Orders, Completed Orders and Total Amount.
Alongside your vendor-wise expense report, that's the basis for a supplier conversation. Knowing exactly what you spend with someone changes the price you get.
A workflow that holds up
- Raise the PO before you order, not after. A phone order with no PO is a delivery nobody can check.
- Receive at the door. Count, then enter. Not at the end of the shift.
- Chase short deliveries the same day, while the driver's paperwork still exists.
- Check the invoice against the PO before paying, then record the payment as an expense.
Good to know
- Purchase orders are per branch.
- Permissions for suppliers and purchase orders are separate — a chef can raise orders without reaching supplier records. See What each role can do.
- Cancelling a purchase order doesn't remove stock already received against it.
- A supplier with orders can't be deleted. Records survive.