Creating a Purchase Order

There are two ways to create a Purchase Order in Skumo: using the analysis engine to generate suggested order quantities based on your sales data, or building one manually by adding items yourself. Both start the same way.

Step 1 — Choose Your Supplier

Click New Purchase Order from the Purchase Orders page.

You'll be asked to select a supplier. The list shows all your active suppliers. If the supplier you need isn't there yet, you can create one directly from this screen.

Multi-location stores: After selecting a supplier, you'll also choose a delivery location — the Shopify location this order is destined for. If your supplier has a default location set, it will be pre-selected for you, but you can change it. The location you pick here determines where incoming and received stock is recorded in Shopify.

Step 2 — Configure the Analysis

Once you've chosen a supplier, Skumo shows you the analysis settings. These control how it calculates suggested order quantities.

You can adjust:

• Analysis method — how sales history is used to calculate demand:
  • Weighted moving average — more recent sales are given higher weight (good for most situations)
  • Simple moving average — all sales in the period are weighted equally
  • Peak period — uses the highest-selling window in the period, useful for seasonal items
  • Year-on-year — takes the same period from last year and applies a multiplier
• Lookback period — how far back in sales history to look (default 90 days)
• Buffer days — how many extra days of stock to build in as a safety buffer (default 30 days)
• Product filters — narrow down which products are included:
  • Filter by product tags
  • Filter by product name (contains or doesn't contain a phrase)
  • Filter by SKU (contains or doesn't contain)

Any analysis defaults you've set on the supplier will be pre-filled here. If you're happy with the settings, click Generate.

Note: For suppliers with large product catalogues (250 or more products), Skumo will prompt you to confirm before running the analysis, or to add a filter to narrow things down. This keeps things running quickly.

Step 3 — Review and Adjust

The analysis results show a table of all the products Skumo recommends ordering. For each item you'll see:

• ABC class — A (high volume), B (medium), C (low), D (very low/no recent sales) — a quick indicator of how important the item is
• Product and variant — the product name and any variant details, with a link to Shopify
• SKU
• Cost price
• Current stock — how much is currently in Shopify inventory
• On order — quantities already committed as incoming on other open POs
• Sold (90 days) — units sold in the last 90 days
• Suggested quantity — Skumo's recommended order quantity based on the analysis
• Margin / Markup — profitability indicator (switch between the two in Settings)
• Order quantity — editable — adjust any suggested quantity here before placing the order

Multi-location stores: Current stock and on-order figures reflect the location you selected in Step 1 if your analysis stock scope setting is set to Selected location. If it's set to All locations, these figures show totals across your whole business. You can change this in Settings → Purchase Orders → Analysis.

Adjusting quantities

You can change any suggested quantity directly in the Order quantity column. Set a quantity to zero to effectively exclude an item, or use the Exclude option to hide it from the PO entirely (excluded items won't appear in the final order or affect the totals).

Flagging items as out of stock at the supplier

If your supplier can't currently provide an item, you can flag it as out of stock rather than excluding it order-by-order. Open the product's variants popup (click the variant count on the row) and tick the OOS checkbox for the affected variant — or use Flag whole product as out of stock to flag every variant at once.

Flagged items are removed from the current order and hidden from future analysis, including the dashboard's Ready to Order figures. Ticking OOS reveals an optional review date — once it passes, the item automatically resurfaces in analysis so it isn't forgotten.

The OOS chip next to the A/B/C/D class filters shows everything currently flagged for this supplier, including flags whose review date has passed (marked Review due). Unflag an item there at any time.

If a customer Special Order needs a flagged item, it's still added to the PO and badged OOS in the pre-send special order review so you can check availability with the supplier first.

This feature can be turned off entirely in Settings → Purchase Orders → Out-of-Stock Flags.

Adding custom items

If you need to include something that isn't linked to a Shopify product — such as packaging, accessories, or unlisted items — use the Add custom item button. You'll enter a name, SKU, cost price, and quantity.

Editing cost prices

You can edit the cost price of any item in this view. For Shopify products, Skumo will offer to update the cost price in Shopify as well. For custom items, the price is stored in Skumo only.

Saving or Sending the Order

When you're happy with the order, you have two options:

• Save & Continue — saves the PO as a Draft. You can come back and make further changes before sending.
• Save & Mark as Sent — finalises the PO, assigns it a PO number, and records all ordered quantities as incoming stock in Shopify. Use this when the order is ready to go.
• Send as Email — does everything that Mark as Sent does, and also sends the order to your supplier by email using the template configured in Settings.

Note: Once a PO is marked as Sent, the items and quantities are locked for editing through the standard order flow. You can still make adjustments from the PO detail screen if needed — see Editing a Purchase Order.