Creating a Special Order

From the Special Orders page, click New Special Order. The creation process has three steps.

Step 1 — Customer Details

Enter the customer's information:

First name and last name (required)
Phone number (required)
Email address (optional)
Order date — defaults to today, but you can change it if you're recording an order placed previously
Taken by — select a staff member from the dropdown (staff names are managed in Settings → Users & Permissions), or type a name if it's not in the list
Notes — any relevant notes about the order or the customer's requirements
On hold until — if the customer has asked you to hold the order until a specific date, set it here

Step 2 — Items

Add one or more items to the Special Order. For each item, choose whether it's a product already in your Shopify system or a custom unlisted item.

Items already in your Shopify system

Select Product in system and use the search field to find the product by name or SKU. Skumo will show matching products from your Shopify catalogue.

Once you've selected a product and variant:

Supplier — Skumo will automatically match the supplier based on the product's Shopify vendor name. If no supplier matches, you can select one manually.
Quantity — how many the customer wants
Agreed price — the price agreed with the customer. This defaults to the current retail price.

Warnings you may see:

Sale price warning — if the product is currently on sale, Skumo flags this so you can confirm the agreed price with the customer rather than assuming the sale price applies
In stock warning — if the product is currently in stock, Skumo asks you to confirm that you still want to place a Special Order rather than selling from existing stock
Supplier availability warning — if the supplier has their Special Order availability set to Warning or None, you'll see a notice here
Out of stock at supplier warning — if the item has been flagged out of stock on a recent purchase order, you'll see a notice to check availability with the supplier before promising the customer. The item will still be added to the supplier's next PO as normal

Custom or unlisted items

Select Custom / unlisted item for products that aren't in your Shopify system at all — specialist items, one-offs, or anything you don't normally carry.

You'll enter:

Item name (required)
SKU (optional)
Supplier (required — you must assign a supplier so the item can be linked to a Purchase Order)
Quantity
Agreed price

Custom items are stored in Skumo only and don't create a new product in Shopify.

Adding multiple items

Click Add another item to include more products on the same Special Order. Each item can be from a different supplier — Skumo handles the routing to the right PO automatically.

Step 3 — Review

Check the summary of the customer details and items before saving. If everything looks right, click Save to create the Special Order.

What happens next

The Special Order will appear in the In Progress tab with a status of Pending (or On Hold if you set a hold date).

The items will automatically be included as additional demand when you next generate a Purchase Order for the relevant suppliers. You don't need to do anything to make this happen — as soon as a PO is generated, Skumo adds the Special Order quantities on top of the analysis suggestion.