🚚 Reports
Purchase Reports
Purchase Reports is a 7-report workbench for the buying side of the business — overall purchase summary, supplier and item breakdowns, pending order chasing, returns tracking, and supplier ledgers/payment status.
📍 Menu path: Reports → Purchase Reports
👤 Who uses it: Roles with Reports permission (export buttons need Export permission)
🏷️ Plan tier: advanced+
Overview
Purchase Reports uses the same left-nav pattern as Sales/Stock Reports: 7 report types listed on the left, loaded on the right, with the active one stored in the URL as ?r=.
The 7 reports are: Purchase Summary, Supplier-wise Purchase, Item-wise Purchase, Pending Purchase Orders, Purchase Return Report, Supplier Ledger and Supplier Payment Report.
This page requires the purchase_orders feature (rather than the generic reports feature that gates the other report pages) at the Advanced plan tier or above.
Before You Start
- Requires a role with Reports permission and the
purchase_ordersfeature at the Advanced plan tier or above. - Export buttons only appear for roles with Export permission.
- Supplier Ledger and Supplier Payment Report need suppliers to have Credit Limit and Credit Days set for their utilisation figures to be meaningful.
- Item-wise Purchase only analyses the most recent 30 purchase orders inside your selected date range — narrow the range if you have many POs.
Step-by-Step Guide
1 Review overall purchase activity
- Open Purchase Summary, set a date range, and read Total Orders, Total Spend, Received and Pending cards.
- Check the Status Breakdown bars (Draft/Ordered/Partial/Received/Cancelled) and the Daily Trend table side by side, then scroll the full Purchase Orders table (PO number, supplier, date, items, subtotal, tax, total, status) with its totals footer.
2 See which suppliers you buy the most from
- Open Supplier-wise Purchase, set a date range, and read Suppliers Active, Total Spend and Top Supplier cards.
- Review the ranked table (rank, supplier, orders, total spend, average per order) with a share-of-total bar per supplier.
3 Drill into specific items purchased
- Open Item-wise Purchase, set a date range and search by product name/SKU; note the report is based on your most recent 30 purchase orders in that range.
- Read the table of quantity ordered vs quantity received (pending shown highlighted) and total cost with a cost-share bar per product.
4 Chase pending purchase orders
- Open Pending Purchase Orders; by default it shows only Draft/Ordered/Partial orders, or pick a specific status from the dropdown to see Received/Cancelled too.
- Check the Urgency column — orders more than 30 days old are flagged Overdue (row highlighted), 14–30 days old are flagged Late.
5 Track purchase returns and supplier accounts
- Open Purchase Return Report, set a date range, and review return entries (tracked as RETURN-type stock movements) with total quantity returned and products affected.
- Open Supplier Ledger, pick a supplier from the dropdown, and review their summary card (credit limit, outstanding, credit days, total POs) plus either a full debit/credit ledger or, if no ledger entries exist yet, a fallback list of their recent purchase orders.
- Open Supplier Payment Report, filter by All/Has Outstanding/Clear, and review each supplier's credit limit utilisation bar — suppliers over their credit limit are highlighted and flagged "Over Limit".
Every Field & Button, Explained
| Field / Button | What it does |
|---|---|
Left-hand report menu | Lists all 7 purchase report types; the active one is stored in the URL as ?r= |
Purchase Summary | Orders/spend/tax/discount cards, status breakdown, daily trend and the full purchase-order list. |
Supplier-wise Purchase | Suppliers ranked by total spend with orders count, average per order and a share-of-total bar. |
Item-wise Purchase | Products ranked by purchase cost, based on the most recent 30 purchase orders in the date range, with ordered vs received quantities. |
Pending Purchase Orders | Draft/Ordered/Partial orders by default, with an Urgency column flagging Overdue (30+ days) and Late (14–30 days) orders. |
Purchase Return Report | RETURN-type stock movements in the date range with total quantity returned and products affected. |
Supplier Ledger | Supplier dropdown selector; shows debit/credit ledger entries if available, otherwise falls back to a recent-purchase-orders list. |
Supplier Payment Report | All/Has Outstanding/Clear filter with credit-limit utilisation bar and an Over Limit flag per supplier. |
Date range picker | Shared From/To filter used by most of the 7 reports. |
Status dropdown (Pending POs) | Switches between the default pending-only view and a specific status (Draft/Ordered/Partial/Received/Cancelled). |
Export button | Downloads the currently loaded report's rows as a spreadsheet where Export permission is granted. |
Tips & Best Practices
- Item-wise Purchase only scans your most recent 30 purchase orders inside the selected date range — narrow the date range if you have many POs and are not seeing an item you expect.
- Set Credit Limit and Credit Days on every supplier — the Supplier Payment Report's utilisation bar and "Over Limit" flag are only meaningful once those values exist.
- Use Pending Purchase Orders' Urgency column as a daily follow-up list — anything marked Overdue needs a call to the supplier.
- If Supplier Ledger shows a purchase-order list instead of debit/credit entries, that just means no ledger postings exist yet for that supplier — it is a fallback view, not an error.
Troubleshooting & FAQ
Item-wise Purchase is missing an item I definitely purchased.
This report only scans the 30 most recent purchase orders within your date range. Narrow the date range (or check if the PO is older than the 30 most recent) to bring it into view.
Pending Purchase Orders looks empty even though I have open POs.
The default filter only shows Draft/Ordered/Partial statuses. Use the status dropdown to explicitly select "Received" or "Cancelled" if you need to see those.
Supplier Ledger shows purchase orders instead of a debit/credit ledger.
That is the built-in fallback: if the ledger endpoint returns no entries for that supplier yet, the page shows their recent purchase orders instead so the tab is never fully empty.
A supplier never shows "Over Limit" even though they clearly owe a lot.
The Over Limit flag only triggers when the supplier has a Credit Limit greater than zero set on their profile. Suppliers with no credit limit set show "No limit set" instead.