Question: How do I record an apparel order with more than one supplier?
Answer: We do have complicated orders in our business—none more so than apparel orders. In all orders, I recommend that you use your internal purchase order number to number all parts of the order in your system: customer sales order, supplier purchase order and invoice. That makes it easier to find and reference when dealing with both your customers and suppliers, as well as internally within your business.
Let’s say that this is your purchase order No. 1000. Make this your customer sales order No. 1000, and when the time comes, invoice No. 1000. This will involve overriding the automatically generated number in your system for the invoice, as we rarely invoice orders in the same order in which the orders were written and submitted to suppliers.
When you have more than one supplier as with apparel orders, keep the 1000, but add a suffix at the end. This can be anything you want, but be consistent in applying the suffix. I like 1000A, 1000B, etc. And the case of the letter makes a difference. The key is to be consistent, so you can find the related supplier purchase orders with ease.
Please email your questions to Harriet at Ask The Accountant.
QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise can be modified to better serve ad specialty distributors. Harriet Gatter is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor, a former accounting professor and a former ad specialty distributor. She advises ad specialty distributors to use QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise, often in conjunction with other industry-specific software, to manage the complexities of the ad specialty business, with the results being time saved, errors eliminated and an overall accurate accounting of your business. Contact her at [email protected]
