Gem Candies · Operating Procedures
Essential before launch Procedure 2 of 15

2. Purchase order recording

Owner
You (solo operation)
Trigger
You place or confirm an order with a supplier for one or more gemstones.
Approval
You approve the purchase order before payment is sent.
Needs input — purchase orders are not entered in Shopify (corrected 2026-08-24; an earlier version of this procedure wrongly said they were). The PurchaseOrders table in the Grist data file is the PO ledger, and its PO-000001 numbering is the reference used everywhere. Payment terms and currency got their own columns (added 2026-08-27, see step 2). Whether a PO is still partly outstanding is now answered per stone rather than per PO: each stone on the order carries its own Ordered or Received movement (see step 5), so an outstanding parcel is the one whose stones have not all been received — no free-text Notes and no extra column needed.

Procedure

  1. Add one PurchaseOrders row in the Grist data file per supplier invoice — a parcel PO for a multi-stone invoice, a one-stone PO for a single buy. Take the next sequential PO-000001, PO-000002, … and use it as the reference everywhere below; do not assign a separate number in parallel.
  2. Fill in the vendor, purchase date, a short description of what was on the invoice, and the Total PO cost — enter it as soon as you have the invoice, even before the parcel is intake-processed, for the record. It no longer computes any stone's own cost (cost allocation across a PO's stones was removed 2026-09-06) — that comes from each stone's own Acquisition cost instead, step below. Set Currency and Payment terms (e.g. Prepaid, Net 30) from the invoice too — both are informational only, so a value outside the usual choices just goes in Notes instead.
  3. As each gemstone on the order is intake-processed (Procedure 1) and assigned a SKU, set that stone's Purchase order reference to this PO, and its own Acquisition cost — its share of the invoice, worked out by hand (Procedure 3). Both tables live in the same Grist file, so the PO link is one entry, not two to keep in step.
  4. Store the supplier's invoice and any supporting documents (packing list, export/import paperwork, pre-existing certificates) in the PO's document folder (Procedure 9), named with the PO reference.
  5. Check that every stone on the PO has a Received movement — adding a gemstone row to the purchase order logs one for you, dated the PO's purchase date. For a parcel that arrives in instalments, log Ordered for the stones still outstanding and Received as each one lands, so the PO's stones are not all reported as in stock before they have arrived.

Required evidence