Where to write notes: supplier, purchase order, receipt or stocktake?

Every purchasing tool has a Notes box, and every team ends up with the same problem: the useful fact is in a note somewhere, but nobody remembers which record it was attached to. Was the supplier's minimum order written on the supplier, on last spring's PO, or in the receipt from the delivery where it first came up? The note was written in good faith and is now unfindable.

Restock Ops has four places to write free text, one on each of the four records it keeps: the supplier, the purchase order, the receipt and the stocktake. They are deliberately not one shared notes field. Each lives with the thing it describes and shows up where that thing is looked at. This post is a short reference for which note goes where, who sees it, and when it stops being editable.

The four fields at a glance

The pattern is permanence by record. Things that are true of a supplier in general outlive any single order and go on the supplier. Things that are true of this order go on the order. Things that happened on one delivery are stamped on that delivery and left alone. The rule of thumb: write the note on the record that would still need it if the other three vanished.

Supplier notes: standing facts

The supplier record has a Supplier notes field, edited from the supplier page and filled in at creation if you like. It is for anything that is true of every order with that vendor: shipping terms, who to email for order confirmations and who for invoices, the carrier they use, the fact that their delivery notes list their SKUs rather than yours, that cartons come in twelves, that they shut for the first week of August.

This is the note that follows you around. When you open any purchase order for that supplier, the supplier notes appear in a side panel on the PO page, so whoever is placing or receiving the order sees them without opening the supplier. That is where the shipping terms belong, which is why the year-end cutoff post suggests putting them there: in January, the question of whether goods in transit are yours or the supplier's answers itself from the panel.

Structured facts have their own fields and should not go in the note. Lead time and minimum order quantity are proper columns on the supplier because the reorder report calculates with them, and the lead times post explains what they drive. Supplier SKUs live on the product mapping, not in a note, for the same reason: the receiving screen matches on them. The note is for the things no calculation needs but a person does.

Purchase order notes: why this order

The PO page has a Notes box in its header, next to the reference, order date and expected date. It is for what is specific to this order: 'topping up before the trade show', 'supplier agreed to split shipment, second half mid-month', 'price confirmed by Dana on the phone, old price list still shows the higher one'. It is the note you want to read when the order has gone quiet for three weeks and nobody remembers why it was raised.

It is editable for as long as the header is editable, which means until the PO is Closed or Canceled. Once a PO is closed, its header, including the notes, is frozen along with the rest of the record. The status post goes through what each status locks. If something needs saying about a closed order, say it on a receipt before closing, or reopen the question in a new PO that refers back by number.

Keep facts about the supplier out of here. A PO note that says 'they always ship DHL' is right once and lost by next quarter, when the order is closed and nobody opens it again. Move it to the supplier and it reappears on every future order.

Neither the PO notes nor the reference are included in the CSV exports. The export is the order as a document: lines, quantities, costs, SKUs on both sides. If a supplier needs an instruction with the order, send it in the email that carries the file.

Receipt note: what arrived and in what state

When you record a delivery on the receive screen, there is a single Note field under the quantity table. The placeholder gives the idea: 'Box 1 of 2, damaged carton'. It is for the condition of that one delivery: a short shipment with the carrier reference, a crushed carton accepted anyway, a box of the wrong colour sent back, the fact that the delivery note said 48 and the count said 46.

The note saves with the receipt and shows in the receipts list on the PO page, alongside the date and the quantities received that day. A PO with three partial deliveries has three receipts and up to three notes, in order, which is exactly the trail you want when a supplier disputes a short payment two months later. The partial receiving post covers how the quantities accumulate; the notes accumulate the same way.

A receipt note is written once, when the delivery is recorded. Receipts are the record of a Shopify inventory write that already happened, so they are not edited afterwards; if a delivery was recorded wrong, the correction is a new receipt or an adjustment, with its own note explaining why. That is what makes the list trustworthy: nothing in it was reworded later.

Stocktake note: the circumstances of a count

A stocktake gets its Note when it is created, from the form on the stocktakes page. It appears under the heading on the stocktake itself. Use it for the circumstances: 'year-end count, warehouse closed to picking from 2pm', 'recount of aisle 3 after the shrink report', 'counted by Sam and Priya, blind'. The year-end count post shows why the accountant cares about this line: a count record with its circumstances written down is evidence, one without is a list of numbers.

Like the receipt note, it is set when the record is created rather than edited afterwards. The individual count lines do not have notes of their own; if one variant's count needs explaining, the stocktake note is the place, and keeping it short and specific ('row 12 bin was mislabelled, two SKUs swapped') is kinder to whoever reads it in a year than a paragraph.

What does not belong in any note

• Quantities that Restock Ops already tracks. Ordered, received and counted numbers are columns, with history. A note that repeats them will drift from the truth.
• Prices. Unit cost is on the PO line, and the cost history post covers what happens to it after receiving. A price in a note is a price nobody reconciles.
• Lead time, minimum order and supplier SKUs. All structured fields the reorder report and receiving screen use.
• Anything that needs to trigger an action. Notes are read by people who happen to open the record. The expected date field is what the late delivery report reads, so put a date there and the note can say why.

A habit that makes this work

Before writing a note, ask which record would still need it in a year. A fact about the vendor goes up to the supplier; a fact about this order stays on the PO; a fact about one delivery or one count goes on the receipt or the stocktake, where it cannot be reworded later. Four fields, one question. The notes end up where the next person will look, which is the whole point of writing them down.

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