Understanding the overall purchasing process

Let us begin by taking a 30,000-foot view of the purchasing process. Putting together a purchasing system requires several steps, and initially it can be confusing for people new to ERP systems. But when you break the steps down and look at them individually, the process becomes much easier to understand.

Setting up a vendor

When you set up a vendor, you are determining the individuals or companies that are providing you with products. Sometimes vendors are also referred to as suppliers. In Odoo, it is perfectly possible to create a product and sell it without implementing a purchasing system. However, to begin using your system for purchasing, you will need to configure the vendors.

The steps you take with setting up a vendor are much the same as setting up a customer. In fact, now is as good a time as any to tell you that Odoo maintains core customer, employee, and vendor records all in the same model (or table) named res.partner. Odoo distinguishes...