The Supply Chain module runs the buying side of your business and the stock that comes with it. It holds your suppliers and product catalogue, turns an internal request into a quote and then a purchase order, receives goods against that order, matches the supplier’s bill to what you actually received, and keeps the value of your stock accurate as it moves across warehouses — all on the same foundation as Accounting, so every receipt, issue, adjustment and bill posts to the ledger without re-entry.

This guide is a reference for what the module does and how the pieces fit together. It describes IXL CORE version 1.0.

Overview

At a glance, Supply Chain covers the full procure-to-pay and stock cycle:

Catalogue — products and services, categories, units of measure and variants.
Suppliers — the businesses you buy from, with categories, contacts, credit terms and a hold facility.
Warehouses — the physical locations that own stock, scoped to a branch.
Requisitions — internal requests to buy, with approval before they become orders.
RFQs — requests for quotation, comparing supplier quotes before you commit.
Purchase orders — the formal orders you send to suppliers, with their own approval and send controls.
Goods receiving (GRN) — recording what physically arrived, with automatic price-variance detection.
Supplier bills — the invoices your suppliers send, raised straight from the receipt.
Goods issues, transfers, adjustments and stock takes — the day-to-day movement of stock.
Lots & traceability — lot and serial tracking, with FEFO and full movement history.
Landed cost — freight, duty and other charges folded into the cost of stock.
Reports & scanning — operational reporting and a mobile barcode-scan workflow.

Everything is scoped to your organisation, governed by permissions (see Access & permissions) and gated behind the Supply Chain entitlement.

Catalogue

The product catalogue is owned by Supply Chain. Each product carries its type, whether it is inventoried, its category, code, SKU and barcode, a description, and pricing. Products can hold variants — the same product in different sizes, colours or configurations, each with its own SKU, barcode and price; creating the first variant marks the parent as variant-bearing automatically.

Units of measure are managed as their own master, and a product can carry both a stock unit and a purchase unit with a conversion factor between them — so you can buy by the case and hold by the each. Products also carry the general-ledger accounts they post to (inventory, cost of sales, revenue, expense and purchase), so buying and selling land in the right place in Accounting without per-transaction wiring.

Products and categories can be brought in through a CSV import — download a template, preview it for errors without committing, then commit the clean rows — mirroring the way Accounting imports its chart of accounts.

Suppliers

A supplier is any business you buy from. Each supplier holds its trading and legal name, contact details, tax number, credit terms (payment days), currency, banking details and the default accounts-payable and expense accounts it posts against — a proper accounts-payable master, linked to its counterpart in Accounting. Suppliers can be grouped into categories and can carry multiple contacts, with one marked as primary.

When a supplier needs to be paused — a dispute, an expired document, an overdue account — you can put it on hold with a reason and reactivate it later, so buying stops at the source rather than being caught downstream.

Each product is linked to the suppliers you buy it from through a product-supplier record that carries the supplier’s own SKU, the agreed cost, currency and lead time, with one supplier marked preferred — so replenishment and ordering know who to buy from first.

Requisitions, RFQs and purchase orders

Buying moves through a controlled chain, and nothing is re-keyed as it goes.

A purchase requisition is an internal request to buy something before any order goes out. It is drafted, then submitted. Above a value threshold it routes to a named approver (who cannot be the person who raised it) for sign-off; below it, it is approved directly. An approved requisition can then be converted — either into an RFQ or straight into a purchase order — carrying its lines through untouched.

An RFQ (request for quotation) invites several suppliers to quote on the same lines. Each supplier’s quote is captured with per-line prices, the totals are worked out for you, and you award the winner — which generates a draft purchase order at the quoted prices, marks the winning quote awarded and the rest declined, all in one step.

A purchase order (PO) is the formal order you send to a supplier — and a spend commitment, not yet a ledger entry. It is built from line items and moves through its own lifecycle: draft, pending approval, approved, sent, then partially or fully received. Approval above a threshold uses the same maker-checker sign-off; a PO can only be sent once approved, and its status updates automatically as goods are received. Edits to an already-approved or sent PO are kept as a tracked revision, so the history of a changed order is never lost. A committed spend view shows what you have ordered but not yet received.

Goods receiving (GRN) and three-way matching

A goods received note (GRN) records what physically arrived against a purchase order. You start a draft receipt prefilled with the order’s outstanding lines, then confirm it. On confirmation the module moves stock into the receiving warehouse and posts to Accounting: debit inventory, credit GRNI. GRNI stands for goods received not invoiced — you now owe for goods you have taken in but not yet been billed for, and your books recognise that liability the moment the goods land.

Two checks run at receipt. A price variance is captured on each line where the received cost differs from the PO cost, so a supplier quietly changing a price does not slip through. And the module keeps a running three-way match — comparing the purchase order, the goods received note and (once it exists) the supplier bill on quantity and price. A small tolerance covers rounding; a genuine difference is flagged as a variance verdict rather than passing silently.

From a confirmed receipt you raise the supplier bill directly: this posts debit GRNI, credit accounts payable, clearing the temporary “goods received not invoiced” balance and replacing it with the real amount owed to the supplier — no double-counting. A confirmed GRN can be voided if recorded in error, and the stock movement, the GRNI journal and the PO’s received quantities are all rolled back together.

Weighted-average costing (WAC)

Stock is valued using weighted-average cost (WAC) — the running average price you have paid for what you hold. Every movement is written to an immutable ledger that records the cost before and after. When goods come in, the average is recalculated from the existing quantity and value plus the new receipt; when stock is issued or transferred out, it leaves at the current average rather than a guessed figure. That same average values your closing stock and is what flows through to Accounting, so the inventory valuation reconciles to the ledger’s inventory control account by construction.

Stock movement

Beyond buying and receiving, the module keeps day-to-day stock honest through a set of governed movements:

Goods issues & deliveries — issue stock out of a warehouse (posting debit cost of sales, credit inventory), with a printable packing list or delivery order.
Stock transfers — move stock between warehouses in a dispatch-then-receive flow, arriving at the preserved average cost; transfers are stock-neutral to the ledger.
Stock adjustments — correct quantities for damage, loss or found stock, marked good, damaged or rejected. Above a value threshold, and for any write-off, the change routes to approval before it posts.
Stock takes — open a count that snapshots current stock, record the counted quantities, and submit the variance for approval; approved corrections post as adjustments.

Every movement — receipt, issue, transfer, adjustment, opening balance, landed cost — is written to the same immutable movement ledger, so stock history is traceable rather than inferred.

Lots, serials & traceability

Products can be tracked at one of several levels: none, by lot, by lot with expiry, or by serial number. For tracked products the module records which physical lots or serials moved on every receipt and issue. Outbound movements draw stock down FEFO — first-expiry-first-out — for expiry-tracked items (or FIFO, or a specific lot you nominate), so the stock nearest its use-by date leaves first.

A traceability view follows any lot or serial through its full movement history — where it was received and where it went. Lots can be quarantined and released, and a deliberate run can flag every lot past its expiry date across the organisation.

Landed cost

The price on a supplier’s invoice is rarely the true cost of getting stock onto your shelf. Landed cost lets you fold in the extra charges — freight, duty, insurance, handling — so the cost you carry is the real one.

You open a landed-cost batch listing the charges and the confirmed goods receipts they cover, and choose how they are apportioned — by value, by quantity, by weight or manually. You can preview the split before committing. On confirmation the apportioned amounts revalue the affected stock’s weighted-average cost (debit inventory, credit a landed-cost clearing account), and the freight or duty bill is raised against its vendor (debit clearing, credit accounts payable) — so those charges live in your inventory value instead of being lost as a general expense.

Reports & scanning

Supply Chain includes read-only operational reporting, each report available as on-screen data, a CSV export or a branded PDF: stock position, inventory valuation, stock movement, reorder/replenishment, PO status and committed spend, supplier performance, ageing (AP means accounts payable — the money you owe suppliers), exceptions, and stock expiry. Because the figures come straight from your receipts, bills and movements, the reports reconcile to the ledger without a separate set of numbers.

Replenishment rules set a reorder point and order-up-to level per product and warehouse; a run raises reorder alerts, which you can resolve, dismiss or turn straight into draft requisitions — so you are prompted to buy before you run out.

A mobile scan workflow lets warehouse staff use a barcode as fast input rather than a new way to post. Scanning resolves a product, variant, lot or serial and adds or increments a line on an existing draft receipt, issue, count or transfer — which is then confirmed through its own normal controls. Products can also print a barcode label.

Access & permissions {#access-and-permissions}

Every Supply Chain action is governed by a capability — viewing suppliers, approving a purchase order, confirming a GRN, adjusting a lot or exporting a report are each separate permissions (for example supply.po.manage, supply.grn.manage, supply.lots.view). Capabilities are grouped into roles and roles assigned to users, and every request is checked twice: once against the capability and once against the organisation’s Supply Chain entitlement. This is enforced on the server, not just hidden in the interface, and every mutation is recorded to the audit trail.

How Supply Chain connects

Supply Chain is not an island. On the shared platform foundation:

Accounting receives every receipt, issue, adjustment and supplier bill as ledger postings — automatically. Receiving raises the GRNI accrual; billing clears it and posts the payable; landed cost revalues stock through a clearing account. Journals are always posted through the platform’s posting engine, never written by hand.
Warehouses own stock: levels, transfers, takes and lots are all scoped to a warehouse within its branch, so each location’s position is clear, with one default warehouse per branch.
Suppliers and products carry their own general-ledger wiring, so an item or a supplier is defined once and posts to the right accounts everywhere it is used.

That connection is the point: you receive goods once, and the cost, the stock and the liability all stay in step across the business.

Supply Chain