Managing Orders

Orders are the core of Innovators Parts. Before anything else, it helps to know how they are shaped, because it is not one row per part.

Parts and orders

An order is a purchase from one vendor. The parts are the line items inside it.

You never create an order directly. You add a part, say where it comes from, and Innovators Parts puts it into that vendor's open order — creating one if there isn't an open order for that vendor yet. Add three REV parts and two AndyMark parts and you end up with two orders: one per vendor, matching the two checkouts you will actually do.

Order status

Marking an order Ordered or Arrived records the timestamp automatically.

Adding a part

1. Click Add part
2. Fill in the details:
   • Part name (required)
   • Vendor — decides which order it joins
   • Quantity
   • Unit price (USD)
   • External link — the product page
   • Notes, Variant, Tags
3. Click to save

Prices below a cent

Unit prices accept more than two decimal places, because distributors genuinely quote them: DigiKey's quantity breaks go to five. A price shows as plain money when it lands on whole cents ($2.40) and spells out the extra digits only when it really carries them ($0.231). Line totals are summed at full precision and rounded once, so a thousand resistors do not drift by a few cents.

The two views

Switch between them with the layout control above the board.

Board — three columns, one per status. Three things can be dragged:

• an order onto a column, to change its status
• a part onto another order card, to move it there (same vendor, both still To order)
• a part onto the To order column, to split it into an order of its own

Table — every part as a row, with filters for date range, vendor, status and tag, and an Export CSV button that exports exactly what the filters are showing.

Splitting and combining

Plans change: something is needed sooner, or a part should ship separately.

• Split into its own order takes a part out into a new order for the same vendor.
• Dropping a part onto another order card combines it into that order.

Both only work between orders that are still To order, and only within the same vendor — you cannot merge a REV order into an AndyMark one. If a move empties an order, that empty order is deleted.

Ordering from the vendor

Open an order and use Order from vendor to hand the whole thing to the vendor's own site. Where the vendor supports it, this builds a cart in one click. Shopify stores, Amazon and DigiKey work this way.

Some vendors only accept one part at a time. There you get a list of links instead, ticked off as you follow them. Keep them in the same tab and the cart builds up as you go.

Parts that could not be matched to something the vendor recognises are listed as excluded rather than quietly dropped, so you know what to add by hand.

Shipping, payment and totals

Shipping & payment details on an order records what the purchase actually cost and how it was paid:

• Tracking carrier and number
• Shipping and Tax
• Payments — split across as many lines as you need, each a credit card, voucher, coupon or other

The split matters for FRC: an order part-paid by a Kit of Parts voucher and part by a team card is one order with two payment lines, not two orders.

Totals are calculated, never typed:

If Paid does not match the grand total, something is missing — an unrecorded voucher, or a shipping charge nobody entered.

Receipts

Orders take PDF and image attachments, which is what makes the record hold up for a nonprofit audit. See Receipts.

Deleting

Removing the last part in an order deletes the order too, since an order with nothing in it is not a purchase.

Part fields