For those of you subscribing to ASI's monthly pricing service, the Suggested Order Report also selects the vendor with the best deal. You will always have two "Beverage Journal books" loaded on the computer at all times. At the end of June, you'll be able to access June and July's deals. Notice in the upper right hand corner of the sample screen, you can select items that are Going Up next month. You may want to order enough in June to carry you through a longer period of time. You can select items that are Going Down next month. Maybe you need 5 cases but 1 case will get you through the end of June. You can order the other 4 cases in July when the price is lower. So you can already see how much time you can save as well as money!

As an example, look at the PENALTY column in our sample screen. If you purchase the base deal for this item, you are losing $.50 per bottle which is 5.8% per bottle. If your competitor is purchasing at the best deal, he's already got $.50 on you before he even prices his bottle! As we already know, every nickel and dime counts in the retail liquor business!

We have quickly reviewed how to create a purchase order manually and how to create orders automatically using the Suggested Order Report. The last method for creating purchase orders is to scan them into a purchase order.

When you receive delivery, you can scan the UPC code on the case or on the bottle, enter the quantity you are receiving and the cost of the item. Do this for each of the items you have received. The hand held inventory scanner transfers this information from the scanner to the computer and stores it in a purchase order. So instead of you entering a purchase order manually, you are saving time by scanning it in. The remaining processing steps are the same at this point. You still have to post the order to inventory and, optionally, update A/P.

Before we end our discussion of purchase orders, it is important to know that Spirits 2000 also works with accumulations.