From Forecast to PO — The Full Workflow
Tightly's PO automation turns replenishment recommendations into supplier-ready purchase orders in one workflow — with supplier communication, pricing history, and approval flow built in.
The PO automation layer
Most inventory planning tools stop at the recommendation: "order 500 units." The buyer then has to open a separate email client, find the supplier contact, write the PO, send it, and manually track the response. This context-switching is where errors and delays happen.
Tightly's PO automation collapses this into one workflow:
1. Smart Replenishment generates the recommendation with quantity, SKU, and urgency
2. The recommendation auto-populates into a PO with the correct supplier, pricing, MOQ, and lead time
3. Supplier communication happens inside the PO record — email threads are stored and accessible
4. The buyer reviews, edits if needed, and approves
5. The PO syncs to the WMS or 3PL for receipt tracking
The embedded supplier communication is a key differentiator: the full history of what was agreed (price, delivery date, quantity) is attached to the PO, not scattered across email inboxes.
Extension — connecting your stones to build territory. The PO workflow extends the replenishment recommendation into an executed action, closing the gap between insight and outcome.
Supplier management as a product foundation
The quality of PO automation depends on the accuracy of supplier records: lead times, MOQs (minimum order quantities), case pack sizes, pricing tiers, and currency.
Tightly stores these in centralized supplier profiles. When you create a PO, it pulls the current pricing and MOQ from the supplier profile — so a buyer doesn't have to manually enter it every time, and the system can split or consolidate orders based on business rules.
Supplier lead time accuracy is especially important: if your supplier profile says 3-week lead time but they're currently running 5 weeks, every DoH calculation is wrong. Tightly tracks actual delivery history to update lead times over time — closing the feedback loop between promise and reality.
Budget and policy controls
Replenishment recommendations without constraints can blow budgets. Tightly's policy layer allows buyers and finance to set guardrails:
Open-to-buy budgets — a dollar cap on total PO spend per cycle. Tightly prioritizes recommendations within budget, so the highest-urgency, highest-revenue SKUs get funded first.
Safety stock policies — minimum coverage rules per SKU or category. "Never go below 14 days of stock for top-20 SKUs" is a policy that automatically shapes recommendations.
Reorder points — Days of Coverage thresholds that trigger replenishment. Set per SKU, per category, or globally.
As PM, the policy layer is where you'll hear the most customer requests: every buyer has their own rules, and making the policy engine flexible enough to cover them without overwhelming new users is a classic UX tension.
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