Picture a purchasing officer at a small textile company. You buy yarn from three different suppliers. You are trying to remember what you paid each of them last month, but all you have is a folder stuffed with paper invoices. A supplier calls with a new price. You cannot tell on the spot whether it is a good deal or a bad one. You sit down to negotiate with nothing solid in your hands. This is the daily reality for many small and mid-sized businesses right now.
Navision addresses this problem through what it calls a purchase module. The module records every purchase you make from every supplier. The item, the date, the price — all of it stays in the program. The next time a supplier calls, you open the computer and look at the history. Saying ‘last time we bought this at that price’ is a simple thing, but at a negotiating table it changes the conversation entirely. You are no longer relying on memory. You are relying on a record.
Open order tracking is another core part of this module. An open order is a purchase order you have placed but not yet received. Normally these orders live on paper or in someone’s head. Who ordered what, when is it arriving, have we paid for it yet — chasing these answers takes time and causes mistakes. In Navision, every purchase order is entered into the system. When goods arrive, the order is closed. When they have not arrived yet, the order stays open. You can see at a glance which orders are still waiting.
In a difficult economic period, cash is everything. Uncontrolled purchasing is one of the biggest sources of cash leakage in a small business. One department orders without checking stock. Another department orders the same item the following week. The warehouse fills up while the accounts department has no idea. Navision requires a purchase order to be entered before a purchase is recorded, which means every transaction leaves a trace. That discipline alone cuts down on duplicate and unnecessary orders. The question ‘do we already have this in stock?’ becomes one you can actually answer.
Supplier price history also builds a bridge between the purchasing desk and the accounting office. When the accountant processes an invoice, she can ask whether the price looks right. The purchasing officer opens the program and compares it against previous purchases. Price disputes get resolved faster. If a supplier has invoiced you incorrectly, you are more likely to catch it. Think of it like a cashier who no longer counts receipts one by one at the end of the shift — instead the register gives a clean total. Navision keeps purchasing transactions in order so you can read them clearly.
In practice, making this work takes real effort. The system is only useful if every purchase is entered completely and on time. Asking staff to open a purchase order for a small, routine buy feels like extra work to people used to doing things quickly. The attitude of ‘I will sort it out later’ breaks the system down fast. There is also the question of setup: supplier records, item codes, and unit prices all need to be entered correctly from the start. If the base data is wrong, the program gives you wrong information. Getting this foundation right takes time, and doing it without a qualified local partner or an experienced implementer is a risk most small businesses cannot afford to take.
If you are considering Navision for purchase tracking, start by looking at your own operation. How many suppliers do you deal with? How many purchase orders do you issue in a month? If the answer is dozens of suppliers and hundreds of orders, the structure this program brings will produce a visible result. But also ask yourself whether your staff will enter data consistently and whether your purchasing officer will actually use the system every day. Navision does not do the work for you. It gives you a framework to work inside. Filling that framework with accurate, timely information is still your job.
This article was originally written in Turkish by Gökhan MERCANOĞLU on February 26, 2001 and has been automatically translated into English and other languages using machine translation.