7.2 Vendor management & automated replenishment

Managing vendors and their prices

A vendor in Odoo is simply a contact whose form carries purchasing information; the Purchasing tab on the contact stores payment terms, a default buyer, and receipt reminders. The real driver of automated buying, though, is the vendor pricelist (technically the supplier info) recorded on each product's Purchase tab. Each line ties a product to a vendor and can specify:

When you add that product to an RFQ for that vendor, Odoo automatically fills the agreed price. When it must choose a vendor automatically during replenishment, it picks the first supplier line whose minimum quantity and validity dates match. Because the lines are evaluated by sequence, their order effectively sets vendor priority, and you can list a preferred supplier first and a fallback below it. These pricelist lines can also be maintained in bulk from the vendor-pricelist views, and confirming a blanket order pushes its negotiated price onto the product's supplier lines automatically.

The Buy route and reordering rules

To let Odoo purchase a product automatically, that product must carry the Buy route (set on the product's Purchase / Inventory tab; routes come from the warehouse and Multi-Step Routes configuration). Combined with a reordering rule, this is the engine of automated replenishment. A reordering rule defines a Minimum and Maximum forecast quantity plus an optional Qty Multiple:

• When forecasted stock drops below the minimum, Odoo plans replenishment up to the maximum.
• With the Buy route, that replenishment is a new RFQ addressed to the product's preferred vendor.
• The Qty Multiple rounds the ordered amount up to a package, box, or pallet size.

Reordering rules act when the scheduler (the run-scheduler action) executes overnight, or immediately when you press Order Once. Rules can be automatic, meaning they always keep stock topped up, or manual, meaning they only suggest. The scheduler runs as a nightly cron job, but a buyer can trigger it on demand; each run recomputes forecasts and creates or updates the draft RFQs needed to satisfy every active rule.

The Replenishment report

Inventory -> Operations -> Replenishment consolidates every product that needs buying or manufacturing. Each line shows the forecast, the rule's min and max, the chosen route, and a suggested quantity. Pressing Order Once turns a one-time suggestion into an RFQ, while Automate converts that line into a permanent reordering rule. This report is where buyers who do not want fully automatic rules still review demand across the catalog in a single screen.

Buying against a sales order: MTO and dropshipping

Two routes connect Sales directly to Purchase and are heavily tested because they change where stock physically moves:

• Make to Order (MTO), when combined with Buy, means confirming a sales order generates an RFQ for exactly that demand instead of pulling from existing stock; the goods flow into your warehouse and then out to the customer.
• Dropship means the vendor ships directly to the customer. Confirming the sale creates a dropship purchase order and no stock ever passes through your warehouse.

Both routes are enabled in the Purchase and Inventory settings and then applied on the individual product. Because MTO links each purchase to a specific sale, cancelling the sales order also proposes cancelling the linked RFQ, keeping demand and supply in step.

Resupply and route priority

A product can be replenished in more than one way: Buy from a vendor, Manufacture, or Resupply from another warehouse. When several routes apply, their sequence decides which one a reordering rule uses, so a warehouse that normally buys can be switched to an internal transfer simply by reordering the routes. A reordering rule can also be pinned to a specific route directly on the rule line, overriding the product's default and letting one product buy in one location while manufacturing in another.

Lead times and scheduling

Odoo schedules purchase dates by working backward from the customer's or the stock deadline, adding up several lead times:

Summing these tells the scheduler how many days early to raise an RFQ so the goods still arrive on time.

Reporting

Finally, Purchase -> Reporting -> Purchase opens the Purchase Analysis pivot and graph view, where buyers slice spend by vendor, product, category, or buyer and measure metrics such as total ordered, average unit price, and quantities received. The same data powers vendor performance indicators such as average days to deliver, helping buyers spot suppliers who miss their promised lead times. This closes the loop: vendor pricelists and reordering rules automate the ordering, while the analysis view verifies that the chosen vendors actually deliver on price and time.