Supply Chain Overview
Purchase Orders
A purchase order in Endless is the formal record of what you're buying, from whom, and on what terms. Each PO is tied to a supplier and contains line items representing the products being ordered — with quantities, unit costs, and logistics details like HTS codes and master carton dimensions. From there, a PO moves through a defined lifecycle: starting as a draft, progressing through issuance, supplier confirmation, production, and shipment, through to delivery and close. To give you visibility into where things stand at any moment, POs also track production milestones — Pre-Production, Production, Pre-Shipment, Shipment, and Delivery — each with expected and actual dates and an on-track status. Payments can be recorded directly against a PO, so you always know whether it's unpaid, partially paid, or settled. When goods ship, the PO links to one or more inbound shipments, which track quantities in transit and quantities received, allowing the system to reconcile what was ordered against what actually arrived at the warehouse. The result is a single record that follows the purchase from the moment you commit to buying through to the moment the inventory lands.
Suppliers
A supplier in Endless is a vendor or manufacturer that your company purchases from — the source of the products you sell. Each supplier holds the key information you need to maintain that relationship: contact details, business terms like payment terms and incoterms, lead time, and performance metrics like quality rating and on-time delivery percentage. Suppliers connect to your product catalog through product-supplier links, where you can record the supplier's own SKU for a product, minimum order quantity, and country of origin. From there, suppliers feed directly into purchase orders: when you create a PO, you're placing an order with a specific supplier, and Endless tracks that spend history over time. Suppliers can have multiple contacts, with one marked as the default, so the right person is always easy to reach. Together, this makes the supplier record the central hub for managing who you buy from, what they supply, what it costs, and how reliably they deliver.
Shipments
A shipment in Endless represents an inbound delivery of goods from a supplier to your warehouse — the physical movement that follows a purchase order. Shipments are typically created directly from a PO, pulling in the relevant line items, quantities, and costs, and from there they track everything about that delivery: the carrier, freight forwarder, vessel name, container number, bill of lading, transport mode (ocean, air, truck, rail), expected and actual ship and arrival dates, and the destination warehouse. On the financial side, a shipment records its full cost breakdown — transportation, origin fees, destination fees, duties, and taxes — and then allocates those costs across line items either by weight or by volume, so you end up with an accurate landed cost per unit. As goods move, the shipment progresses through a clear set of statuses: Pending, In Transit, Delivered, In Receiving, and Closed. The In Receiving stage is where the warehouse reconciles what actually arrived against what was ordered, updating received quantities per line item, and where the system pushes the data out to your warehouse management system. For complex inbound flows, shipments can also be consolidated — a parent shipment can contain child shipments, letting you track partial or split deliveries under one master record.