Most suppliers with an online ordering portal will let you upload a file instead of typing an order in by hand - but each one wants its own columns, in its own order, under its own header names. A CSV export format tells Stockroom what that supplier's file looks like, so exporting a purchase order for them produces a file their system accepts.
Add a format for a supplier
Go to Suppliers, open the supplier, and scroll to the CSV export format section.
Click Add export format. You start with three columns - Supplier SKU, Product and Quantity.
For each column, choose the field on the left and type the header your supplier expects on the right. That header is what lands in row 1 of the file, so type it exactly the way their system wants it, capital letters and all.
Use the arrows to reorder columns, the x to remove one, and Add column to add more - up to 40.
Two columns can't share a header name. You'll see Already used by another column until you change one of them.
Click Save. Setting up a second supplier who wants something similar? Copy from another supplier brings an existing format's columns and headers over for you to adjust.
When your supplier orders in cases
Stockroom counts in single units: an order for 15 is 15 units, even when the supplier ships them 5 to a case. Their ordering system usually wants the case count instead, and reading 15 as 15 cases is how you end up with five times what you meant.
Save the pack details on the product first - on the product page, under Supplier ordering, set Pack size, Pack name and Minimum order (per supplier, if your distributors case things differently). Then map one of these fields to their quantity column:
Packs - the quantity expressed in packs. 15 units of a case of 5 exports as 3. Blank for items with no pack size saved.
Order quantity (packs or eaches) - packs where the item has a pack size, single units where it doesn't. This is the one to use when an order mixes cased and loose items, because a blank quantity cell usually makes their importer skip the line.
Order unit (pack name or each) - the word for what that number counts: your pack name ("case", "box"), or "each" for a loose item. Map it to their unit or UOM column if they have one.
If a quantity isn't a whole number of packs, the file says so - 7 units of a case of 4 exports as 1.75 rather than quietly rounding your order up or down.
Export a purchase order in that format
One order: open the PO, click More actions, then Export CSV for [supplier]. The file is named after the PO number.
Several orders at once: on Purchase orders, filter the list to that one supplier, then Export and Export lines for [supplier]. A file spanning several suppliers has no single set of headers, so this option only appears once the list is narrowed to one.
Export CSV is still there alongside it, with Stockroom's own standard columns.
Which columns you can choose
Order details: PO number, status, payment status, paid on, supplier, account number, currency, created date, expected date, destination.
The item: supplier SKU, SKU, barcode, product, variant, retail price, on hand.
Quantities and money: quantity, packs, order quantity, order unit, pack size, pack unit, unit cost, discount %, line total, taxable, received quantity, cancelled quantity, weight.
Two worth knowing about: Supplier SKU falls back to your own SKU for items where you haven't recorded a part number for that supplier, so the column is never half empty. Account number is your account with that supplier, which is often what their file needs at the top of every row.
Good to know
The plain Export CSV keeps Stockroom's own headers, and those are the headers the importer reads - so a standard export can be brought back in to create a purchase order (see Creating a purchase order from a CSV file). A file written in a supplier's headers is for them, not for coming back into Stockroom.
Exports use dot decimals and YYYY-MM-DD dates whatever language your admin is set to, because that is what other systems parse.
Retail price and On hand are read from your catalog at the moment you export, not from when the order was written. Retail price is in your store's currency; the costs on the line are in the purchase order's currency.
Remove format takes the extra export option away and nothing else - the purchase orders themselves are untouched, and the standard export keeps working.
Recording part numbers, case sizes and minimums for more than one distributor per item: see Buy the same item from more than one supplier.