Emailing Purchase Orders

When purchase orders are emailed to suppliers you can set a different format for each supplier. You might do this in order to send purchase orders in a format that the supplier can most easily work with.

Supplier Record

Purchase Order Templates

A template defines how the purchase order should be formatted, both in layout and data. These are technical descriptions, but in general you can cut and paste from examples and use the interactive editor to experiment.

A template is written in HTML. Fieldpine then applies the purchase order data to the template to replace any symbols with actual values. The result of that is then converted to PDF, CSV or left as HTML. This final converted document is what is sent to the supplier.
A template is also used to create the email cover letter.

Examples

Simple CSV for Import into another ERP system

Template Definition

<fieldpine-set decode=remove-tag-new-line />
<fieldpine-set target=csv />
ProductCode,Quantity
<fieldpine-repeat purchaseorder>
"%purchaseorder.item[].supcode%",%purchaseorder.item[].qty_ord%
</fieldpine-repeat>

Results in a CSV file with this sort of content

ProductCode,Quantity
"AAA001",12
"PANTS123",144
"X123-4",20

<fieldpine-set decode=remove-tag-new-line />

This line removes the CR/LF after <Fieldpine-xxx> tags in the template. This is only really required for CSV files as HTML automatically removes excess whitespace. What this does is allow Fieldpine tags to be placed on lines by themselves and not insert blank lines in the output file.

<fieldpine-set target=csv />

This specifies that we are expecting to generate a CSV. Generally the caller asks a template to create a PDF, CSV, etc, but this tag informs the caller that we are expecting to be a CSV.

ProductCode,Quantity

This is simple text, so is copied directly to the output. In this case we are setting the column headings in the CSV file

<fieldpine-repeat purchaseorder>

Indicates that the lines from here until the </fieldpine-repeat> should be repeated for each purchase order line. This means the lines following are evaluated for each purchase order line.

"%purchaseorder.item[].supcode%",%purchaseorder.item[].qty_ord%

The symbols %purchaseorder.item[].supcode% and %purchaseorder.item[].qty_ord% are evaluated for the current purchase order line and the value inserted. This is essentially what drives the main logic to create the purchase order output.

</fieldpine-repeat>

Ends a repeat block

Simple Email Cover Letter

Hi %purchaseorder.supplier.name%

<p>Details of our purchase order #%purchaseorder.poid% are attached</p>

<h2>Deliver To</h2>
%purchaseorder.deliveryaddress/txt[htmlbr]%

<p>Thanks</p>

Results in an email body like

Hi Bobs Burgers Ltd

Details of our purchase order #892 are attached
Deliver To
27/493 Adelaide Road 
Berhampore

While most of this should be clear, the line

%purchaseorder.deliveryaddress/txt[htmlbr]%

uses a symbol with formatting. First the value for %purchaseorder.deliveryaddress% is retrieved. This value is then formatted to replace newline characters with HTML <br> tags. This is required as the symbol value is ascii text (ie contains newline characters to break lines) while HTML ignores newlines. So the newlines present in the value need to be forced to line breaks. The formatting string "/txt[htmlbr]" is only required for values that have multiple output lines, such as addresses, and is rarely used.

Complete A4 PDF

This example shows a more complete full A4. This example is taken from a live retailer. It shows

Generation into PDF
Conditional changes for a drop ship purchase order
Use of header section to seperate billing and shipping
Including external images
Clickable links. The email shown in the "bill to" section is the creating stores email. If the supplier clicks this email address their email program opens to start composing an email back to the store (subject of course to several conditions on their computer)

<html lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <title>Purchase Order</title>
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
    <style>
        * {
            font-family: Arial;
        }

        thead {
            border-bottom: 1px solid black;
        }

            thead tr td {
                background-color: silver;
                padding: 0.4em;
                font-weight: 700;
                font-size: 1.2em;
            }

        .showa4 {
        }

        .show80mm {
        }


        @media screen and (min-width:180mm) {
            @page {
                size: 210mm 297mm;
                margin: 10mm 10mm 10mm 10mm;
            }

            .showa4 {
            }

            .show80mm {
                display: none;
            }
        }

        @media screen and (max-width:180mm) {
            @page {
                margin: 5mm 0mm 5mm 0mm;
            }

            .showa4 {
                display: none;
            }

            .show80mm {
            }
        }
    </style>

    <style media="print">
        @media (min-device-width:180mm) {
            @page {
                size: 210mm 297mm;
                margin: 10mm 10mm 10mm 10mm;
            }

            .showa4 {
            }

            .show80mm {
                display: none;
            }
        }


        @media (max-device-width:180mm) {
            * {
                font-size: 9pt;
            }

            @page {
                size: 65mm 100vh;
                margin: 0mm 0mm 0mm 0mm;
                padding: 0mm 0mm 0mm 0mm;
            }

            .showa4 {
                display: none !important;
            }

            .show80mm {
                max-width: 65mm;
            }

            thead tr td {
                background-color: silver;
                padding: 0em;
                font-weight: 700;
                font-size: 0.9em;
            }

            td {
                word-wrap: break-word;
            }
        }



        .Version2291 {
        }
    </style>

</head>
<body>

    <div class="showa4">
        <img src="https://fieldpine.com/logo0.png" alt="" style="width:30%" />
        <Center><h1><fieldpine-if test="%purchaseorder.isdropshipping%">Drop Shipping </fieldpine-if>Purchase Order</h1></Center>
        <p>To: %purchaseorder.supplier.name%</p>


        <table border="0" width="100%">
            <thead><tr><td>Bill To</td><td>Deliver To</td></tr></thead>
            <tbody>
                <tr>
                    <td valign="top" style="border:2px solid black;padding:0.4em">
                        <table border="0" width="100%">
                            <tr><td colspan="2" style="border-bottom:1px dotted silver;"><big><b>%purchaseorder.location.formalname%</b></big></td></tr>
                            <tr><td colspan="2">%purchaseorder.location.address1/txt[htmlbr]%</td></tr>
                            <tr><td colspan="2" style="border-bottom:1px dotted silver;">%purchaseorder.location.city% %purchaseorder.location.postcode%</td></tr>
                            <tr><td>Phone</td><td>%purchaseorder.location.phone%</td></tr>
                            <tr><td>Email</td><td><a href="mailto:%purchaseorder.location.email%">%purchaseorder.location.email%</a></td></tr>
                            <tr><td>Date</td><td>%purchaseorder.entrydt/dt[]%</td></tr>
                            <tr><td>Order#</td><td>%purchaseorder.cust_ponum% / %param.poid%</td></tr>
                            <fieldpine-if test="%purchaseorder.supplier.storecode%">
                                <tr><td>Store Code</td><td>%purchaseorder.supplier.storecode%</td></tr>
                            </fieldpine-if>
                        </table>

                    </td>
                    <td valign="top" style="border:2px solid black;padding:0.4em">%purchaseorder.deliveryaddress/txt[htmlbr]%</td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <td valign="top" colspan="2">
                        Comments<br />
                        <b><i>%purchaseorder.suppliercomments%</i></b>
                    </td>
                </tr>
            </tbody>
        </table>




    </div>

    <!-- Draw Salelines A4 Version -->
    <table border="0" class="showa4" style="border-collapse:collapse;margin-top:3em" width="100%">
        <thead>
            <tr style="background-color:silver">
                <td>L#</td>
                <td>Order Code</td>
                <td>Qty</td>
                <td>Description</td>
                <td align="right">Cost Each</td>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            <fprepeat purchaseorder>
                <!-- order="qty_ord desc" -->
                <tr>
                    <td>%purchaseorder.item[].linenum%</td>
                    <td align="left">%purchaseorder.item[].product.manupartcode%</td>
                    <td align="left">%purchaseorder.item[].qty_ord%</td>
                    <td align="left">%purchaseorder.item[].product.description%</td>
                    <td align="right">%purchaseorder.item[].product.costprice/$[2]%</td>
                </tr>
            </fprepeat>

        </tbody>
    </table>




</body>

This results in a purchase order that looks like this.

This purchase order is showing a drop ship order. The bold "Drop Shipping Purchase Order" only appears for drop ship orders, normal orders simply say "Purchase Order". The template does this automatically based on the details in the purchase order