What is a PO Import Tool- Why You Need it for Your Cannabis Retail POS

What is a PO Import Tool?

Cova’s PO import tool is a feature which allows you to simply input the ASN (Advanced Shipping Notice) supplier and supplier invoice number, while Cova handles the rest and automatically generates your purchase order with all the details of the products including cost, order quantity, received quantity, price, and even the package number included. 

Other PO tools on the market have the ability to scan and import the purchase order, but you still have to confirm quantities and manually input the package numbers to receive the PO. With Cova's purchase order import tool for the Canadian cannabis retail market, that entire process can happen in a few clicks. It automates the typical multi-step process of manually inputting selections from drop down menus, choosing your products from your suppliers database individually, and punching additional details like cost, and you can easily save a lot of time and reduce errors that may typically occur during a manual import process.

Benefits of PO Import Tool

A cannabis retail POS software is supposed to streamline operations and reduce operational costs, and ultimately save you time and effort with a smooth, fast end-to-end experience. When you automated the repetitive and error-prone process of manually plugging in PO details, you save time—around 5 hours a week or more, as claimed by multiple Cova clients—and greatly reduce mistakes that can cost even more.

Cova has seen this with our own clients, which is why our team rolled out the Purchase Order import feature for the BC and ON markets in 2020, and now also for the AB market recently. With this feature, it only takes a few clicks to instantly pull purchase orders with all the fields pre-populated, making the process much more scalable and efficient.

Here’s how it works: 

This feature now allows you to import the ASN from your provincial government body (AGLC in AB, LCRB in BC, AGCO/OCS in ON), import it into Cova and instantly create a Purchase Order from it. Cova will generate a Purchase Order using the information in the imported file, and you can then verify that content on the Receiving screen before finalizing the import by pushing ‘Receive’. Once you have received the PO, it can then be marked ‘Complete’ (as with a non-imported PO). 

It’s also a process that only takes a few clicks, and allows you to handle a larger volume of orders in a shorter amount of time. That’s saving your team time and your company money - what’s better than that?

A few things to note:

• Products must exist in Cova first before they can be received with the import. We use the BCLDB SKU to match, and there must be a single item in your catalog with that BCLDB SKU. You will get an error during the import if we can’t find a unique match for a product.
• We use the content of the 'Product Identifier' field (Lot Number) as the Package ID for Cova. 
• The ’Ship To’ and ‘Bill To’ locations are both selected from the location provided while doing the import.
• This feature is in early release for Alberta cannabis stores, and may not be accessible to everyone yet. If you would like to inquire about activating it, please reach out to your Cova Account Manager, or contact support@covasoftware.com.

At Cova, our focus is evolving our software to keep pace with changing regulations, and adding product improvements that save our customers time they can use to grow their business.