Suppliers, materials and items are closely linked to each other. You can consider them in a kind of hierarchy with materials at the bottom and suppliers at the top.

Materials are the smallest component parts and can be combined to make an item. Items refer to larger parts and are what are used to create a proposal. Suppliers represent the suppliers you use to source your materials and items.

In this way, materials, items and suppliers are linked to each other in a close relationship.

Items represent the products or services that your business sells to its customers and can be found in the items you sell section of your Payaca account.

Items can be anything from physical goods to digital services and are used to build quotes and invoices.

Any one item can be made up of a combination of materials or may be an item on its own.

To add a new item, visit the "Items you sell" tab, on the menu bar.

Select "Create Item".

Create an Item Reference. This is internal and will not be shown to the customer.

Add a Title & description. This will be shown on proposals, so feel free to add lots of detail here!

You can also add your own images. This is a good idea as these images will appear on your proposals making them stand out to your customers.

Just click on the image icon and upload image files or drag and drop your image file directly into the image space.

To price your item, you have the option of choosing a set price, setting a profit percentage or setting a profit amount. Your item price will likely need to at least equal the cost of your materials.

It's important to note that you will only have the option to have a profit margin if you've attached materials to quantify the profit against.

You can also use the auto-update tick box to set your item price to automatically update when material prices change. This will ensure your percentage profit margin always remains consistent even when material prices change.

Once you are happy with your item, click "Back".

You will now be able to add your item to new proposals.

When pricing an item you can choose to add or remove different tax rates on individual items.

This allows you to apply tax on an item-by-item basis rather than a blanket application across all your items.

To add or remove tax, from an open item use the tax drop-down to choose between available tax rates.

Any custom tax rates you have created will be available to select. For steps on setting up custom tax rates read our help article on setting up my company.

CIS needs to be enabled from the "My Company" page of your account.

Make sure you're on the "Company info" sub-tab and scroll to the bottom of the page.

You will see a box titled "Construction industry scheme" and a switch below it labelled "I am a CIS subcontractor".

Click on the switch.

The CIS deduction rate drop-down will now be visible.

You will also see a message saying:

"If you change the CIS deduction rate for this company, CIS deduction rates will be updated against all applicable line items and against any quotes and invoices which have not been sent. The old CIS deduction rate will remain on any sent quotes and invoices".

Use the drop-down to select from 0%, %20 or %30.

Now that your CIS rate is enabled, you can add it to individual items.

Open the item that you want to apply CIS to, either from a quote/proposal or from the "Items you sell" page.

Within the item editor, you will see two drop-downs, one for tax and one for CIS.

The default CIS deduction state will be set to "No".

Click on the drop-down to switch the CIS to "Yes".

In brackets you will see the CIS percentage, this will match the rate you chose earlier when enabling CIS deduction.

CIS will now be applied to that item.

Repeat for any other items you want to add CIS deduction to.

From the left side menu, go to the "Items you sell" page.

In the top right of your screen, click "Item groups".

You will be able to see a series of cards displaying your current saved item groups. To edit a current item group, click on that group card.

Use the "x" icon to remove items from a group or use the "Add item group" button to add new items.

Select the item you want to add and it will be added.

When you're happy with the group, click "Save" in the top right corner.

To create a new item group, when you're on the item group cards page, click "Create Item Group".

Name your group and begin building it out using the "Add item group" button.

When you're happy, click "Save".

Saved item groups can then be used to quickly build out a proposal.

Item groups can also be created and edited from proposals. Find the steps on how to do this in the proposals article.

Materials can be added to items.

From an open item, click "Add Material".

Here you can choose to add materials you use to deliver your item.

Use the filters to find your materials.

Once you've added your material, you can also change your supplier from the item page you are on.

Once you have selected your materials, click "Add selected Materials"

Materials are the component parts that make up items (items you sell).

Whereas items are displayed on quotes and are visible to your customers, materials are used as a way of organising the different parts required for a job and are not visible to customers.

Materials act like shopping lists, letting you know what is required to deliver any item.

If you're trying to find a particular material you can do this very easily by using the filters and search bar at the top of the materials page.

With the filters, you can limit displaced materials by category, such as tools, plumbing, consumables, etc.

You can filter by suppliers which will allow you to select one of your suppliers and only show materials associated with that supplier.

Or you can filter by source, which allows you to limit the view to system materials (Williams) or your saved materials.

You can even combine multiple filters for a more refined search.

If you don't want to use filters, you can perform a search using the search bar. Search for the name of the material or use the supplier reference code.

Materials can be linked to suppliers to make it easy to track and find what you need for any given project.

Multiple materials can be attributed to a single supplier and multiple suppliers can be attached to a single material.

You can find many materials already provided through the Williams supplier. This saves you from having to manually build up many individual materials.

To link a material to a supplier, from the materials page, find the material you want to link and click on it to open.

From the open item, make sure you are on the suppliers tab and click "Add Supplier".

Materials can also be linked to items, allowing you to quickly see which items use any given material.

These linked items can be viewed from the items tab, from within a material, allowing you to quickly see which items use that material.

To create a material:

From the Dashboard go to "Materials".

Click "Create Materials".

The material editor will open, allowing you to input information about the material you want to create.

The sections indicated with a red asterisk are required and should be filled out.

You need to choose a name and assign a price.

You will also need to assign a supplier.

You can search for existing suppliers or create a new supplier by clicking into the box and selecting "Create a new Supplier".

From the material builder, you can:

Once you have filled out the information you need, click "Save".

You will now be presented with that materials page, from here you can manage that material including a view of linked items.

One feature of Payaca is the ability to add markup to your prices whenever you're creating quotes or invoices.

The way this is achieved is through the use of items and materials.

Your material price should be equal to the cost of purchase of that material- this is the actual price you pay for that material from the supplier. This works as your baseline price.

The item can then include a markup on top of that material price.

This means to be able to add markup you must have materials attributed to your items. Follow the steps in the "Adding materials to items" section above for pairing items and materials.

Once you have your materials added, you will see some new information available in the "Item sales price" box.

You will now see the option to "Set a profit percentage" or "Set a profit amount (£)".

If you choose to set a percentage the item price will be increased by the percentage you chose, relative to the materials attached.

If you choose to set a profit amount, that value will be added to the total cost of your attached materials to form the item price.

Any items with markup assigned used in future quotes or invoices will automatically apply the markup rates set.

The supplier section of Payaca is where you can save and manage any suppliers you use to source your materials.

Williams is the default supplier that is pre-populated into your account, however, you can add your own suppliers too.

The benefit of using Williams is that all their supplier data is automatically updated to Payaca. This means that all the prices and information for materials provided by Williams are always kept up to date with Williams' actual physical supply.

This saves you from having to update these prices manually and prevents you from accidentally mispricing a job.

If you do want to set up additional suppliers you can quickly upload new materials to these via a CSV import.

From your dashboard, select the "Suppliers" option from the menu

Click on "Create Supplier"

Enter the Supplier information, and click "Save"

When creating a proposal, if you include items on the proposal that have an existing link to materials, you can use these to automatically calculate your prices.

While building your proposal, click "Show Materials required".

You can either add materials manually or click "Update from proposed items".

This will automatically pull through materials associated with the items on your proposal.

Purchase orders can be found in the suppliers section of your Payaca account and can be used to send purchase lists directly from your Payaca account to your supplier.

They can also be created directly from a project by using the materials tab.

Click on the supplier you want to create a purchase order with. If you want to use a system-updated supplier then choose Williams.

For the purpose of this help article, we will use Williams.

Click on the tab labelled "Purchase Orders".

From the purchase order tab, click "Create Purchase Order".

You now need to add materials to your order.

Click "Add materials".

You can also add additional notes to your order. These will be visible to the merchant when your order is sent.

Use the tick box to select your desired materials and use the filters at the top to help you choose your materials.

Once you have selected all the materials you want to include in your order, click "Add selected Materials".

Your materials will now be displayed to you in a list.

To proceed, click "Preview Purchase Order".

You will be presented with a draft of your purchase order.

To send the order to the supplier click "Send".

You will be presented with an editable preview of the email that will be sent to the supplier. Make any changes you require then click "Send".

Once the purchase with the supplier has been confirmed you can click "Confirm Purchase".

You will be given the opportunity to adjust the record of purchased items. If any item was unavailable or not received you can remove it from the final confirmed list.

When you're happy, click "Confirm".

If you want to download the final pdf click "Download pdf".

From an open project, go to the materials tab.

Click "Search & add materials".

Use the display to add items to your list and click "Add selected Materials". These will now be displayed under the materials tab.

If you have a proposal already in place, instead of searching and adding materials, click "Update from proposed Items" and this will automatically pull materials from those already added to your proposal.

When you're happy, click "Create a Purchase Order".

Confirm the supplier you want to use and click "Next".

Confirm the materials you are adding using the tick boxes and add edi the quantities if necessary. You can also add notes.

Click "Create purchase order".

Your purchase order will now appear under the materials tab of your project.

Within a project, if you have a list of materials added to your materials tab, you can mark each material as purchased individually, by using the "Record purchase" button.

Whenever you go to the purchase orders tab you will be able to see a list of previous purchase orders and their different states.

From this view, you will be able to find any incomplete purchase orders that are still in a draft state.

To edit a draft purchase order, click on the draft purchase order you want to edit. This will open the order.

Click "Edit".

You will now be able to add and remove materials as you see fit.

Follow the steps above (creating a new purchase order) to send your purchase order.

If you want to leave the order as a draft, click "Back" and your changes will be saved in a draft state.

To void a purchase order open the purchase order you want to void.

Click "Void this purchase order".

To confirm, click "Void"