Most ERP purchasing modules look the same on a slide: request → order → receive → pay. The interesting part is what happens at the edges — when demand is uncertain, goods come from abroad, suppliers quote in three currencies, or your team is manually copying numbers between spreadsheets. That's where 1C:Drive either earns its place or doesn't.

Here's how the system actually works.

Two Ways to Plan What to Buy

Before a purchase order exists, you need to know what to order. 1C:Drive gives you two distinct tools for this, and choosing the right one matters.

Demand planning works from actual open orders. If a customer orders a table, the system explodes the bill of materials — legs, tabletop, paint, screws — and calculates what needs to be bought or produced to fulfill that specific order. It's real-time and tied to actual demand. Good for made-to-order production or businesses that don't carry much free stock.

Demand forecasting works from historical consumption. You define a reference period (say, the last 60 days), the system calculates average daily consumption, then projects how much you'll need over your forecasting horizon. Good for high-volume products that sell regularly without individual sales orders, like consumables or standard retail stock.

Both tools generate purchase orders automatically. The difference is what they're based on: actual open demand vs. statistical patterns.

For businesses that need a simpler approach, there's also the MIN/MAX reorder point system. Set a minimum quantity — the level that triggers a replenishment order — and a maximum quantity you want in stock. When stock falls below MIN, the system generates a purchase order to bring it back to MAX. No forecasting required.

The Bidding Process

When you're sourcing something new or want competitive pricing, 1C:Drive has a proper RFQ (Request for Quotation) workflow.

You create an RFQ, attach a list of products, set an expiration date, and send it to multiple suppliers at once. As responses come in, you register each one — prices, discounts, validity periods, payment terms. Then you compare them side by side and create a purchase order based on the best offer. The system keeps the full history, so you can see what each supplier quoted and when.

This isn't just a paper trail. Supplier prices are stored and updated automatically, so next time you run a report on "what did we actually pay for component X over the last year," the data is there.

Purchase Orders and What They Track

A purchase order in 1C:Drive tracks two things independently: delivery status and payment status. This matters because goods often arrive before the invoice, or you pay an advance before goods ship.

You can attach payment schedules to orders — drawn from the contract terms — so your finance team can see expected outflows without hunting through documents.

If you order the same things regularly (office supplies, packaging materials, maintenance services), there's a recurring purchases tool. Set a schedule and a supplier, and the system generates purchase orders or supplier invoices automatically.

Receiving Goods: One Step or Two

When goods arrive, you have two options depending on your accounting policy.

In the one-step approach, a single supplier invoice records both the physical receipt and the financial transaction. Simpler, fewer documents.

In the two-step approach, a goods receipt captures the physical arrival first (useful when goods arrive before the invoice), and the supplier invoice handles the accounting later. This maps to how many warehouses actually operate — the truck shows up, warehouse logs the goods, finance processes the invoice a few days later.

Both approaches support reservations and credit limit checks at the point of receiving.

Imported Goods and Landed Costs

If you import, you know that the price on the supplier invoice is never the actual cost. There are customs duties, VAT, broker fees, freight — and all of it needs to be allocated to the right products.

1C:Drive handles this with a customs declaration document that lets you group products into commodity groups, specify duty rates, HS codes, country of origin, and VAT treatment for each group. Then a separate landed costs document lets you allocate additional expenses — freight, insurance, broker services — across the received goods either by quantity or by value.

The result is that each item in your inventory carries an accurate cost, not just the invoice price.

Returns, Adjustments, and the Messy Situations

Suppliers make mistakes. Goods arrive damaged. A supplier wants to give you a retroactive discount.

The system handles this through debit notes (changes to amount or product list), purchase returns, and AR/AP adjustment documents. Each covers a different scenario: returning goods to a supplier, reducing debt without a return, clearing advances, or offsetting mutual debts between a customer who is also a supplier.

What You Can Report On

The module includes 30+ standard reports with drill-down capability. The most useful ones for a purchasing team are accounts payable aging (overdue debt broken down by time bucket), supplier price history, and plan-versus-actual analysis on order fulfillment.

Reports work across multiple legal entities, so if your business structure involves several companies, you're not running separate instances.