Marcus Reyes
Supply Chain & Inventory Specialist | 12 Years
Marcus has managed supply chain and inventory operations in food & beverage manufacturing for over a decade, with a focus on compliance, lot traceability, and waste reduction. He has worked with FDA-regulated manufacturers across the US.
An inventory valuation report tells you what you have. It says nothing about what you've already agreed to pay for and haven't received yet. That gap is real money leaving your bank account on a schedule your inventory reports can't see coming — which is exactly what the Open Purchase Commitments report tracks.
How It's Calculated
As of today, Nstock pulls every purchase order that's pending or only partially received — meaning the full ordered quantity hasn't arrived yet — and calculates a commitment value for each: total order price for that line plus total shipping cost, as agreed at the time the order was placed. Rows are sorted by expected delivery date, soonest first, so what's landing next is always at the top, and everything rolls up into a grand total across all open orders.
Why a Finance or Ops Person Would Check It
This is a cash-flow report more than an inventory report. Finance cares because this spend is committed whether or not it's hit the books as inventory yet — it's an obligation, and knowing the total and its timing matters for keeping enough cash on hand to cover it. Ops and purchasing care because the same list doubles as a receiving forecast: what's coming, from whom, and when, which matters for planning warehouse space and production schedules around incoming material.
Watch for This
A commitment total that's grown noticeably without a matching increase in expected near-term deliveries usually means orders are being placed and then sitting pending for longer than intended — a supplier confirmation that never came back, a delivery date that quietly slipped, or an order that got duplicated because nobody checked whether one was already open for that material. Left unchecked, that's cash committed with no clear landing date, and it compounds: if purchasing keeps placing new orders without checking why old ones haven't cleared, the open commitment total keeps climbing while none of it shows up as usable inventory. Sorting this report by expected delivery date and scanning for anything overdue or missing a date entirely is usually the fastest way to catch it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does this include fully received orders?
No — only orders that are pending or partially received count. Once an order is fully received, its value has already converted into on-hand raw material inventory and it drops out of this report.
What if a purchase order doesn't have an expected delivery date?
It's still included in the total, but sorts to the end of the list since there's nothing to sort by — worth a follow-up with the supplier to get a real date, since a missing delivery date usually means the confirmation loop with that supplier isn't closed.
Does commitment value include partial receipts?
The commitment reflects the full ordered line — total order price plus shipping as agreed. It's tracking what you've committed to pay, not a running balance that shrinks as partial shipments arrive.
How is this different from Open Purchase Orders elsewhere in Nstock?
This report is specifically the financial lens on the same underlying data — dollar commitment by supplier, sorted by delivery timing — built for cash-flow planning rather than day-to-day receiving operations.
Next Steps
Once a committed order is received, its value moves into raw materials — and if it's issued to production shortly after, from there into WIP. For the broader picture of what's already on hand and how long it's been sitting, see Monthly Inventory Report Explained and Inventory Aging Report. For more on managing the supplier relationships behind these orders, see Supplier Management for Small Manufacturers and How to Send Purchase Orders from Your Own Email Domain. And before a new supplier ever gets to the point of an open commitment, vetting them with an RFI, RFP, or RFQ is worth the few extra minutes — see the step-by-step walkthrough for how to run it.
Start your free trial → — already have an account? Log in and find Open Purchase Commitments under Reports → Finance.
— Marcus Reyes, Supply Chain & Inventory Specialist