SM Space · Smart Command
SM Space Smart Command: Run Your ERP the Way You Think
Instead of opening screens, working down menus and searching field by field, tell the ERP what you want to do. It asks for the few things only you know, fills in what it already knows, and creates the document through the same rules, permissions and approvals as the screen would.
Try it — this box is simulated, and nothing you do in it reaches a real system.
Suggested commands
- Create Purchase Order Raise a new order to a supplier. It is created as a draft.
- Receive and Invoice Receive an order and record the supplier’s invoice in one go.
- Approve Purchase Order Answer an order that has been routed to you.
- Check Inventory Stock by warehouse, with what is reserved taken off.
- Create Sales Order Take an order from a customer, priced and credit-checked.
- Find Vendor Open a supplier’s file without going through the list screen.
Simulated Nothing here reaches a real system. In SM Space this box opens anywhere with Ctrl K, and the list is built from what you are allowed to do.
What is Smart Command in ERP?
Smart Command is an intent-driven ERP interface. A user opens one box, types what they want to do — create PO — and the system asks, in order, for the few things it cannot work out on its own: the vendor, the item, the quantity. It uses the company’s own records, the prices it has already paid, the supplier’s own terms and the configured business rules to fill in the rest, and it creates the document through exactly the same validations, permissions and approvals as the ordinary screen.
Put the other way round: traditional ERP asks you to learn where everything is. Smart Command lets you start with what you want to do.
- Starts with what you want to do, not where it lives
- Asks for only what the system cannot work out
- Enforces the same permissions, validations and approvals
- Creates a real document, as a draft, with a number
Creating a purchase order with Smart Command
This is the flow the box above runs, written out — six steps, four of them answered by the user. The demo is the same sequence with the screens drawn in.
You say what you want to do
Two words into the box. It is matched on the command’s name, its module, and the words people actually use for it — so “raise an order” finds the same thing “create PO” does.
> Create POIt asks which vendor
A search, not a dropdown of four thousand. It is ranked — an exact code first, then an exact name, then the ones that start with what you typed — and it is forgiving about spelling, because a vendor’s name is the thing people get wrong.
Create PO
Select vendor
ACM Limited · ACM Manufacturing Limited · ABC SuppliesThen which item
The list leads with what this vendor has supplied you before, which is what you are buying nine times in ten. Everything else is still one search away — a supplier’s first order for a new part is not a mistake, so nothing is hidden.
Create PO → ACM Limited
Add item
ITEMA MC · ITEMB Pro · Aluminium Sheet 3mmThen how many — and the price is already there
The quantity is the one number the system will not guess at: that is the buyer’s decision, fresh each time. The price is filled in, with the document behind it named, so you can see where the number came from and overrule it.
Quantity?10Unit price?22.50 ← you last paid this on PO-10312, 12 Aug 2026A review, with what you were never asked for on it
Currency, payment terms, delivery terms and the delivery location arrive from the vendor’s own profile the moment the vendor is known. Anything that will stop the order is named here, and so is anything merely worth knowing.
Purchase order ready
Vendor ACM Limited · Lines 2 · Currency USD · Terms Net 30
⚠ ITEMB Pro: no price known — it will be ordered at zeroAnd it is a draft, not a fait accompli
The order is created in DRAFT. Submitting it for approval is a separate step, and approval runs through the normal approval rules — the routing, the limits and the people are the ones already configured.
✓ Purchase order PO-10483 created — DRAFT
Open PO-10483 · Submit for approval
How Smart Command works
Six stages, and the third is the one that matters: nothing here is a shortcut past the ERP. The command bar collects the answers and then hands them to the same code the screen hands them to.
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Intent
“Create PO”. Matched against every command this person is allowed to run — by name, by module, and by the words people actually type.
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Permission
The list is built from what you may do. A command you have no grant for is not filtered out of the results — it was never in them.
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Questions, in order
Vendor, item, quantity. Each one a ranked search of your own records, each one narrowed by the answer before it.
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Context
Currency, terms, delivery place, unit of measure, last price paid, the number series. Filled in, not asked for.
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Validation
The same checks the screen runs, run before you commit: supplier status, item status, tax, approval rules, credit. What blocks is separated from what is worth knowing.
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The document
Created as a draft, through the module’s own endpoint. There is no second writer and no back door — one code path, one set of rules.
Worth being exact about. Smart Command does not decide anything. Permissions, vendor and item status, approval requirements, posting rules, tax, currency, location, quantity limits and credit control are all enforced where they were always enforced. The command bar is a faster door into the same building.
It asks for what only you know, and fills in what it already knows
This is the half of the feature that is easy to miss, because the thing you notice is the thing you were not asked. Four answers become a complete purchase order.
What you answer
- The commandCreate PO
- The vendorACM Limited
- The itemITEMA MC
- The quantity10
What you are never asked for
- CurrencyUSDfrom the vendor’s profile
- Payment termsNet 30from the vendor’s profile
- Delivery termsFOBfrom the vendor’s profile
- Unit of measureEAfrom the item
- Unit price22.50the last price paid to this vendor
- Order numberPO-10483from your numbering rules
- Delivery locationToronto Warehousethe one this user always picks
- StatusDRAFTforced — approval has not happened yet
You can still change any of it. These are answers already on file, not decisions taken away from you — and where the system has nothing to go on, it says so rather than inventing a number.
Finding the record, when you cannot spell it
Every step that asks for a record is a ranked search of your own data: an exact code first, then an exact name or a barcode you filed against it, then the rows that start with what you typed, then the rows that contain it. Three more things happen underneath.
Two typos, still found
ACN Manufactring
Did you mean?
✓ ACM Manufacturing Limited
ACM Limited
It only ever widens. A row that is there because it resembles what you typed ranks below every row that actually contains it, so a correct spelling is never pushed down by a near miss.
Ltd finds Limited
ACM Ltd
Stored as
✓ ACM Limited
Also Mfg, Intl, Corp, Inc, GmbH, Pty — twenty-four pairs, both ways
A shortening is not a spelling mistake and does not behave like one, so it is answered separately. The list has an edge, and we would rather say where it is: Mnfg is not on it and finds nothing.
The name you wrote on it
SKU-99812
Finds
✓ ACM Limited
Barcodes, supplier SKUs and short names — vendors, customers and items
An alias is an identifier you filed on purpose, so it is searched with no flag and no setting, and an exact alias ranks beside an exact name. Point a barcode scanner at the box and it lands on the row.
One boundary, because it is the obvious next question. This forgiveness applies to record names — vendors, customers, items, warehouses, employees. Command names are matched on their words and their synonyms instead, so a misspelt command does not quietly turn itself into a different one.
One box, and it reaches the whole system
Two different things live in the same box, and it is worth keeping them apart. Some commands run a transaction. The rest open a screen — which sounds small until you count how much of an ERP day is spent finding one.
Run the transaction
| Area | What you type | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Purchasing | Create Purchase Order |
Raises a draft order, priced from what you last paid |
| Requisitions | Convert Requisition to Purchase Order |
Turns an approved request into one order — or several, split by supplier |
| Sourcing | Award RFQ |
Picks the winning quotation, and records the comparison behind it |
| Receiving | Receive PO-10482 |
Books in every outstanding line, or only the ones you choose |
| Payables | Receive and Invoice |
Two documents from one command: the goods receipt and the supplier invoice |
| Costing | Allocate Landed Cost |
Spreads freight and duty across the lines that carried them |
| HR | Request Leave |
Checks the balance before it asks anybody to approve it |
| Sales | Create Sales Order for Contoso |
Priced from the customer’s own list, and credit-checked before it saves |
| Inventory | Check Inventory |
Answers with stock by warehouse, and stops — nothing is written |
Purchase orders go further than the row above suggests: submit, approve, release, receive, invoice, return, revise, close, cancel, reopen and copy are all commands. So are the requisition’s own actions — submit, approve, reject, split by supplier, assign a buyer — and the whole request-for-quotation sequence, up to and including awarding it.
Or just go to the screen
| Area | What you type |
|---|---|
| Sales | Sales Orders |
| Inventory | Stock on Hand |
| Finance | Chart of Accounts |
| Reporting | Reports |
| HR | Employees |
| Payroll | Pay Runs |
Every screen you are allowed to open, in every module, in the language your system is set to — because this half is the menu read sideways rather than a list anybody maintains.
Five details that decide whether people keep using it
A command bar is easy to demonstrate and hard to live with. These five are the difference, and each one is ordinary behaviour rather than a setting somebody has to find.
It tells you what will go wrong before you commit
The review step separates what will stop the order from what is merely worth knowing. A supplier on hold is a refusal, and you are told so while you can still do something about it. A missing price is a warning: the order will save, and you should look at it. You find out before you press Create, not after.
- Blocking ACM Limited is on hold for purchasing until 30 September.
- Warning An RFQ is normally required above $10,000. This will save, but it will not submit.
- Warning ITEMB Pro: no price known — it will be ordered at zero.
It admits what it does not know
A price comes from an agreed price in the vendor’s catalogue, then from the last price actually paid, then from the item’s standard cost. When none of the three exists, most systems quietly write nought. This one says so — on the review screen, and again on the order that comes out of it.
- 1 An agreed price in the vendor’s catalogue
- 2 The last price actually paid to this vendor
- 3 The item’s standard cost
- — None of the three: ordered at zero, and told twice
You can stop halfway and come back
A half-finished command is kept as a draft against your own user, not thrown away. Close the laptop at five, open the box tomorrow morning, and it is the first thing in the list — at the step you left it on.
- Resume Create PO → ACM Limited → 2 lines added
Pressing the button twice does not create two orders
The network drops, nothing comes back, and the user presses Create again — which is the moment most systems quietly make a second purchase order. Here the same order comes back instead. One document, whatever the connection did.
- Retry PO-10483 — the same order, not a second one
A command you are not allowed does not appear
Not greyed out. Not “access denied” three steps in. Simply absent, because the list is built from what you may do. A warehouse clerk and a buyer open the same box and see two different sets of commands — and Receive and Invoice only shows for someone allowed to create both documents.
- Buyer sees Create PO · Approve PO · Receive and Invoice
- Clerk sees Receive PO — and nothing else on this order
Smart Command vs an ERP chatbot
The comparison worth making is not with a chat assistant in general — SM Space ships one of those too, and it is good at a job this is bad at. It is with the chatbot bolted onto the side of an ERP: outside the workflow, answering from documentation, handing you a paragraph when what you wanted was a purchase order.
| A bolted-on ERP chatbot | Smart Command |
|---|---|
| Answers a question about the system | Carries out a transaction in the system |
| Returns text you then act on yourself | Returns a document, with a number |
| Usually reads documentation | Reads your records, prices and terms |
| Sits outside the workflow | Is the workflow, entered from the front |
| You re-explain the context each time | The context is the transaction it is building |
| Permissions are often a separate question | The same permissions as every screen, enforced by the same code |
Smart Command is not there to answer “how do I create a purchase order?”. It is there to create the purchase order.
And when you have a question instead of a job
Not everything you want from an ERP is a transaction. “Show me the overdue orders for ACM over $5,000” is a question, and it belongs to the AI Assistant — a separate feature that sits alongside the command bar and answers in a chat, where the answer can be explained, filtered and turned into a report.
Show overdue purchase orders for ACM over $5,000
You said “ACM”. Did you mean ACM Limited or ACM Manufacturing Limited?
3 purchase orders found
| Order | Value | Days late |
|---|---|---|
| PO-10472 | $8,450 | 12 |
| PO-10481 | $6,200 | 5 |
| PO-10490 | $12,500 | 2 |
Ask the assistant what happened. Tell the command bar what to do. They share the same permissions, so neither one shows you anything you are not allowed to see, and a column you are not cleared for is missing from both. When the assistant is not sure which record you meant, it asks before it answers rather than guessing — which is the same instinct as the command bar refusing to invent a price.
Frequently asked questions
- What is Smart Command in ERP?
- Smart Command is an intent-based ERP interface: a single box where a user types what they want to do — “create PO” — and the system asks, in order, for the few things it cannot work out on its own. It uses the company’s own records, the prices already paid, the supplier’s own terms and the configured business rules to fill in the rest, and it creates the document through exactly the same validations, permissions and approvals as the ordinary screen.
- How does Smart Command create a purchase order?
- In six steps: the command, the vendor, the item, the quantity, a review, and Create. Currency, payment terms, delivery terms, unit of measure, the order number and the last price paid are filled in rather than asked for. The order is created as a draft, and approval runs through the normal approval rules.
- Does Smart Command replace ERP screens?
- No. It is a faster way in. The screens stay exactly where they are, and they are still the right place for reviewing a document, editing it in detail, or anything with a lot of fields on it. Smart Command saves the navigation, not the screen.
- Does Smart Command bypass ERP validations or approvals?
- No, and it could not: it posts to the same endpoint the screen posts to. A supplier on hold refuses the order in the command bar exactly as it refuses it on the screen. The difference is when you find out — the review step names what will stop the order before you press Create, rather than after.
- Is Smart Command the same as an AI chatbot?
- No. Smart Command is for doing: creating, approving, receiving. The AI Assistant, which sits alongside it, is for asking: “show overdue purchase orders for ACM over $5,000”. They share the same permissions and the same business rules, and a user moves between them. A question typed into the command bar belongs in the assistant, and the product routes it there.
- What happens if I do not have permission to run a command?
- It is not in your list. Not greyed out, and not an “access denied” three steps in — the box is built from what you are allowed to do, so a warehouse clerk and a buyer see two different sets of commands. Receive and Invoice, for example, only appears for someone allowed to create both a goods receipt and a supplier invoice.
- Does Smart Command cope with typing mistakes?
- On record names, yes. “ACN Manufactring” finds ACM Manufacturing Limited, and “ACM Ltd” finds ACM Limited, because twenty-four abbreviation pairs are expanded on the way through. It works on vendors, customers, items, warehouses and employees. Command names themselves are matched on their words and their synonyms rather than corrected, so “raise an order” works and a misspelt command does not silently become a different one.
- What can Smart Command do today?
- Purchase orders end to end — create, submit, approve, release, receive, invoice, return, revise, close, cancel — plus purchase requisitions, requests for quotation including the award, landed cost, leave requests, sales orders, an inventory look-up, record look-ups, and direct navigation to any screen the user is allowed to open across every module.
Where this sits in SM Space
Smart Command is the way in. What it reaches is the rest of the system.
- Purchasing & Procurement — requisitions, quotations, purchase orders and three-way matching.
- Inventory Management — stock by warehouse, bin, lot and serial number.
- Sales & Invoicing — quotes, sales orders and the credit check behind them.
- Workflow & Approvals — the routing every command’s approval runs through.
- AI Assistant — the other half: asking, rather than doing.
- Reporting & Dashboards — where a question becomes something you keep.
- Security & Access Control — why a command you may not run is not in your list.
- SM Space — the whole system, in one page.
Ready to work with an ERP differently?
Start with what you want to do. Smart Command guides you through the rest — and everything it creates goes through the rules you already have.