retail inventory items

We don't want to expand our inventory list for every item we purchase on behalf of clients.  But, we would like the receipt of the items to follow the normal inventory process whereby the warehouse can note that the items were received.  Any way to do that?  I tried setting up one new inventory item call "purchase for clients" and dragging that to the PPO and then using the notes field to flesh out what the items are per line (so, same inventory items on each line but different notes).  The warehouse can receive the items based on the notes but I can't find a way to let the sales team know as each item is received.