Purchase Orders

What it is and what it's for

Use a Purchase Order whenever you want a formal record of what you asked a vendor for before receiving the goods or the bill. It's useful to:

• Send the vendor a printable document with the exact detail of your order.
• Route it through an internal authorization workflow before committing the spend.
• Track whether the vendor has delivered what you ordered yet (pending, partial or received).
• Serve as the origin for later generating a Purchase with Reception or a Vendor Bill.
• Compare it against your Budget, if your company uses the Budgeting module.

A Purchase Order can also be generated automatically from another document:

• From a Sales Order: useful for drop-shipping purchases, where the vendor ships the goods directly to the end customer.
• From an already-authorized Purchase Request: the Purchase Order inherits the vendor, currency, payment terms, location, department, division, item class, reference, priority and notes from the request.

A Purchase Order has two independent statuses that are worth telling apart: the Authorization Status (Draft, Pending, Authorized or Rejected) shows whether it has been internally approved; the Order Status (Pending Receipt, Partially Received, Received) shows how much of what you ordered the vendor has actually delivered.

How to use it

1. Open Purchase Orders from the Purchases menu.
2. Use the All, Pending Authorization and Draft tabs to quickly find the group of orders you need to review.
3. With Xchange, on the All tab a filter shows only what's pending to send and a button sends several in bulk.
4. Click New to create a blank Purchase Order, or open it from an already-authorized Sales Order or Purchase Request so it's generated with the data prefilled.
5. If your company has document recognition (OCR) enabled, you can attach the vendor's quote or PDF so several fields (reference, vendor, currency, payment terms, exchange rate) fill in automatically; always double-check the imported data before saving.
6. Fill in the vendor, location and currency, and add the item or service lines with their quantity and price; then save the document.
7. If your user group requires authorization, the order stays pending until the user assigned as authorizer approves or rejects it from the detail screen.
8. Before creating the order, use the Analysis screen (available from an already-saved order) to check the last price paid for each item and the stock available at the location.
9. As the vendor delivers the goods through Purchases with Reception linked to this order, the Order Status updates on its own (Pending Receipt, Partially Received or Received). If you don't need to track the reception line by line, you can force the status manually with the Mark as Pending Receipt and Mark as Received buttons on the detail screen.
10. To print, use the document's print button; you can choose between several predefined formats or a custom HTML template configured by your company. The printed document includes a barcode/QR the vendor can scan to verify it.
11. Use Reports for a summary or a detailed view of your purchase orders, filtering by vendor, date, subsidiary, location, department, project, item or item class.

Key fields

Validations when saving

• Vendor and location are required; the location must belong to the document's subsidiary.
• The vendor must be active when creating the order (when editing, it just needs to not be void).
• The currency and, if provided, the department and the shipping/billing addresses must exist and be active.
• There must be at least one line with an item, service, or description; you can't leave a quantity or price on a line with no item or name.
• Each line's discount percentage must be between 0% and 100%.
• If the vendor requires a specific purchase transit account, every line that has a ledger account must use that same account.
• If your company has budget control enabled, every line must have a ledger account assigned.
• If the order was generated from a Sales Order or a Purchase Request, the source document must be authorized and not void.
• The document number can't be changed once created, and a voided document can no longer be edited (keep it only as a reference).

Availability and permissions

• On the Enterprise edition, in addition to the plan, your company must have the Core module active.
• You need the Purchase Orders permission; the add, edit, delete and void levels are controlled separately within that same permission.
• Even without edit-level access, you can still edit an order that was assigned to you as authorizer.
• Document recognition (OCR) import requires the Premium plan or higher, or a support/partner user.
• Budget validation only applies if your company uses the Budgeting module (Enterprise edition).

Tips and common mistakes