Manage Purchase Orders for Parts

The following image shows the process of selecting a purchase order and drilling down to seeing its details.

The following image shows the line item details in the right pane. From here, you can edit the line item or delete it.

From the lower right pane, you can add a new part to the purchase order using the Add New button.

Each purchase order has a status to help you track the progress of the shipment. Purchase order line items also have a status. This enables you to record the status of parts received at different times, or to record different statuses for line items when some parts are properly received, and others are not.

You do not set the purchase order status for the purchase order to be Received, Partially Received, or Error. Rather, the system sets the status for the purchase order as a whole based on the status you enter for the line items.

The following describes the process:

• The inventory manager confirms each line item separately as it is received, and sets its line item status to be Received (when the part is delivered as expected), or Error (if the part was damaged, or if the wrong part or quantity was sent.)
• When the final purchase order line item is set to Received or Error, the system automatically sets the purchase order status to:
  • Received (if all line items are received.)
  • Partially Received (if at least one of the line items has a status of Error, but some are Received.)
  • Error (if all of the purchase order line items have a status of Error.)

When you change the purchase order status to Issued and then click Save, each individual purchase order line item will also be given that status, if it is not already marked as Received or Error.

The following describes the statuses used for purchase orders:

• Requested - this is the default status. Represents a purchase order that is newly created, but not yet approved
• Approved – represents a purchase order that has been approved by a user in the PO APPROVER security group. The purchase order is ready to be issued to the vendor.
• Rejected – represents a purchase order that has been rejected by a user in the PO APPROVER security group. The purchase order cannot be issued until it is set back to a Requested status, and then approved.
• Issued – the purchase order has been submitted to a vendor. You set this status.
• Received – the purchase order line items have been received at the receiving location, and the local inventory manager has confirmed the contents of each item. This status can only be set automatically by the system once all line items are Received.
• Partially Received – at least one of the purchase order line items has a status of Error, and the rest are Received. This status can only be set automatically by the system once all items are recorded as Received or Error.
• Error – All of the purchase order line items have a status of Error. This status can only be set automatically by the system once all items are set to Error.

The following describes the statuses used for line items:

• Awaiting Issue – represents a purchase order line item that is newly created, but not yet issued to the vendor. This system sets this status for a line item when you create it.
• Issued – represents a purchase order line item that has been submitted to the vendor, and not yet received at the receiving location. You can change this manually, or, when you change the status for the purchase order to Issued and then click Save, each individual purchase order line item will also be given the Issued status, if it is not already marked as Received or Error
• Received - represents a purchase order line item that has been received. See Setting purchase order line items to Received.
• Error - represents a purchase order line item that was not received as expected, such as when parts are lost in transit, or the wrong part or quantity was received. No inventory updates are performed for this item. If necessary, you can create a new manual inventory transaction to reflect the actual received item and quantity, outside of this purchase order.

Purchase orders may contain values for shipping and taxes, and these values must be reflected in the part costs that are part of the purchase order. You enter federal and state taxes and shipping costs for the purchase order. The application then prorates these costs to the PO line costs. In addition, for inventory transactions, the part unit costs also contain a portion of the shipping and tax costs, so that the total for each inventory transaction equals the total for PO line costs.

The following Purchase Order costs are prorated to each purchase order line item:

• Shipping
• State Tax
• Federal Tax

Since these fields affect the approval amount, they cannot be changed after the purchase order is approved.

The application uses a virtual field called "Shipping and Taxes" that stores the prorated shipping and taxes for the line item. This field is shown in the lower left pane when you select a purchase order in the upper right pane.

• The calculation of the "Shipping and Taxes" virtual field is: (Quantity * Unit Cost for that line) / (Sum of Quantity * Unit Cost for all lines) * (Sum of Shipping and Tax fields)
• The Line Cost field includes the "Shipping and Taxes" value: Line Cost = (Quantity * Unit Cost) + Shipping and Taxes

A part can be associated with multiple vendors, and these vendors can be ranked to indicate the preference you have for ordering from that vendor. When you select the part to add a purchase order for it, by default, the vendor ranked 1 is shown in the Vendor Code field. However, you can change this by clicking the ellipsis in the Vendor Code field to see a list showing all the vendors associated with the part. You can select a different vendor from this list if needed.

All purchase orders must be approved before they can be Issued or Received. Approvers can either approve or reject purchase orders directly in the Manage Purchase Orders view in the Edit Purchase Order pane using the Approve or Reject buttons. These buttons appear only if the status is Requested, and you are in the “PO APPROVER” security group.

The following describes how work flow affects the purchase order approval status:

• A newly created purchase order is auto-approved if the logged-in user’s role is part of the security group “PO APPROVER”
• Otherwise, the newly created purchase order is set to the Requested status.
• Approved purchase orders are given a status of Approved; rejected ones are given the status of Rejected. This occurs when you click the Approve or Reject action buttons. When you reject a purchase order, any fields you entered are saved, except the Amount Approved which must be null until the purchase order is approved.

• An approver can make changes to the purchase order before approving or rejected the request, including making changes to the line items.
• Individual purchase order line items cannot be approved or rejected. When purchase order line items are created, they have a status of Awaiting Issue. They become Issued when you issue the purchase order, or you can manually set the line items status.

The field Amount Approved is required to approve the request. The Amount Approved value in the form is automatically set to equal the Total Cost field. Total Cost is a virtual field, calculated as Quantity to Purchase multiplied by Unit Cost. If you edit any cost fields, such as State Tax, the system updates both the Total Cost and the Amount Approved fields.

When you receive parts, you can mark them as Received, so that the inventory is updated, and you can store the part. This enables you to manage parts that might not come in at the same time. When you set a line item to Received, that line item is considered “closed”, and it cannot be changed.

To set a line item to Received:

1. From the Manage Purchase Orders task, use the Filter to locate the purchase order you want to manage. Enter criteria and click Show.
2. In the Purchase Orders pane, select the purchase order for the parts that have been received.

   The bottom pane shows the line items for the purchase order. If a line item has not yet been marked as Received, the row has the Received button.

3. Click Received.
   • When a purchase order line item is set to Received, the system calls the workflow rule that creates the transaction to add the parts to inventory. This updates the part quantities in the Parts in Storage Locations (pt_store_loc_pt) and Part Inventory (pt) tables, along with the Average Unit Cost of the receiving location.
   • After this status is updated, the system checks to see if all other line items are Received or Error; if so, the purchase order status is set to Received or Partially Received.

The Add New button is active only if the purchase order status is set to Requested, Approved, or Rejected. See How adding parts to a purchase order updates its approval status.

If you add items to a rejected purchase order, that purchase order stays Rejected, whether or not you are in the PO APPROVER security group.

To add parts to a purchase order:

1. From the Manage Purchase Orders task, enter search criteria and click Show to see purchase orders meeting your criteria in the Purchase Orders pane.
2. Select a purchase order and receiving location combination.

   The Purchase Order pane below shows the line items for the selected purchase order.

3. Click Add New from the below Purchase Order pane.

   The Purchase Order Line Item form appears filled in with the information entered for the purchase order.

   

4. Enter the P.O. Line Number to uniquely identify this line item for this purchase order.
5. Select a Catalog Number and enter a Quantity.
6. Click Save.

   The line item status will default to Awaiting Issue, but you can change this after saving the line item.

When you add parts to an existing purchase order, that purchase order status may get updated depending on your role, and on what the purchase order status is prior to adding the new items.

• If you are adding items to a purchase order that you have already approved, then that purchase order stays Approved.
• If you are in the PO APPROVER security group, and are adding items to a purchase order that another user approved, the Purchase Order Status returns to Requested.
• If you add items to a rejected purchase order, that purchase order stays Rejected, whether or not you are in the PO APPROVER security group.

Whether a purchase order can be edited depends on its status. Once the system has assigned a purchase order a status of Received, Partially Received, or Error, it cannot be edited.

If the purchase order Status is set to Rejected, and you want to have another chance to approve the purchase order, you can set the status to Requested. This means that the purchase order is again available for approval.

Certain fields are editable only when the purchase order has a certain status. However, it is also possible to change the Purchase Order Status to change the fields that are editable. For example, if you want to edit a purchase order after it has been approved, you could change the status from Approved to Requested, and save the changes. This will make many of the field, such as Vendor Code, editable. The purchase order would then need to be approved again.

In another situation, you might want to change the Receiving Location or Vendor Code for an Issued Purchase Order. In this case, you can change the Purchase Order Status from Issued to Requested so that you can edit the Receiving Location or Vendor Code.

You can edit purchase order details in the Edit panel by selecting a record in the Purchase Order panel. You then work in the Purchase Order, Order Details, Shipping and Billing panes to edit the data. See an image of drilling down to purchase order details

The following table describes when specific purchase order fields are editable.

You can edit line items, such as changing the PO Line Status to reflect whether the parts were received as expected, or if there was an error in the shipment.

When you select a purchase order, the application shows its line items in the bottom pane. Click a line item and the Purchase Order Line Item form appears on the right You can edit P.O. line item details in this form. Click to see an image of the lien item drill down.

For purchase order line items, some fields cannot be edited, depending on the value of the line item Status field. For example, if a purchase order line item status is Issued, then you cannot edit the Catalog Number and Quantity fields

When a purchase order line item is set to Received, that line item is considered “closed”, and it cannot be changed.

The following table describes when each of the line item fields can be edited: