Types of Purchase Orders
Accounting Seed supports two types of purchase orders: Standard and Drop Ship. The functionality for each is described below:
- Standard - This is the traditional purchase order used to receive goods. The shipping address will be the address that is entered on the PO PDF format (usually the company's address).
- Drop Ship - A dropship Purchase Order (“PO”) automatically allocates a Sales Order and creates a shipment when the PO is fully received. Dropship POs must be completed from a Sales Order, and also must be received in full at one time to automatically create the allocations and shipment associated with their source Sales Order. The shipping address on the PO will be the address on the customer account. Please see the Create Purchase Order from Sales Order knowledge article for more details.
Do you want to:
Create a Purchase Order
- Navigate to Accounting Home and click the Create Entries tab. Then, under the Orders menu, click Purchase Orders.
- Click New.
- Complete all required fields. (Required fields have a red asterisk beside the field title.)
- The list below is a reference to how the Purchase Order header fields are used. You first need to complete a Purchase Order header and then add Purchase Order Lines to the Purchase Order.
- Required Fields on this page:
- Type - (Standard or Drop Shipment).
Note: With the Hibiscus Fall 2019 release, the validation rule that controlled the Type field has been removed. The Type is now required and must be set to either Standard or Drop Shipment. Null/None is no longer allowed.
- Order Date - Select the purchase order date. Defaults to today
- Status - (Open, Closed, Cancelled) This is used to denote the status of the purchase order and can be changed so that users can set the status of their Purchase Orders, as per their business process.
- Vendor - Select the vendor to issue the Purchase Order to.
- Non-Required Fields on this page:
- Currency - The currency will initially default to currency assigned to the default Ledger (or the active Ledger if Accounting Seed’s Multi-Company Ledger Manager App feature is used). If multi-currency is enabled, then you can select a currency other than the default.
- In this example, the currency defaulted to USD, since that is the currency assigned to the Ledger.
- The Purchase Order though needs to be in Euro, so the currency needs to be changed to EUR. Once the Purchase order has been created, the Currency cannot be changed.
- In this example, the currency defaulted to USD, since that is the currency assigned to the Ledger.
- Currency Conversion Rate - the Currency Conversion Rate (CCR) should normally be left blank. If Multi-currency is enabled, the Currency Conversion Rate shown on the Purchase order header and Purchase Order Line(s) will remain blank until it is set automatically as follows:
- If there are no Payables related to the Purchase Order (PO), when the PO is received for the first time, the Currency Conversion Rate will be pulled from the Dated Exchange Rate table based upon the Initial Receive Date. For more information, refer to the Add Currencies and Exchange Rates article.
- If creating a Payable from a Purchase Order and there are no related Purchase Order Inventory Movement records (in other words, the Purchase Order has not yet been received), the Currency Conversion Rate will be pulled from the Dated Exchange Rate table based upon the Issue Date of the Payable.
Note: Once the Currency Conversion Rate is set, it will be used for all other Payables created from the same Purchase Order. To clear this field, all Payables and Purchase Order Inventory Movement records must be deleted.
- Initial Receive Date - the Initial Receive Date should normally be left blank. If Multi-currency is enabled, the Initial Receive Date shown on the Purchase Order Header and subordinate Purchase Order Line(s) will remain blank until it is set by the Initial Receipt of an Inventoried Product in the Receive process. The Initial Receive Date and its currency conversion rate will be used for the Inventory and GL transactions for this and all other Inventoried Products received for the Purchase order.
- Purchase Order Format - If left blank, this will default to the Default Purchase Order PDF format set for the Ledger.
- Ledger - The ledger will default. If multi-company is enabled, then you can select a ledger other than the default.
- Vendor Contact - The Vendor Contact specifies who the purchase order will be sent to and is required to email the Purchase Order. If left blank, the field will default to the Billing Contact on the Vendor Account.
- Vendor Address Fields - Indicates the address the purchase order is sent to. If left blank, the field will default to the Billing Address on the Vendor Account.
- Shipping Company - Select the Account to ship the Purchase Order to.
- Shipping Contact - Lookup to the Contact object. This is used as a reference field as to who a purchase order was sent to.
- Shipping Address Fields - This indicates the address the purchased items should be shipped to. A workflow rule may be used to populate these fields automatically from the Account, Contact or a custom object storing addresses.
- Click Save to create the Purchase Order.
- After the Purchase Order has been created, go to the Purchase Order Lines. Purchase Order Lines may be entered one (1) at a time by clicking the “New” button or in mass by selecting the “Mass Add/Edit Rows” button. Purchase Order Lines are where you enter the specific product(s) or service(s) that are being purchased.
Below is an example of the Mass Add/Edit Rows page, which includes the options to Save & Refresh, Save & Complete, or Save & New (save changes and create a new Purchase Order).
Note: Click here to view the above image in full screen.
- Product - Lookup to Salesforce products.
- Quantity - The number of units you are purchasing for.
- Unit Price - Enter the product or service unit price. The field allows up to six decimal places.
- For each Product, the default Unit Cost set on the Product record will default into the Unit Price field on this screen. However, a user can override the Unit Price, on this screen. This would be the case if the price paid to a vendor differed from the standard unit cost. The difference between these costs would be recorded as an Inventory Variance Expense when recording the resulting Payable from this Purchase Order.
- If Multi-currency is enabled, the Unit Price must be in the same currency that was set on the Purchase Order.
- Project & Project Task - If the line is associated with a project, then select the Project and Project Task here.
- GL Variable 1-4 - Used to record reporting designations like divisions, departments, geographies, cost centers, profit centers, or business units. This will automatically populate if set on the individual Product record.
- Click Save & Complete to save and return to the Purchase Order or click Save & Refresh to both save and add additional lines.
- The alternative is selecting New and entering the Purchase Order Lines individually. Below is an example.
- Product - Lookup to Salesforce products.
- Quantity - The number of units you are purchasing for.
- Unit Price - Enter the product or service unit price. The field allows up to six decimal places.
- For each Product, the default Unit Cost set on the Product record will default into the Unit Price field on this screen. However, a user can override the Unit Price, on this screen. This would be the case if the price paid to a vendor differed from the standard unit cost. The difference between these costs would be recorded as an Inventory Variance Expense when recording the resulting Payable from this Purchase Order.
- If Multi-currency is enabled, the Unit Price must be in the same currency that was set on the Purchase Order.
- Project & Project Task - If the line is associated with a project, then select the Project and Project Task here.
- GL Variable 1-4 - Used to record reporting designations like divisions, departments, geographies, cost centers, profit centers, or business units. This will automatically populate if set on the individual Product record.
- Click Save to save and return to the Purchase Order or click Save & New to both save and add additional lines.
- Once the Purchase Order is complete, the Purchase Order can be emailed to the Vendor contact or saved as a PDF file. To do this, click Create PDF found on the right-hand side menu.
Note: Click here to view the above image in full screen.
- To enable the Send Email option, the Send to Contact field cannot be blank.
- The Subject and Body can be modified to say what you would like.
- Enter any CC Addresses, if necessary. For Salesforce Lightning, email addresses will auto-populate based upon the relationships that have been added as Related Contacts on the Account. For Salesforce Classic, this will auto-populate based upon the Contact Roles related to this Account.
- Attachments can be added if necessary by clicking the Attach file button. (Up to five (5) attachments can be added).
- The Save PDF button only saves a copy of the statement to the Files related list on the Account record and does not email the Contact.
- The naming convention on the PDF file will be:
<Vendor Name>_<PO Name>_<Current Date Time>.pdf
Example: ABC Company_PO-00336_05-21-2022_09:10_AM.pdf
Note: The Date and Time will display based upon your locale. - The PDF filename is limited to 255 characters. If the limit is exceeded, the filename will be truncated.
- Click Send Email to save a copy of the PDF and then send an email containing the PDF and attachments or Save PDF to just save a copy of the PDF.
Clone a Purchase Order
- Navigate to Accounting Home and click the Create Entries tab. Then, under the Orders menu, click Purchase Orders.
- Select a list view (other than the Recently Viewed list view).
- Click the Purchase Order that you want to clone.
- Click Clone w/Lines. The Clone with Lines dialog box displays.
- Today’s date automatically displays as the Order Date. Click the Calendar icon to change the date, as necessary.
Note: If Multi-currency is enabled, the Currency drop-down list will be available to select a currency. - Click Clone.
- On the Edit dialog box, update information on the cloned Purchase Order, as necessary.
- Click Save.
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Spring ’23 Release
- The ability to clone a Purchase Order with lines is available with this release.
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Summer ’22 Release
- With the Summer '22 release, if Multi-currency is enabled, when creating a Payable from a Purchase Order and there are no related Purchase Order Inventory Movement records, the Currency Conversion Rate will be pulled from the Dated Exchange Rate table based upon the Issue Date of the Payable.
- The PDF filename has been standardized.
Comments
1 comment
I have a few questions as a new user to the system:
1. We like to record the Item Receipt number in the system. Vendors don't always include our PO on their documents so this make it easier when matching AP Invoices to item receipts in the system. Is there a field to record this data when receiving in a PO?
2. Most all of our orders have freight charges added on to them. They charges do no appear on the PO. How do we add these to the PO when receiving in on the PO?
3. Can an error message be generated to alert the person receiving in on a PO that they are currently, or cumulative receipts on the PO line item, exceed the amount ordered? It looks like the system allows you to easily receive in 100 instead of 10... This wouldn't be caught until an invoice comes in, so could really mess up our inventory. Sometimes invoices aren't received from vendors for quite some time.
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