Purchase Order Approval Process

Overview

Purchase Orders can have additional statuses so that you can differentiate between those that have been requested, approved, ordered, or denied.

Security governs who is a Purchase Order Requestor and who is a Purchase Order Approver:

The process is designed so Requestors ask Approvers to order something for them.

If you are an Approver, you can setup agrē to send you a Message when a new order has been requested.

When you actually place the order with a supplier, you change the status of the PO to Ordered and at this point, the product is reflected in Inventory reports as being On Order.

I want to read the white paper on Purchase Order Authorization.

What you'll find:

Overview

Security

Configuration Options

Requesting a Purchase

Approving and Ordering a Purchase

Denying a Purchase

Reporting

Security

Before you can use the new purchase order features, you need to be allowed to use them.

Security is handled at the Role level: File > Security > Manage Roles.

If this security item is not allowed, the user will only be able to create POs with a status of Requested.

Tip

You may want to create a separate security role just for Purchase Order Approvers.

Configuration Options

agrē can send you a message when new Purchase Order Requests are placed. When the sweeper runs each evening, it will check for any new purchase order requests and send a message to all users in the role you select.

Navigate to: File > Config Options > Company -> Messages tab

From the drop down list, select the Role of users who should receive messages regarding Purchase Orders.

When you receive a new message, the Messages icon will indicate how many new messages that are waiting in your inbox.

Requesting a Purchase

If you are not a PO Purchaser, when you create a PO the only status available is Requested.

If you are a Purchaser, you can choose any status (Requested, Approved, Ordered, Denied).

Note

The Requested By (Staff) field is a text field – any text can be entered. If you will want to search by Requestor when running reports, you must search for the exact text typed in this field.

Approving and Ordering a Purchase

Search the PO grid for those waiting for approval (Status = Requested).

Edit the PO.

Change the Status to Approved if you will be placing the order with the supplier later, or to Ordered if you are placing the order now.

You will not be able to link an Inventory Receipt to a PO until the status is set to Ordered.

<PO Available> will display if there are PO’s either Requested, Approved or Ordered (so that you know a PO is ‘out there’ and available)

if the status is anything other than Ordered, you will see a message that the status needs to be updated (just in case the Purchase Order Approver forgot to update the status of the PO).

There is no change to your Inventory Position until the status of the Purchase Order is set to Ordered.

Denying a Purchase

If the Approver decides to cancel the request, edit the PO and change the status to Denied.

If a Requestor changes their mind about a request, they can edit the PO and change the status to Closed.

Reporting

The Purchase Order Activity Report has been formatted to print landscape instead of portrait to accommodate the extra columns information.