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Acumatica Distribution: Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace

When to use the Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace

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The Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace is used in the following business scenarios:

  • Internal purchase requisition

  • Receiving bids from suppliers, and evaluating those bids

  • Purchasing  goods from suppliers

Purchasing Steps

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Purchasing goods from suppliers goes normally through the following steps:

  1. Purchase Requisition

  2. Requesting a bid or sales quote from suppliers

  3. Receiving bids (sales quotes) from suppliers, and evaluating those bids

  4. Placing a Purchase Order (PO) with the vendor or supplier

  5. Receipt of goods from the supplier

  6. Receiving an invoice from the supplier, for which you will create a vendor bill in accounts payable

  7. Paying the vendor bill

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When you sell through a B2C or B2B E-Commerce store or a customer portal, this sequence of steps will be different. This business scenario is discussed and illustrated in the webpage titled "ERP Offer for Wholesale Distribution".

Acumatica PO Management.jpg

The webinar (20 mins, 2018) gives you a detailed overview of the purchase order management. 

Relationship between this Purchase Order Management Module and other Suites and Module of Acumatica ERP Foundation

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In simple words the first four steps (purchase requisition, requesting, receiving and evaluating bids, placing a PO) are enabled in the PO module of the Distribution Suite. The fifth step (receipt of goods from the supplier) is enabled in the Inventory Management module of the distribution suite. The last two steps ( creating a vendor bill, and paying this bill) are enabled in the Accounts Payable module of the Finance suite. Don't worry, you will not have to jump from one module to another. All these steps are linked in logical order so that you go through those steps very easily.

Important features of the Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace

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Important features of the Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace are as follows:

  • Purchase requisition

  • Placing a Purchase Order (PO)

  • Receiving the goods from the supplier

  • Creating a vendor bill

  • Paying the vendor bill

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  • Purchase requisition

    • ​Purchase requisition enables you to take the following steps:​

      • For internal supply purchase requisition

        • The employee submits a purchase requisition to his/her manager

        • The manager approves it or not

        • If approved, purchasing will submit a request for bid to its preferred vendors

        • The preferred vendors may submit a bid

        • Purchasing sees the bids in Acumatica, and selects the best bid, and converts it into a Purchase Order (PO)

      • A webinar ( 30 mins, 2018) can be seen below. For a full screen, click here.

  • Placing a Purchase Order (PO)

    • ​Placing a Purchase Order (PO) enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Create PO

      • Add line items (stock items), or Add Items to see only those items that are in stock.

      • Video (   4 mins) gives you an overview of the PO management.  Or you can review again the video that is at the top of this page. 

  • Approving a Purchase Order (PO)

    • ​Approving a Purchase Order (PO) enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Select  PO

      • In approval setting, enter the approval conditions set by the supervisor

      • The supervisor has a dashboard where all the pending approvals are listed. He/she can select one, check it out, and approve it or not. Several levels of approval can be required depending eg . on the amount.

      • Video (   4 mins) gives you an overview of the PO management. 

  • Creating a Blanket Purchase Order (PO)

    • What is it?

      • A blanket purchase order (BPO) aka standing purchase order is a long-term agreement between an organization and a supplier to have the supplier deliver goods or services with a set price on a recurring basis over a specified time period. â€‹

      • If your business makes multiple payments for the same goods or services, issuing a blanket purchase order with the details, such as price and delivery schedule, already specified is an efficient way to reduce time spent and processing delays.

      • Suppliers, in turn, can submit multiple invoices citing the same BPO number. The blanket purchase order limitations may be based on a specified time, for example a year, or a specific amount of money. In addition to time frame, quantity, and price, blanket purchase orders may include item quality specifications.

      • Click here for more details about it's general usage 

    • ​Creating a Blanket Purchase Order (PO) enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Create a blanket PO

      • When more items are needed, create a normal PO but add a Blanket PO line to the order

      • Approve if needed

      • Video (   4 mins) gives you an overview of the PO management. 

  • Creating a Purchase Order (PO) from a Sales Order (SO)

    • When a customer enters a purchase order from an Ecommerce store or over the phone, this order becomes a SO. But you may not have this product in stock , so you want to purchase it asap. That is when you want to create a PO from a SO, which is enabled by Acumatica ERP. 

    • ​Creating a Purchase Order (PO) from a Sales Order (SO) enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Select a SO

      • Select a line item, and edit it to create a PO

      • In Purchase Orders, complete the creation of this PO

      • Video (  mins)

  • Creating a Product Receipt

    • You can create a product receipt from a PO through Actions, or from the Product Receipts form 

    • ​Creating a Product Receipts enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Create a Product Receipt

      • You can add an existing PO, or many existing POs for the same vendor,  or a PO line (item)

      • You can create automatically a  bill from a product receipt once product receipt has been released,  but bill will be put on hold. You check the received products against your PO. If okay, then you will release the bill. 

      • Video (  mins)

  • How to Process PO Receipt and Add Costs in Acumatica in order to create landed costs for a PO receipt

    • You received products at warehouse 1 but they should be now in warehouse 2 since that warehouse ran all of a sudden out of stock. We need a transportation company to move them to warehouse 2. We want to add those transportation cost (bill) to the cost of the PO received products. 

    • How to Process PO Receipt and Add Costs in Acumatica enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Create a bill for the transportation bill

      • Select the PO receipt related to these moved products received before

      • Video (  2 mins, 2016)

  • Creating a bill

    • You can create bills:

      • Manualluy

      • From a PO receipt

      • From importing an Excel file with bill data

    • The video under Approving and Paying bills covers the creation of bills

  • Approve and Pay BIlls

    • You can have one bill approved for payment, and pay it via check, credit card, ACH, wire or cash. If you pay by check you can print out that check for a signature. If your company pays suppliers via online banking, those payments will come into Acumatica when you import your bank transactions. During bank reconciliation, you can match those payments with your bills in Acumatica. 

    • Or you can prepare many bills for payment as a batch by payment method and/or by due date, approve that batch of payments, and pay that whole batch.

    • You can set up a schedule for automatic payment of a bill eg monthly rent. 

    • How to Process PO Receipt and Add Costs in Acumatica enables you to take the following steps:​

      • Batch payment

        • Approve bills

        • Prepare payments

        • Process payments

        • Release payments

      • Video (5 mins)​

From Purchase Request to Product Requisition to Purchase Order to Bill and Payment using the latest 2020R1 features

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The video (25 mins, 4/2020) below will take you through all the steps of a purchase request to bill and payment.

The Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace Datasheet

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Customizing a Purchase Order Receipt to See All Outstanding BIlls using the latest 2020R1 features

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Today the Purchase Order Receipt doesn't let you see all outstanding bills for a vendor. When the purchased products arrive, you want to create a purchase order receipt but, you may also want to see the outstanding bills for that vendor. This way you will know what you owe the vendor in total.

 

The video (10 mins, 4/2020) below will show you how easy it is to customize the purchase order receipt screen/form to add a search/list action to see the outstanding bills.

Benefits of the Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace

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The benefits of the Purchase Order Management Module/Workspace to you are as follows:

  • The process in this module enables processing POs in many ways so that you can speed up the payment of monthly bills, the payments of bills by payment method, by due date, or the payment of a specific PO in a few clicks (Create PO, receive PO, create bill, and pay it)  starting from the PO screen. This is very much needed in a company since POs for products need to be handled differently than paying monthly utility and rental bills.

  • The use of dashboards for purchasing, supervisors, and accounting AP will make sure that bills get paid on time since bills pending approval and bills to be paid are listed in the proper dashboards. 

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