Purchase Orders are orders placed with suppliers. They can be created as standalone documents or can be created from quotations or jobs.

Creating Purchase Orders

Linking a Purchase Order to a Quote or Job

Settings on the PO (Dates, Delivery)

Tracking Purchase Orders (PO's)

Linking Items to Different Jobs

Management of Supplier Discounts

On other pages:

Booking into stock from a purchase order

 

Creating Purchase Order

There are several ways to create purchase orders:

• Go to the purchase orders page and click on 'New Purchase Order'. These are not linked to any other documents but can be retrospectively linked
• Create from a Quote - these are automatically linked to the source quote
• Create from a Job - these are automatically linked to the source job. This is recommended as jobs is the main tool for tracking all transactions in the system.

There are two ways to create purchase orders from a job and quote. This is a two-step process where you have the option to select items before ordering.

Step 1

When you have the job or quote open, either:

• Click on the 'Create Purchase Orders' button. This will bring all the items on the job/quote onto the next screen where you will select suppliers and which items to order, or
• Click on 'Edit' 

• Select the items you want to order
• Click on the button 'Create'
• Select 'Purchase Orders from selected items'
• This will also take you to the selection screen

Step 2

Both the above process will bring up the next screen where you can change the prices, quantities, items and choose suppliers.

If the supplier is set up as the main supplier for an item, the system will pre-populate the supplier dropdown. You can override this with another supplier selection. All the items for the same supplier will be placed on one PO. 

Conversion Options

From a Job

Only show suppliers... will reduce the list to potential suppliers you have already indicated in their settings work with this code or sector

Combine Items... - this is useful where you have more than one occurrence of a code on a job or quote and you want to combine their quantities. If you leave this unticked the PO will keep the sections and code occurrences separate which is useful if your PO needs to be delivered to site or marked up by sections. However, if you just want to order the total quantity of an item irrespective of how often it appears on the source job/quote click this.

Combine labour cost and item cost -If your quote or job has labour costs separate from the item sale price the system only uses the sale price to create the PO unless you tick this to add the two together. 

Quote Conversion

If you have a supplier discount already applied to the cost price on the quote you need to tick this to ensure it is not applied again during the PO creation.

Job Conversion

When you create a job from a quote the cost on the quote is brought into the job as forecast cost. This may already include supplier discounts so use this to ensure the discount is not applied again.

 

Settings on the PO (Dates, Delivery)

Set the date you require the items, and then add in the expected date when you have a confirmation from your supplier.

If you are delivering to the customer's site, tick 'Deliver To Client' and their addresses are available in the site address dropdown.

Tracking Purchase Orders (PO's)

On the job and quotes screens, on the pipeline view, you can see what POs have been created against each document. The  symbol means there are one or more associated purchase orders.

Hover over the 'P' symbol to see the list of PO's. Click on one PO number to open it.

In the grid view of the job you can add columns to see whether items have been ordered and delivered:

On the purchase orders screen, you can see in the grid view what date you require the items. This will be coloured red if they are overdue.

Use the GANTT chart view to see expected delivery dates (not required):

This can be filtered by the job number and other fields.

Drag-and-drop to move expected dates.

If you send the online page link to your supplier they can confirm the order. This will move it to the confirmed status.

Linking a Purchase Order to a Quote or Job

If you create a PO from a job or quote it will be automatically linked.

If you create a purchase order on its own you can retrospectively associate to a job or quote. To do this, open the PO, select 'Links & Associations', select 'Link to' then select the job or quote. Click on the link button against the desired document.

Linking Items to Different Jobs

It is possible to have items from different jobs linked onto one PO. This is useful when you bulk order from one supplier for multiple clients.

To associate an item click on the item's menu and select 'Links & Associations'

Choose the module to make the link to:

If no documents (e.g. Jobs) are shown:

Click on 'Read from all (include Unlinked)'

Select the item you want to link to by putting in the quantity to match and click on 'Link from'.

 

How purchase orders affect profit and loss on jobs.

Management of Supplier Discounts

You can set up discounts for all items from a supplier, certain categories, or certain products on the supplier's edit screen.

If you have set up a discount against a supplier this will be applied when a PO is created from a quote or job, or when it is added to a PO directly. However, the discount will also be applied when an item is added to a quote.  Therefore, if you convert a quote to a purchase order you will need to tick 'Use cost already calculated' so the discount is not applied a second time.

If you add an item to a job that has a discount from the supplier this is not applied at this point. However, if you create a Job from a quote with this item on the discount will have been applied in the quote. The agreed cost from the quote is copied to the job as the 'forecast cost'. Therefore, when you create a PO from this job make sure you select 'Use forecast cost' so the discount is not applied again.