Purchase Order Workflow

ServiceCEO's default Purchase Order (PO) workflow contains five steps:

1. Create the PO. For details, see the Creating a Purchase Order topic.
   All created POs have a status of Pending Approval.

2. Approve the PO. A purchase order must be approved before it can be sent to the vendor. Click Approve from any tab of the PO to approve it. Approving a PO changes its status to Not Sent.
   Note that if you make edits to an approved purchase order, the purchase order will need to be re-approved before it is sent.

3. Send the PO. Marking the PO as sent means that is was sent to a vendor or purchasing agent and is in the process of being fulfilled. To send the PO to your vendor:

   • Click Send from any tab of the PO. An Update PO dialog box appears, asking you if you want to mark the PO as sent and mark the parts as On Order.

   • Click Yes. The Report Preview page appears, displaying the purchase order's details. From here, you can send the purchase order to your vendor in any number of ways, including:

     •  Print the report and mail it to the vendor.

     • Export the report to another format and e-mail it to the vendor.

   • Click Close. The Purchase Order dialog box reappears.  

Sent purchase orders have a status of Pend. Receipt. Inventory parts on sent POs have a status of On Order.

4. Receive Purchase Order. When the parts arrive at your stock location from the vendor, you must receive them. Receiving a PO tells ServiceCEO that the items are now in stock. You will be given an opportunity to edit the quantity and cost of all received items before the items are added to the stock location. To do so:
   
    

   Click Receive from any tab of the PO. The Items tab appears, with a new Received section highlighted with a blue box (displayed at right). If the quantity of a part is different then what you originally ordered, edit the appropriate Received Qty value. If the cost of a part is different then what it was when you originally ordered it, edit the appropriate Received Cost value.

   When receiving serialized items, the Received Cost column will display (click) rather then a specific cost. perform these steps: Click in the Received Cost column where it says (click). The Received tab of the PO Item dialog box appears. Type the starting serial number into the New Starting Serial No. field. The received products will all be assigned a serial number. If necessary, edit the individual serial numbers in the Serial No. column. If necessary, edit the individual costs in the Unit Price column. Click OK. Click Receive. A confirmation dialog box appears. Click Yes. You may receive some prompts: If a part's Received Qty is less then the amount you ordered, a Back Order dialog box will appear, prompting you to create a new purchase order for the items you have not yet received. Click Yes to create the new purchase order. The back order purchase order will appear with a status of Not Sent, so you will need to send it to the vendor as its first workflow step. If a part's Received Cost is different then the original cost, you will be asked if you want to update the Vendor Catalog Items for this part. For details, see the Updating Catalog Items section.

   Received purchase orders have a status of Pend. Bill. Items on a received purchase order have a status of In Stock.

5. Log Bill/Invoice. If you are integrated with a third-party Accounting application (like QuickBooks), you can export the PO to that application in order to increase the payables for the appropriate vendor. A summary description of the item entered is also included.
   If Accounting integration is not enabled, this step allows the user to simply log the invoice number and date for their internal records.
   For details, see the Exporting a Purchase Order section.
   Once a PO is exported, it will no longer appear in ServiceCEO.

Users will only be able to work on POs if they have the proper security rights. See the Purchase Orders section of the Groups tab of the Admin - User Access Rights dialog box. See the See the Establishing Security Rights section.

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