Process Purchases
A purchase order can be used to register both physical and financial transactions and therefore has three posting options: Receive, Invoice, and Receive and Invoice. These options enable you to record the transactions at different points in time, such as issuing a payment before receiving the goods. If the purchase process does not require that the physical transaction be recorded separately, then a purchase may be processed in a purchase invoice only or in a G/L journal.
Depending on how the goods are purchased or the work flow that is agreed upon with the vendor, purchases may begin with a purchase quote or a blanket purchase order.
In some environments, goods sold to a customer are delivered directly from the vendor, bypassing the company's own inventory. This can be achieved with the use of drop shipment functionality or by creating special orders that link the purchase to the sale.
Apart from entering and managing purchase document information, you can get purchase decision support, such as tracking to the sales or production order that demands the purchased goods and different means of insight to vendor and item statistics.
Other purchase process features include approval workflow, purchasing subcontracted work, and intercompany purchase operations.
The following table describes a sequence of tasks, with links to the topics that describe them. These tasks are listed in the order in which they are generally performed.
| To | See |
|---|---|
Buy goods without having to post the receipt separately from the purchase invoice. |
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Request a quote from a vendor for specific items or services. |
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Create a purchase order manually with no prior quote or blanket order. |
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Reflect an agreement with a vendor to buy large quantities of an item that are to be received in several smaller shipments over a certain period of time. |
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Create a purchase order quickly from an existing purchase quote. |
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Create a purchase order by converting a blanket purchase order to one or more separate purchase orders. |
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View the statistics of a blanket purchase order to see how many purchase orders are created and how many remain. |
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Learn how receipt dates are calculated. |
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Copy document lines from other purchase documents. |
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Create recurring purchase order or invoice lines quickly by using standard vendor purchase codes. |
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Calculate the recorded vendor invoice discount on a purchase line when the item and quantity are entered. |
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Create and process a purchase order that is linked to a sales order to ensure that the items are shipped directly from the vendor to the customer. |
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Create a special purchase order for a specific nonstock item to be shipped to a customer without passing through inventory. |
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Order track to matching demand to ensure that, for example, a sales order may be fulfilled by the purchased item. |
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View information relating to a purchase document, such as comments, vendor details, and posted entries. |
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View purchase document statistics, such as how many items are received and invoiced or basic information about the vendor. |
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Inform warehouse workers that purchased items are ready to be put away in the warehouse by making an inventory put-away or a warehouse receipt. |
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Prepare and send a posted purchase document to an affiliated company, such as a parent company, for consolidation. |
How to: Fill In and Send Intercompany Sales Documents and Purchase Documents |
Post the purchase as received and/or invoiced. |
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Undo the quantity posting of a purchase receipt if the purchase document has not yet been invoiced. |
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Process purchase orders created by operations planning for subcontracted production operations. |
See Also
Concepts
Perform Material Requirements Planning
Receiving
Put Items Away
Production