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.	How to: Create Purchase Invoices
Create a purchase invoice to record your agreement with a vendor to purchase products on certain delivery and payment terms, using the simplified features in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.	How to: Record Purchases
Create a purchase invoice for all or selected lines on a sales invoice, using the simplified features in Microsoft Dynamics NAV.	How to: Purchase Products for a Sale
Request a quote from a vendor for specific items or services.	How to: Create Purchase Quotes
Create a purchase order manually with no prior quote or blanket order.	How to: Create Purchase Orders Manually
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.	How to: Create Blanket Purchase Orders
Create a purchase order quickly from an existing purchase quote.	How to: Convert Purchase Quotes to Purchase Orders
Create a purchase order by converting a blanket purchase order to one or more separate purchase orders.	How to: Convert Blanket Purchase Orders to Purchase Orders
View the statistics of a blanket purchase order to see how many purchase orders are created and how many remain.	How to: View the Status of Blanket Purchase Orders
Learn how receipt dates are calculated.	Date Calculation for Purchases
Copy document lines from other purchase documents.	Copy Purchase Document
Create recurring purchase order or invoice lines quickly by using standard vendor purchase codes.	How to: Insert Standard Purchase Lines on Documents
Calculate the recorded vendor invoice discount on a purchase line when the item and quantity are entered.	Calculating Invoice Discounts on Purchases
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.	How to: Create Drop Shipments
Create a special purchase order for a specific nonstock item to be shipped to a customer without passing through inventory.	How to: Create Special Orders
Order track to matching demand to ensure that, for example, a sales order may be fulfilled by the purchased item.	Order Tracking
View information relating to a purchase document, such as comments, vendor details, and posted entries.	How to: View Additional Purchase Document Information
View purchase document statistics, such as how many items are received and invoiced or basic information about the vendor.	How to: View Purchase Order Statistics
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.	How to: Create Inventory Put-aways
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.	How to: Post Purchase Orders
Undo the quantity posting of a purchase receipt if the purchase document has not yet been invoiced.	How to: Undo Quantity Posting on Posted Receipts
Process purchase orders created by operations planning for subcontracted production operations.	How to: Post Subcontract Purchase Orders

See Also

Concepts

Perform Material Requirements Planning
Receiving
Put Items Away
Production

Other Resources

Work with Data