Purchasing Overview

Purchasing supports your company in managing its expenditures and reimbursing vendors promptly for services or goods provided. Through Purchasing, you create purchase requisitions for requesting items or services. Once an authorized employee in your company approves the requisition, it becomes a purchase order. Your company can use the purchase order to authorize payments and ensure that the correct items are received.

Purchasing Functionality

  • Using Purchasing, you can enter, generate, monitor, and receive purchase orders to improve material movement and inventory level management.
  • A vendor/item cross reference function allows you to store and track information about a particular item from a specific vendor. You can also store and track vendor item pricing.
  • You can also access vendor performance information, the vendor communication log, and a listing of vendor information for items purchased regularly. In this manner, you can ensure that you have selected the best vendor for each purchase.
  • You can set up parameters to set default values for purchase orders, including tolerance factors for purchase order receiving and vouchers.
  • Purchasing also allows you to view the planned costs, actual unit costs, promise dates, and due dates for each line item.
  • Using the payment hold feature within Purchasing, you can place vendors on payment hold if their goods or services are unacceptable.
  • Because a purchase order represents a contract with a vendor, Purchasing provides you with a utility for changing purchase orders and tracking the changes you make.
  • Purchasing also includes the Purchase Order Receiving form, through which you enter whether you are receiving a whole/partial order or a whole/partial line/release.

Purchasing Interfaces

Purchasing eliminates redundant transaction entries by interacting with the following areas of the system:

Interface Description
Orders - Sales Order Entry You can create a purchase order to satisfy a sales order line item requirement.
Service - Service Order Entry You can create a purchase order to satisfy a service order line item requirement.
Material - Inventory When you create a purchase order, the system uses information from the Items form.
Material - Planning You can create purchase orders to satisfy material planning purchase requirements.
Finance - General Ledger The Purchase Order Ledger Distribution journal within General Ledger tracks the material transaction costs created in Purchasing.
Finance - Accounts Payable You can generate Accounts Payable vouchers and adjustments from within Purchasing.