Commitments
A commitment is an expense that will be charged to an activity at a future date. Commitments are expense obligations that were incurred, but not yet paid. Examples include purchase orders, requisitions, unposted vendor invoices, current time entries, employee expense entries, and so on.
Commitments are created when an activity and account category are defined in a transaction. You determine the Lawson applications that should generate commitments when an activity and account category are addressed in the originating transaction. Generally, commitments are created when an entry is released. Commitments are updated dynamically with changes in the status of a transaction. For example, if a requisition for $2,000 is issued, then a $2,000 commitment is created. If the requisition amount changes to $2,100, then the commitment changes to $2,100.
Manual commitments
You can use manual commitments to commit budget dollars for miscellaneous expenses such as travel expenses, tuition expenses, or miscellaneous resource charges in advance of a requisition or invoice. Manual commitment transactions appear as commitments in reports and in the budget edit process. Manual commitments are not relieved by any particular expenditure. You will delete or purge them once the actual expense comes through or the manual commitment expires.