Purchase Orders

The following commentary identifies a number of features that, hopefully, provides a sufficient degree of information for you to identify whether this free resource might be worthy of investigation. If you have any queries that you would like an answer to please send an email and you will receive a response.

Supplier Identification: Retains the legacy of an eight character identifier from the historic link with Sage Accounts as well as the ability to record associated tax codes, currency and multiple addresses for each supplier.

Data Entry Methods: Recording supply chain purchase orders requires initial orders to be identified by entering product requirements on a line by line basis with subsequent simplification being affected when users simply elect to Repeat a previous order to create a new order that may then be subject to individual item adjustments.

Product Pricing: Linked to an associated unit-of-measure with users able to denote a stated price relative to an associated quantity that is identified internally using the Roman characters I, V, X, L, C and M to denote their numeric values of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 or 1,000. This expands the degree of precision associated with line price from four to seven decimal places, although this is a level of accuracy that is not regularly encountered.

Documents: The flexible mechanism that is used in the production of documents is reliant upon the availability of Microsoft Office and is an area in which there is usually a need for some site specific development that can easily be completed by somebody competent in using these tools.

Order Receipt: Users may select an individual order and elect to confirm the constituent items that reflect an individual delivery being completed by the supplier; having possibly preceded this activity and flagged a large, or even limted, order as eligible for automatic receipt in order to reduce keying where all outstanding items are anticipated. A traffic light feature (red/amber/green) on the Purchase Order List window provides a clear indication to users of the overdue position for each order line as well as identifying the lowest line status for each purchase order.

It is feasible that product receipt details can be driven by hand held scanning equipment and reduce the need for any form of manual entry.

Inventory Traceability: Received product that is flagged as traceable (either supply chain or individual batch) will be associated with designated "batch" identifiers that may be initially established through reference to the purchase order, the receipt number or identified supplier goods receipt note. This may be manually adjusted to reflect supply chain designated references with each individual product on a single purchase order being "linked" to multiple supplier identified batches. Users entering godds receipt details will be be advised if any required certification should be anticipated.

Back To Back: When entering or maintaining purchase order line details any linkage to sales order lines is monitored and the user prompted if any action appears necessary. At the point of receipt being recorded an advisory message would be issued to inform that the goods being received would enable onward shipment of one or more sales orders.

Cost Recording: The ability to associate various costs, that in turn may be posted to the purchase ledger, with either an individual purchase order or receipt enables the potential management and review of any relevant costs at that level should this be required. An example may be the charges incurred through the use of a third party collection or warehousing service, often using by distributors importing product into the UK.

Supplier Invoicing: Links a received supplier invoice to items received, including partial quantities, from that supplier.

Paperless: A flexible user defined "linking" feature permits any number of external files (PDF, workbooks, Word documents) to be associated with a purchase order. Examples might include originating requisition, associated correspondence and in fact any relevant paper based information that might be digitised.