Purchase Order

A purchase order (PO) lists the products you plan to buy from a supplier.

A purchase order does not change stock

Stock goes up only when you receive the goods in an approved Purchase Inbound. You can skip purchase orders and create a Purchase Inbound directly if you don't need them.

Menu: Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order

For buttons, statuses and approvals shared by all transactions, see Working with transactions.

How to create a purchase order

Required permission

Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Create

1. Open Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order and click ⊕ (Add New Transaction).

2. Fill in the header:

   Field	What to enter
   Created For	The branch the PO belongs to. It defaults to your current branch.
   For Location	The location in your branch that the PO is for.
   Request by	The user requesting the purchase.
   Deliver To	The location, in any branch, where the supplier should deliver.
   Deliver Until	The latest acceptable delivery date. It's filled in when you pick the supplier.
   Supplier	The supplier you're ordering from.
   Payment Method	How you'll pay the supplier.
   Term	Number of days until payment is due.
   Requesting Branch / Request Location	Only if you're ordering on behalf of another branch: that branch and its location.
   Remarks	Optional notes. They appear on the printout.

3. Add the products and quantities (see How to add products).

4. Click Save ▾ and choose Save, Approve or Approve and Print.

The PO gets a Sheet No. (for example PO10010000349). If you saved it as a Draft, click 👍 For Approval when it's ready for an approver.

Maximum inventory warning

If a product would go over its maximum inventory, a Continue to add products? message lists each affected product with its total, maximum and excess quantities. Click OK to save anyway or Cancel to change the quantities.

How to receive a purchase order (create a Purchase Inbound)

When the goods arrive, turn the approved PO into a Purchase Inbound.

Required permission

Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Inbound › Create

From the list (one or several POs):

1. In the Purchase Order List, tick the approved POs to receive.
2. Click the Create Purchase Inbound icon in the toolbar.
3. In the window that opens, check each product's Qty and UOM. Change the quantity if only part of the order arrived. If you selected several POs, switch between them with the Transaction dropdown.
4. Choose the Approval Status the new inbound gets: Draft (the default) or, if you can approve purchase inbounds, Approved.
5. Click the 🧺 (create) button.

From an open PO: tick the product rows to receive (tick the header box for all of them), click the 🧺 Create Purchase Inbound button, then check the quantities and click 🧺 in the window. If no row is ticked, CIRMS shows No selected product. The new inbound opens as a Draft.

CIRMS creates the Purchase Inbound and opens it, already linked to the PO. Complete the details there and approve it to add the stock. See Purchase Inbound.

In the PO list, the Imported To column shows the inbounds created from each PO, and the row colour shows whether the PO has been fully received.

Other things on a purchase order

• Columns for purchasing: Supplier SKU (the supplier's own code, printed for the supplier), Received Qty and Remaining Qty (how much of each row has arrived and is still expected), and Latest Price, Lowest Price and Highest Price (what you paid this supplier before). The other columns are described in The product lines.
• Transaction Reminder: if your administrator switched it on, adding a product that is still on another open PO opens a window listing those POs with their Order Qty and Received Qty, so you don't order the same goods twice.
• Down payment: to pay the supplier in advance, create a Payment (Down Payment) for the approved PO. It's deducted when you later pay the inbound.
• Linked transactions: the summary at the bottom right links to the transactions made from the PO (purchase inbounds, down payments, payments), with their status.
• Clear Undelivered Transactions: when the supplier won't deliver the rest, closes the PO's remaining quantities (see Other tools on orders).

Example

The main store orders from Metro Foods, which takes 7 days to deliver and gives 30 days' credit:

1. Create a PO: Supplier Metro Foods (Deliver Until becomes 7 days from today, Term 30), 100 cases of Canned Tuna 155 g at 1,368.00 and 50 cases of Corned Beef 150 g at 1,650.00. Total Amount 219,300.00. Approve it and e-mail it to the supplier with ✉.
2. Six days later, 80 cases of tuna and all the corned beef arrive. Create the purchase inbound from the PO and change the tuna to 80. After approval, stock goes up by 80 and 50 cases, and the PO shows Remaining Qty 20 for the tuna.
3. The supplier says the last 20 cases won't come: open the PO and use Clear Undelivered Transactions, answering no, to close them.
4. Within 30 days, pay the inbound in Payment.

How to find a purchase order

1. Open Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order.
2. Set Branch, Trans. Date and Transaction Status, then click Search.

You see only your own POs unless you have Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › View Other Users' Transaction.

Settings that affect this module

Your administrator can change these in Settings (see About settings). Click a section to see the choices.

Generic Settings › Purchase

• Warn if inventory exceeds maximum?
• Auto-print after Save?
• Set the default printout template for this transaction module
• Enable transaction reminder popup for products with pending remaining order qty's to inbound.
• Auto input product Quantity and UOM base on History?

Branch Settings › Purchases

• Display products based on supplier?

Other permissions for this module

Permission	Allows you to
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Approve	Approve POs
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Decline	Decline POs
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Revert	Revert POs back to draft
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Edit Price	Change the price on a PO row
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Show Cost	See product costs
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Edit Date/Time	Change the PO's date and time
Purchase and Other Expense › Purchase Order › Clear Undelivered Transactions	Close POs that won't be fully delivered