Creating POs from the Purchasing & Fulfillment page (Procurement required)

SECURITY  Inventory object permission to add and edit purchase orders

NAVIGATION   > Inventory > Procurement & Delivery > Purchasing & Fulfillment

BEFORE YOU BEGIN  This page is only available if Procurement is enabled. Refer to Activations.

The Purchasing & Fulfillment page is only available for partners who have the Procurement feature activated. It streamlines purchasing, because you can easily locate all items that need to be ordered from a specific vendor and add them to the purchase order with one click. If you have a purchasing team, they will be creating purchase orders from this page.

Items are listed on this page if:

  • they are subject to procurement, that is, the product the charge is based on does not have the Does not require Procurement check box selected. A product does not have to be an inventory product to be subject to procurement.

NOTE  Non-inventory quote items must be purchased when you close the deal. If these items are subject to procurement, when you run the Won Opportunity Wizard, their status is set to Need to Order/Fulfill. Then they are automatically routed to Purchase Approval (if required) or to Purchasing. Refer to Closing opportunities you have won.

  • the charge status is equal to Need to Order/Fulfill

  • if required, the items have already received purchase approval

EXAMPLE  (Inventory product): You run the Won Opportunity Wizard and a quote item for three monitors is converted to a ticket charge. The quantity reserved for the quote item was less than the quantity needed. The charge status is set to Need to Order/Fulfill.

EXAMPLE  (Non-inventory product): You add a charge to a contract, project, or ticket. The product is not an inventory product, so there was nothing to pick to fulfill the charge. Since the product is subject to procurement, the charge is set to Need to Order/Fulfill.

To create a PO, you must first select all items that will be placed on it.

  1. To open the page, use the path(s) in the Security and navigation section above.
  2. Use the column filters to narrow the list, and click the links to view more details.
  3. Select the check box for each item you want to include. If you want to include all items in the list, click the check box in the heading row.

NOTE  If the check box for an item is gray, that is, not available for selection, that item has been added to a new purchase order that has not yet been submitted. If you hover over the check box, the PO the item is associated with will be displayed.

  1. On the button row, click Create Purchase Order.

  2. If Multi-currency is enabled, the Select Vendor dialog window will open. Select a vendor and click OK.

The Unit Cost values of all selected charges will be converted into that vendor's currency, using the current exchange rate. You will not be able to change the vendor for this purchase order after this step.

  1. The New Purchase Order page opens in a separate window. Refer to Adding or editing a purchase order.

When opened from the Purchasing & Fulfillment page, the following conditions apply:

Field Description

Vendor Name

A purchase order can have only one vendor. If you filter your list by Primary Vendor, you will be sure all the selected items are available from the same vendor.

If all the selected items have the same Primary Vendor, that vendor will be selected on the PO. If you selected items with different primary vendors, you must select a vendor.

Purchase for Organization

If all of the selected items are associated with the same organization, that organization's name populates this field.

Ship to

If all the items are associated with the same sales order, the Ship To option defaults to Other. The selected organization's address populates the address fields, but you can change this to a different shipping address.

Product Name

This field defaults to the product specified for the charge and cannot be edited.

Quantity

This field defaults to the quantity needed to fulfill the charge and cannot be edited.

Inventory Location

This field defaults to the default inventory location, unless the purchase order item's product is associated with only one inventory product, in which case the inventory location defaults to that item's inventory location.

You can select a new inventory location. If the selected inventory location does not have an inventory product for the product, Autotask will automatically add one.

  1. Save the PO, using one of the following options:

Option Description

Save & Close

This option saves the purchase order but does not submit it. Items are not ordered until they are submitted. The items remain visible on the Purchasing & Fulfillment page, but you cannot select them. You can access the purchase order from the Purchase Orders page and you can still edit it.

Save & Submit

Use this option only when you are sure the purchase order is complete and correct. The PO is both saved and submitted, but not sent to the vendor.

  • The charge status is set to On Order, and the charges no longer appear on the Purchasing & Fulfillment page.
  • A notification is sent to the charge owner.
  • To view the PO and receive items, you can access the purchase order from the Purchase Orders page.
  • It cannot be edited.

NOTE  A single charge item can appear on more than one Procurement page (Purchase Approval, Purchasing & Fulfillment, Receiving, and Delivery & Shipping) at the same time if there are units which have different statuses. For example, an item may have some units with the status of Ready to Deliver/Ship, and some units with the status of On Order.

Save & New

This options saves the purchase order but does not submit it. The fields are cleared so you can create a new purchase order.
   

Create Purchase Order

Click this button to create a PO with the selected items. Refer to Adding or editing a purchase order.

Bypass Procurement for Selected Items

When you first enable Procurement, all charges with a status of Need to Order/Fulfill will appear on the Purchasing & Fulfillment page. It is likely that you will want to clear out these items without having to create a dummy PO and pushing them through the purchasing process.

  • Users with the required security permissions will see the Bypass Procurement for Selected Items button. This button will allow you to set the status of selected items to Delivered/Shipped Full, and these items will not require any further procurement activity. The table will be refreshed and the selected items will no longer appear.

  • If a selected item has been picked or reserved, procurement cannot be bypassed.

Column Chooser

The Column Chooser allows you to customize search results tables throughout Autotask. It determines the following:

  • Which columns are displayed on the table
  • The left-to-right display order of the columns

NOTE   Column Chooser settings on search results tables and some standard reports are part of the user settings stored on the Autotask server. You can log in from any computer and have your column chooser settings applied to your Autotask session. To clear the data stored in your Autotask instance and reset the column chooser settings to the Autotask default settings, click Reset Settings in My >  Miscellaneous > Settings.

To customize the table, do the following:

  1. Click the column chooser icon above the search results. The Column Chooser page opens.

Columns appear either in the Available Columns or the Selected Columns panel.

  1. Double-click a column name or select one or multiple columns and click the left or right arrow to move columns to the other panel.
  2. To change the display order of the columns, select one or multiple columns in the Selected Columns panel and click the up or down arrows.

NOTE  Top-to-bottom order in the Selected Columns list becomes left-to-right order on the Search Results list.

  1. Click Save & Close.

NOTE  If the characters + # appear after the column name, then that column may have multiple items returned for some rows. If that occurs, the first item will appear in the row followed by + and the number of additional items returned. To display the list of additional items, hover over the item in the column.

Export

To export all the items in the list in CSV format, click the Export icon. For multi-page lists, all pages are included.
Column Description
Available

This field refers to stocked items, purchase order items, and product quote items that you keep in inventory. It specifies the number of units of this item currently available in the specified inventory location. Available = (On Hand - Reserved/Picked).

  • If a quote is lost, the reservation is released and the stocked item reverts to a status of Available.

Organization The organization associated with the sales order, or the ticket, contract, or project charge. Click the hyperlink to open the Organization page.

Date Purchased

The date when the item was purchased.

This field will be disabled for contract charges created by a block, retainer, or per ticket purchases. By default, it will display the purchase date of the charges.

This date defaults to the current date, but can be edited.

Estimated Arrival Date (available on Receiving page only)

You can specify an estimated arrival date on purchase order items. The Estimated Arrival Date field appears on the Purchase Order Item page Memo form. There is also an Estimated Arrival Date window that will open when you submit a purchase order. From this window you can specify an estimated arrival date for any items on the purchase order that do not have a date specified.

Extended Cost (available on Purchase Approval page only) The unit cost multiplied by the quantity.

Internal Invoice Number

An internal invoice number for the charge used for reference only.

Internal PO Number

An internal purchase order number for a charge. It is for internal reference only and is not carried through to billing.

Manufacturer Product Number The part number assigned to the product by the manufacturer

Notes

 This column shows notes that were added to the contract, project, or ticket charge. These notes can be edited as long as the charge has not been billed.
On Hand

The On Hand field indicates the stocked item count at a specific inventory location. Stocked items are considered On Hand if they are available, picked, or reserved.

P.O. Number (available on Receiving and Delivery & Shipping pages only)

This field appears on entities that are part of the billing workflow, and is applied to labor and charges.

  • If you assign a purchase order (PO) number to a quote (on the Terms tab), and then close the associated opportunity using the Won Opportunity Wizard, any charges created using the Won Opportunity Wizard will inherit the PO number.
  • If you assign a PO number to a contract, the associated billing items inherit the contract's PO number.
  • If you assign a PO number to projects, tickets, or tasks, that PO number will override the associated contract's purchase order number.
  • The PO number appears on invoices. A separate invoice is created for each PO number. If an organization has multiple billing items that are assigned to different PO numbers, Autotask will generate multiple invoices for that organization.

Refer to Working with purchase order (PO) numbers.

Posted (available on Purchase Approvals and Purchasing & Fulfillment pages only)

A check mark indicates that the charge has been approved and posted.
Primary Vendor (available on Purchase Approvals and Purchasing & Fulfillment pages only) The default vendor specified for the product on which the charge is based. Click the hyperlink to open the Organization page.
Product The product on which the charge is based. Click the hyperlink to open the Charge page.
Product SKU (available on Purchase Approvals and Purchasing & Fulfillment pages only) The SKU (stock keeping unit) number assigned to the product
Quantity Needed (available on Purchase Approvals and Purchasing & Fulfillment pages only) The quantity that must be ordered to fulfill the charge
Reserved / Picked The number of items that have already been picked or reserved. Click the hyperlink to open the Reserved/Picked Details window.
Sales Order The name of the sales order associated with the charge. Click the hyperlink to open the Sales Order Detail page.
Ship To (not available on Purchase Approvals) The shipping address specified on the purchase order. If the item is not associated with a purchase order, the shipping address on the sales order is shown.
Ticket / Project / Contract The name of the associated project or contract, or the number of the associated ticket. Click the hyperlink to open the parent entity.

Vendor (available on Receiving page only)

On the Receiving page, the Vendor column reflects the vendor the order was placed with, not the primary vendor. Click the hyperlink to open the Organization page.

Vendor Invoice Number (available on Receiving page only)

The Vendor Invoice Number is associated with purchase order items when they are received into Autotask as stocked items. The same vendor invoice number is assigned to all purchase order items that are received in the same shipment. If a purchase order item is partially received over multiple shipments, it may have multiple associated vendor invoice numbers.

On the purchase order, the Vendor Invoice # field becomes read-only when the first item on the purchase order has been received. It will contain all vendor invoice numbers associated with all purchase order items that are part of the purchase order, separated by commas.

This field is required if the Require Vendor Invoice Number on received purchase order items and when manually adding stocked items to inventory system setting is enabled.

Enter the Vendor Invoice Number associated with the purchase order items you are receiving.

NOTE  A single charge item can appear on more than one Procurement page (Purchase Approval, Purchasing & Fulfillment, Receiving, and Delivery & Shipping) at the same time if there are units which have different statuses. For example, an item may have some units with the status of Ready to Deliver/Ship, and some units with the status of On Order.