Purchase order request flow

1 Use case description

The purchase order request is a document type intended to manage the process of placing orders for goods of services. When making a purchase, it will first need to be approved by peers before actually placing the order. When the PO request is approved, the order can be sent to the supplier. Next step in the process is receiving the ordered goods. When all goods are received, we should also have received an invoice which we want to process and send to our accountancy package. In most cases, there is a 100% match between the goods ordered, goods received and the goods invoiced. In this case, there is no need to send the invoice through the approval flow again. In order to facilitate this, we skip the approval flow invoices that were fully matched with a PO request and can send them straight to the accountancy package.

2 Step by step

2.1 Creating a new PO request

Make sure you select the document type "PO request" in the archive and the You can create a new PO request by clicking the Add document icon in the tasklist. A new document will be opened, showing relevant fields which you can fill in as needed. Required or invalid fields will be marked in red.

2.2 PO request approval

Just like the approval flow for invoices, you can send the PO request into the approval flow. Both a manual flow or automatic flow are possible. When the PO request is approved, it will move to the next step where the purchase order can be sent out to the supplier.

2.3 Sending out the PO request

There are 2 ways we can send our PO request to the supplier: via e-mail by printing and mailing it.

- Clicking this button will generate a PO request PDF and show it on screen. The user can also fill in the from- and to email address, change the subject and email message. Clicking the 'Send' button will send the email and move the PO request document to the next status where reception of the goods can happen.

- This button will generate a PO request PDF and show it on screen. From this screen you can print the PDF. After printing the document, the user should click the 'Save' button which will move the PO request document to the next status where reception of the goods can happen.

2.4 Receiving goods

When all goods are received, we want to mark the PO request document as being 'Fully received'. This can be done by clicking the button. A screen will pop up where the user can select the reception status 'Fully received', reception date and reception comment. After clicking the 'Save' button, the life cycle of the PO request document has reached it's end.

2.5 Invoice matching

For all incoming invoices, we will try if we can match them with a fully received and unmatched PO request document. An invoice and a PO request will be matched when the supplier, PO number and amounts match. When we cannot find a matching PO request, the incoming invoice will be sent to the validation step in the archive and follow the normal flow of a document. If we find a matching PO request, we will copy the posting lines from the PO request to the invoice, create a relation between the Invoice and the PO request and skip the approval step for the invoice.