Inventory-based Business Purchase Orders Look Up Prices This function allows you to look at the purchase history of an item to determine at what price the item may be purchased today, and from whom. After you specify the item you wish to see, the program displays a list of every purchase you have made of the item in reverse chronological order. Each summary line shows the vendor from whom you purchased the item, the date, the purchase order number, the unit of measure and quantity, and the unit price. Enter Orders LIFE CYCLE OF PURCHASE ORDERS Purchase orders are the computer records and physical documents which reflect purchases made from individual vendors. You enter purchase orders into a transient "New Purchase Order" file in a batch oriented format with the option to print each as it is entered (as specified by the 'Auto Print PO?' field in the Master Company Controls of the Maintenance Toolbox). No information in any of the permanent purchase order, inventory, vendor, or customer files is updated until the new purchase orders are both printed and posted. Once posted, the purchase orders are removed from the transient file and placed into the permanent "Purchase Orders" file. From here on, the receivings and adjustment transactions will update the purchase order file directly. As long as a purchase order is flagged as open, it may appear on the Open Order, Past Due, and Cash Requirements reports. When a purchase order is closed, it will no longer appear on those reports but will still be listed on the Purchase Order Register. Closed orders are still available in Information Central as well. Purchase orders are closed automatically by the Receive Items posting function if it determines that all the line items have been fulfilled. Purchase orders may also be closed or reopened in the Maintenance Toolbox. THE PURCHASE ORDER HEADER The first screen of the purchase urder entry program contains the header information where you may enter in your internal requisition number which led to the writing of this purchase order. This field is for your own reference only and serves no other function, but does appear in the purchase order inquiry screen. If there are several buyers (purchasing agents for the company), a particular buyer may be noted on the purchase order. The remit-to Address on the purchase order automatically defaults to the one found in the Vendor record. This may be changed to any remit-to address on file for the vendor. You can view these and select the one you want by clicking on the Select Remit-To's button. The ship-to address on the purchase order automatically defaults to the one found in the Master Company Controls. This may be overridden, or a ship-to address may be called up from the ship-to address file (click on the Select Ship-To's button). Vendors will track your orders with their own internal sales order number. You may record this number on your purchase order for quicker reference when making inquiries with the vendor. Payment terms information for the purchase order defaults to the data found in the vendor record but may be overridden for any particular purchase order. When entering the vendor on the purchase order, you are prompted for the vendor's code. It is not necessary to know this code. Instead you may enter the first three characters of any of the words in the vendor's name. You will then see a cross-reference list of vendors whose names contain words that begin with the three letters that were entered. See the Cross-Reference chapter in Operator Orientation. An F.O.B. text field is provided, once again, for your own and for your vendor's reference, and will print on the purchase order itself. This is a free entry text field. A Ship Via field is also provided to specify by what method the order should be shipped (e.g., Federal Express, UPS, their truck, etc.). PURCHASE ORDER LINE ITEM DETAILS On the second page, an unlimited number of line items may be entered to produce purchase orders with an unlimited number of pages. Purchase order pages are numbered, and then totaled only on the final page. The line items may consist of inventory and non-inventory items. Inventory items may be entered using their item code or by using the Appgen Cross Reference feature as described in Operator Orientation. You may enter non-inventory items by typing an asterisk (*) in the first position of the item code field. Once the item is entered, you will then be prompted for additional information in a 'pop-up' window. This information includes: vendor part number, due date, customer, sales order number, quantity, unit of measure, unit cost, and discount. If this is an inventory item you will be prompted for a warehouse into which the item will be received. If this is a non-stock item, you will be prompted for an item description. On the second page of the purchase order entry screen, the line items are subtotaled and tax is applied according to the tax percentage set up in the Master Company Controls of the Maintenance Toolbox. This tax percentage may be changed to zero or any other appropriate tax at the time of entry. Freight and miscellaneous charges may be entered after which the purchase order is automatically totaled. Finally, comments may be entered onto each individual purchase order. These comments will print on the purchase orders themselves. PURCHASE ORDER COMPLETION After you verify the correctness of the purchase order entries, you may print them in a batch, if you have not printed them individually, and then finally post them. The posting process updates the permanent purchase order, inventory, vendor, and customer files. Prior to posting, you also have the option of printing the Edit List which shows you all the data entered in the purchase orders in a condensed report format. You would use this edit list simply to verify the correctness of the data. Voiding Purchase Orders In order to maintain the sequential integrity of the purchase order numbers, purchase orders may not be deleted. If a purchase order is completely incorrect and/or unwanted, you may use the void option. This function will mark the purchase order as void, preventing it from printing or updating any master files. It will, however, appear on the Purchase Order Register as a voided document. Print Purchase Orders The 'Auto Print PO?' flag in the Master Company Controls (see Maintenance Toolbox) determines whether each purchase order will print as soon as it is entered or whether purchase orders will be printed in batches at another time. Even if it is set to print upon completion of entry, you may reject the option at that time and print it later, alone or with others. To print purchase orders in batches, use the Print PO's selection on the Purchase Orders tab. The purchase orders have been designed to be produced on preprinted forms. When printing purchase orders, you are asked whether to print all orders or just new orders. If you specify 'new', any purchase orders that were previously printed will not print again. If you specify 'all', these will print regardless of whether they have printed before. Only those purchase orders which have not yet been posted, however, will be available to print. Post Purchase Orders Once purchase orders are printed, they must be posted in order to update the permanent purchase order, inventory, vendor, and history files. Before the actual posting occurs, a journal is produced. This journal is a report style list which includes summary information from each purchase order. This journal, in fact, is your hard copy audit trail of all posted purchase orders. Once purchase orders are posted, they may not be reprinted. Adjust PO's When new purchase orders are entered, they may be corrected or changed in any fashion, as long as they have not yet been posted. If they have been printed, you may still make changes. However, you will receive a warning that the purchase order has been previously printed. Care must be taken in order to ensure that your current purchase order matches that which you have sent to your vendor. Once a purchase order is issued (printed, posted, submitted to vendor), changes may still occur. The Adjust PO's program will allow you to adjust the quantity and costs of purchase order line items in a batch transaction oriented procedure. Once posted, these adjustments will update the purchase order history files, the inventory files, and the purchase order register. You should keep the Adjustments Journal as it is your only audit trail to changes made after the initial issue of the purchase order. Receive Items When you receive merchandise, you must enter the receipt information through the Receive Items program. This is a batch transaction oriented program whereby you must enter a batch of receipt records, print an edit list to check for errors, make appropriate corrections, produce a journal of the receipt information, and post it all at once. When the receipts are posted, the order and inventory files are updated. Many receipts may be entered against any purchase order to accommodate partial and fragmented shipments. It is possible to receive more than what was ordered, as well as less than what was ordered. During the merchandise receipts posting, the program will calculate the difference between ordered and received quantities. If the receipt quantity of each line on the purchase order equals or exceeds its respective ordered quantity, the purchase order will automatically be closed out. This will prevent the data on the purchase order from appearing on any of the open order reports. If for some reason this is not desired, you may use the reopen option in the Maintenance Toolbox. Recurring Orders Orders that are repeatedly placed with the same vendors in virtually the same manner (e.g., service contracts, blanket orders, etc.) need not be entered each time they need to be issued. Instead, the 'Recurring Orders' function allows you to enter them once. These are actually templates of orders that when needed, are copied into the New Purchase Order file for normal processing. The templates may be modified as necessary before they are copied, or they may of course be modified after they are copied using the Enter & Edit Purchase Orders function. The templates stay on file until explicitly deleted. The recurring order entry is virtually identical to the normal order entry. Set Up Vendors Set up one record for each of your vendors using the Vendor File Maintenance program. Here, you can add new vendor records, make changes and corrections to existing vendor records, and delete any unwanted, unused vendor records. Not all fields are required in this program, but the more information you enter, the more the system will service you. To enter a new vendor record, simply click on the New Vendor button. The program will assign a unique key to the record and then lead you through the rest of the entry process. To call up an existing record, you may use the powerful, instant, and natural method of the Appgen Cross-Reference record identification feature. Otherwise, you can simply click on the Select Vendors button to choose the vendor you are looking for from a list. Set Up Ship-to Addresses You may have more than one location to which you want purchase goods to be shipped. Enter these alternate addresses to make vendor invoice entry quicker and accurate. Purchase Orders: Reports & Lists Purchase Advice The Purchase Advice Report is a comprehensive report to aid you in the process of making purchase decisions. This report prints out all items that are either out of stock, have volume below their reorder levels, or have insufficient stock to meet future commitments. It prints the current stocking status of each item with associated purchasing advice, last cost, normal cost, average cost, and list price. Along with this information are lists of future commitments and on-order quantities. Status flags for each item are: "R" = below reorder level, "O" = out of stock, "*" = insufficient to meet commitments. Open Order Reports These reports show, in detail and summary formats, purchase information on those orders that are not flagged as closed. The Open Order reports are used in general to view what items have been delivered and which items have not yet been received. Past Due Orders The Past Due Purchase Order Items report is a comprehensive listing of merchandise whose due date has passed and has not yet been received. This report lists only those items which are past due on open purchase orders. Note: Purchase orders whose line items have not yet been fulfilled may be closed manually using the Close Orders option in the Maintenance Toolbox. Although items may appear past due on those orders, they will not appear on this report since they are not flagged as being open orders. Expected Receipts This report lists all items (with purchase order information) that are expected to be received within an operator specified date range. Cash Requirements This report is provided to aid you in controlling/projecting your cash flow. This report must be read with a good working knowledge of vendors, deliveries, and other commitments. There are four future aging columns provided in this report. You specify the aging by providing the number of days in each period. You also specify the beginning date for this report which may differ from the current date. Purchase Order History These reports show both closed and open orders in detail and summary formats. This may be used to track shipments and to analyze vendor performance. These reports comes in several different versions: Detailed by Vendor & Item Summary by Vendor & Item Detailed by Item & Vendor Summary by Item & Vendor Purchase Order Register This is a simple financial listing in purchase order number order. This list shows all purchase orders, along with their order number and date, vendor, requisition number, net amount, tax amount, freight, miscellaneous, and total amount. Vendor Performance This report includes information that can allow you to judge the quality of your relationships with individual vendors based on their past performance. With a variety of selection criteria options and sorting options (by vendor code, name, or item code), this report identifies performance based on quantities delivered (short, exact, excess), final cost (lower, exact, higher), and delivery time (early, on time, late), as compared to the purchase order expectations. This information is available in both a detailed and a summary format, and is derived from both current and historical data. Vendor Lists These are simple lists of the information you entered into the vendor records using the Set Up Vendors program. Details This shows all the information you entered into the vendors records using the Set Up Vendors program. Names & Addresses In this list you see each vendor's code, name and address, telephone numbers, status, and class. Phone Numbers & Contacts This is a list of the vendors including their name, contacts, phone numbers, email address, and WWW address (url). Other Lists These are simple lists of the peripheral data files that make data entry easier and more accurate. These files are maintained with the programs in the Maintenance ToolBox. Buyers Ship Via Codes