Purchase Order Management

Best Practices for Effective Purchase Order Management

Introduction to Purchase Order Management

Importance of Purchase Orders in Business Transactions

Types of Purchase Orders: Material, Goods and Services

The Purchase Order (PO) is the source document for the order and all subsequent documents are created from the PO. A PO is a commercial document issued to you from your customer, indicating types, quantities, and agreed-upon prices for products or services that you will provide to them. A PO can be of different types, typically either for materials and goods or for services. The subsequent responses depend on the PO type and the requirements of your customer. A single PO can contain lines of multiple types (e.g. one line for goods and one for services).

From your dashboard, navigate to the Orders tab to access your purchase orders. The subsequent screen allows you to efficiently manage your POs.

Here, you'll gain insights on processing POs and handling logistics via SBN. Tasks such as creating an order confirmation, updating line items, generating a shipping notice, or creating an invoice can be seamlessly performed.

All documents created from a PO will be organized in the 'Related Documents' section, accessible via a hyperlink in the PO details. Furthermore, all order confirmations are located within the Fulfillment tab.

Responding to a Purchase Order

On the PO details page, clicking on the Create Order Confirmation button will show us three different options. Either confirm the entire order, reject the entire order or update the line items. 

To confirm the order, you’ll need to enter an alphanumeric reference number, choose to enter a shipping date or even some additional comments. Some of these fields could be mandatory depending on your customer’s transaction rules. 

Once finished, you’ll be taken back to your PO, which will show as “confirmed” or “rejected” status, depending on which option you chose.

Further dedicated instructions on Standard Accounts are available on this page and in video format. 

Purchase Order Detail

Find your PO from the homepage, the workbench, or the Orders tab. Click on the order number to open the PO.

The order header includes the order date and information about your customer and your company. If the PO contains any attachments, they will also be displayed as hyperlinks in the header.

The Line Items section describes the ordered items. Each line displays the description, type, quantity, and pricing of the items your customer wants to purchase.

The PO can be of different types: material, service, or blanket. The type of PO and transacting rules defined by your customer determine the documents you need to create as a response (such as PO Confirmation, Ship Notice, or Service Sheet).

• Additional Options: You can always resend a PO that was not sent to your email address, cXML, or EDI properly by clicking the Resend button (1).

The Export cXML button allows you to save a copy of the cXML source information for diagnosing problems and auditing total value.

Download PDF of the Purchase Order

Select the “Download PDF” hyperlink to download the PO as a PDF document.

Note: If the document exceeds 1000 lines or is larger than 1MB size, details are not shown in the UI. Therefore the detail is not included in the PDF generated.

Now we know how to locate and manage your purchase orders. If you need more information about your orders or how to create an order confirmation, please click on the links below: