Purchasing and receiving

Obtaining purchase approval

Your company can set up a purchase approval process for charges above a specified monetary amount. Then, all product purchases that require approval automatically appear on the Purchase Approvals page and must be approved before they can be added to a purchase order.

Purchase approvals (Procurement required)

Manually creating a purchase order

You can manually create a purchase order by selecting a vendor and optionally a customer, and by manually adding items you would like to purchase.

Adding or editing a purchase order

The Procurement feature includes a Purchasing page that will automatically list all products (both inventory and non-inventory) that have a status of Need to Order. You can select all items you are planning to order from the same vendor and automatically add them to a PO you create from this page.

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

Once the purchase order has been saved, you can view it in HTML or PDF format, select a different PO template, and email it to the vendor.

Viewing, printing, or emailing a purchase order

Submitting the PO to the vendor

Submitting the PO sets the status of the PO to Submitted, and allows you to receive the items on the PO.

IMPORTANT  Submitting the PO does not put it into the hands of the vendor. To do this, you must either mail it as an attachment to your vendor contact, or enter it into the vendor's purchasing application.

Submitting a purchase order

Fielding questions about the expected arrival date of an item can waste a lot of time. If this information is available, you can enter it into Autotask.

Tracking the estimated arrival date

Searching and managing all POs

On the Purchase Order Search page, you can search and manage all purchase orders ever created in Autotask.

Searching and managing purchase orders

As soon as a PO has been submitted, the status of all PO items is updated to On Order. They can now be received by locating the PO number on the Purchase Order Search page and opening the Receive/Cancel Receipt of Purchase Order page.

Receiving purchase order items

The Procurement feature includes a Receiving page that will automatically list all products (both inventory and non-inventory) that have a status of On Order. You can search for a PO item included with a shipment using many other filters, including Product, Vendor, or Manufacturer Product Number. This is easier and faster than searching through multiple POs.

The Receiving page (Procurement required)

Viewing receipt history and receipt details

When you place a purchase order with a vendor, there is no guarantee that all items will be shipped in one shipment, or invoiced on one invoice. The Receipt History and the Receipt Detail pages help you sort through multiple shipments and invoice numbers associated with the PO.

Viewing the receipt history and receipt details

Canceling the receipt of purchase order items allows you to correct mistakes made during the receiving process, and reduce the quantity ordered if the vendor is not able to fulfill the entire order.

Canceling the receipt of purchase order items