Creating a purchase order

Creating a purchase order

If you haven’t used purchase orders before, we have a useful article on “what is a purchase order” which has some background information. This article explains how to create a purchase order in Zahara. 

Creating an order

You can create a purchase order in two ways. 
You can either go to Documents > Purchase Orders and click “New Purchase Order” or you can click + > New Purchase Order on the menu bar
 
dashboard with create purchase order
 
You will now see the Purchase Create screen as below: 
 
Zahaar Screen Shot
 
 
Your first choice will be the supplier. Zahara works on the principle of: “I know what I want to buy and I know who I’m buying it from”. If the supplier has multiple email addresses, you can choose the correct one just below. This is the email address we will send the purchase order to (provided a purchase order is set to send).
 
The Division is important. If the creator belongs to more than one Division they can change Division here or select Multi-grouped which will move the Division onto the line items. The Division settings applies numerous controls and settings like nominal code filtering. 
 
If you are buying on behalf of a colleague, and have the permission, you can choose a different originator. Below this you can change the currency. The Project field will set the whole purchase to the project, effectively pre-setting the line-item project field. 

Custom fields

The next panel – if you are using custom fields – is the custom fields panel. Any fields you have enabled or set up will appear here. These will respect any parents and children that may have been created as well. 

Line items

The next panel is where you create the line items or the narrative of the order.

Zahara Screen Shot

Product selector – if the Supplier chosen has recorded products / items, these can be selected from the “Choose a Product” selector and dropped onto the line items. 

Switching to table view – there is a table icon on the right which will switch you onto a table view – this is useful when you have created multiple line items.

Import from CSV – here you can import line items from a CSV file – see this dedicated article

Now you can populate your line item, adjusting any of the fields or pre-selected values. If you are creating a one line item order, you will click Continue, in blue bottom right. If you are adding more line items, you will click Add new line item. Switching to table view will enable you to see all your lines as shown below:

You can then edit individual line items by clicking the blue edit icon, or switch back into edit mode by clicking the table icon again. You can also bulk update all line items by selecting them as shown below:

Once you have all of your lines perfect, you can move on by clicking continue. 

Budgets panel 

The next panel is the optional Budgets panel. This is shown below and is for the creator’s benefit to see how the Budget (if any) is affected by the order. 

Zahara Screen Shot

 

Delivery panel

The delivery panels shows the default delivery address. This is set in Business Settings> Purchase Orders and will be one of Business Unit, Division or Project. You can change the address though. You can select any other address or type in a new address

Zahara Screen Shot

You can also change the Required by date. This can be set at a Line item level if set in Business Settings > Purchase Orders. Otherwise, set the required by date. This can be used as a value on a purchase order and for reporting / accruals. 

Narrative panel

This panel is all about comments and providing the narrative for either an approver or a supplier. Internal comments is the field for approval comments – perhaps the justification for the purchase. The supplier field can be used to add comments that show on the Purchase Order PDF like “need this urgently”

Zahara Screen Shot

Adding files

You can add documents to the purchase order. These might be supporting documents for the supplier or the approver. You can drag them over to the panel and then select what kind of file you are attaching. This is limited to one document only though. 

Selecting a workflow 

At the bottom of the Narrative panel is the workflow selector. If you have permission to override the workflow, you can do that here. Otherwise the pre-set workflow will show. 

Save as Draft

You can save the purchase order as a Draft at any time. This means the Purchase can be edited but hasn’t been submitted yet. If a purchase is saved as a Draft, it will show with a Draft icon as shown below: 

Zahara Screen Shot

You can edit the Draft by clicking the Purchase Order number or you can click the approval status icon to reveal a menu with the ability to click Raise. 

Editing an Order

Once an order is raised, you can view it or edit it any time by clicking the purchase order number from the list view. The Document Actions menu has the following:

Zahara Screen Shot

  • Edit – this allows you to edit the purchase order, provided you have purchase order update permissions and were the originator. 
  • Reset Matching allows you to release any linked invoice attached to the order.
  • Download will be an option to download the PDF of the purchase order, provided the order has been approved and has completed the workflow 
  • Send to supplier will bring up a box to allow you to send the PO to the supplier 
  • Delete will allow you to delete the PO provided you have the permission and the order hasn’t yet been sent to the supplier 
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