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Purchase Order Types

Purchasing provides the following purchase order types: Standard Purchase Order, Planned Purchase Order, Blanket Purchase Agreement, and Contract Purchase Agreement. You can use the Document Name field in the Document Types window to change the names of these documents. For example, if you enter Regular Purchase Order in the Document Name field for the Standard Purchase Order type, your choices in the Type field in the Purchase Orders window will be Regular Purchase Order, Planned Purchase Order, Blanket Purchase Agreement, and Contract Purchase Agreement.

Standard Purchase Orders

You generally create standard purchase orders for one-time purchase of various items. You create standard purchase orders when you know the details of the goods or services you require, estimated costs, quantities, delivery schedules, and accounting distributions. If you use encumbrance accounting, the purchase order may be encumbered since the required information is known.

Blanket Purchase Agreements

You create blanket purchase agreements when you know the detail of the goods or services you plan to buy from a specific supplier in a period, but you do not yet know the detail of your delivery schedules. You can use blanket purchase agreements to specify negotiated prices for your items before actually purchasing them.

Blanket Releases

You can issue a blanket release against a blanket purchase agreement to place the actual order (as long as the release is within the blanket agreement effectivity dates). If you use encumbrance accounting, you can encumber each release.

Contract Purchase Agreements

You create contract purchase agreements with your suppliers to agree on specific terms and conditions without indicating the goods and services that you will be purchasing. You can later issue standard purchase orders referencing your contracts, and you can encumber these purchase orders if you use encumbrance accounting.

Planned Purchase Orders

A planned purchase order is a long-term agreement committing to buy items or services from a single source. You must specify tentative delivery schedules and all details for goods or services that you want to buy, including charge account, quantities, and estimated cost.

Scheduled Releases

You can issue scheduled releases against a planned purchase order to place the actual orders. If you use encumbrance accounting, you can use the planned purchase order to reserve funds for long term agreements. You can also change the accounting distributions on each release and the system will reverse the encumbrance for the planned purchase order and create a new encumbrance for the release.

Purchase Order Types Summary

  Standard Purchase Order Planned Purchase Order Blanket Purchase Agreement Contract Purchase Agreement
Terms and Conditions Known Yes Yes Yes Yes
Goods or Services Known Yes Yes Yes No
Pricing Known Yes Yes Maybe No
Quantity Known Yes Yes No No
Account Distributions Known Yes Yes No No
Delivery Schedule Known Yes Maybe No No
Can Be Encumbered Yes Yes No No
Can Encumber Releases N/A Yes Yes N/A


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