Purchase Order Features
AutoCreate
AutoCreate lets you compose a purchase order or a release from on-line requisitions in a few keystrokes. See: Autocreate Documents Overview.
Workflow for Automatic Purchase Order and Release Creation
Purchasing uses Oracle Workflow technology to create purchase orders and releases automatically from approved requisition lines. Purchase orders and releases are created automatically only if the approved requisition lines are valid (for example, they contain valid source document information) and if the "Is Automatic Creation Allowed?" attribute in the Oracle Workflow Builder is set to 'Y' for Yes. (It is set to 'Y' by default.) See: Workflow for Creating Purchase Orders or Releases. See: Choosing Workflow Options. See also: Automatic Release Generation.
Accurate Accounting
You supply accounting information as part of your purchase order. You can allocate order line quantities and costs to cost centers, projects, or departments.
On-line Funds Availability Checking
You can determine whether you have enough funds available in your budget before you complete a purchase order. You can check funds at the purchase order header, lines, shipments, distributions, and release levels. You can also check whether funds are available before you approve your purchase order. You can even set up your system setup options to prevent a buyer from approving a purchase order until sufficient funds are available.
To use on-line funds checking, you need to implement budgetary controls. You can check funds at the detail or summary level. You can also choose to check your funds for each period, quarter, or year. See: Budgetary Control and Online Funds Checking
Revising Purchase Orders
To change a standard or planned purchase order, simply query this purchase order and enter your changes. You can provide additional paper requisition information to a standard purchase order. You can also revise blanket or contract purchase agreements. When you make changes to a purchase order or release, Purchasing's change order workflow processes determine whether or not the changes require reapproval and, if so, route the document for the necessary reapprovals. See: Workflow Processes for Approving Change Orders.
To add on-line requisition lines to an existing standard purchase order or release, use AutoCreate. You can add requisition lines as a new purchase order line or add to an existing purchase order line. See: Autocreate Document Options.
When you change a purchase order, Purchasing automatically increments the revision number. See: Document Revision Rules.
Shipment Schedules
You can create purchase order lines that have an unlimited number of ship-to locations and delivery dates. Each shipment line has a Ship-To Organization and Location, Promise-By Date, Need-By Date, and Last Accept Date. You receive goods and services against each shipment line.
Acceptances
You can enter purchase order acceptances to verify that your suppliers have agreed to and accepted the details on the purchase orders you send to them. See: Entering Purchase Order Acceptances.
Line Types
Purchasing uses Line Types to distinguish between items you order by quantity and price, and services that you order by amount. Line Types also serve to identify outside processing services for which Work in Process creates requisitions. See: Defining Line Types.
Approving Purchase Orders
Purchasing checks purchase orders for accuracy and completeness before printing. You can submit purchase orders to the approval process from the Purchase Orders window before you print them. Also, you can use the Notifications Summary window to submit purchase orders for approval. See: Submitting a Document for Approval. See: Viewing and Responding to Notifications.
You can also assign an authorization limit to each buyer and decide whether you want to enforce this limit whenever any buyer approves a purchase order. See: Overview of Purchasing Options. See: Defining Buyers.
Printing Purchase Orders
You can print purchase orders at the time you approve them. (See: Submitting a Document for Approval.) You can reprint purchase orders as often as you want using the Submit Requests window (See: Submitting a Request). You can choose from the following options:
- Print all new and changed purchase orders
- Print all changed purchase orders
- Print all new purchase orders
- Print a particular purchase order or range of purchase orders
- Print a test purchase order
- Landscape or portrait format
Cancelling Purchase Orders
Purchasing lets you cancel a purchase order or purchase order line after you have approved it. When you cancel a purchase order or purchase order line, you pay only for those goods you received before cancellation, and you can optionally reassign any unfilled requisitions to another purchase order. See: Controlling Documents.
If you are using encumbrance or budgetary control and if you choose to cancel referencing requisitions, Purchasing creates negative debit entries in your general ledger system to cancel the encumbrance associated with the purchase order. Purchasing recreates requisition encumbrances for the requisition lines you used to create the purchase order, using the distributions from your cancelled purchase order. See: Budgetary Control and Online Funds Checking
Closing and Final Closing Purchase Orders
Purchasing lets you automatically close a purchase order once you have received and paid for all items you ordered. This feature lets you concentrate on those purchase orders that are overdue or partially received. You can also manually close purchase orders at any time. Of course, you always have the option to review or reopen a purchase order by adding new lines or creating additional receipt transactions until the purchase order is final closed. See: Controlling Documents.
If you designate an invoice as the final match to a purchase order, Payables final closes the purchase order shipment during AutoApproval. You cannot update the status of a final-closed purchase order. See: Approval.
If you are using encumbrance or budgetary control and if you choose to cancel referencing requisitions, Purchasing automatically creates credit entries in your general ledger system to reverse the encumbrance that corresponds to the purchase order are final closing. See: Budgetary Control and Online Funds Checking.
Close for Receiving and Close for Invoicing
Purchasing automatically closes shipments for receiving and invoicing based on controls that you specify in the Purchasing Options window. Once all shipments for a given line are closed, Purchasing automatically closes the line. When all lines for a given header are closed, Purchasing automatically closes the document.
You can specify closing controls including: Receipt Close Tolerance, Receipt Close Point, and Invoice Close Tolerance. See: Defining Purchasing Options.
Note: The Close for Invoicing status does not prevent you from matching an invoice to a purchase order.
Holding and Freezing Purchase Orders
Purchasing lets you freeze a purchase order so that you can prevent changes or additions to it, but still receive and pay for goods already ordered. You can easily control your purchase order changes because you can freeze or unfreeze a purchase order when appropriate. Likewise, you can place a purchase order on hold to prevent all actions until you remove the order from hold. See: Controlling Documents.
Notification Controls (Using Oracle Alert)
For planned purchase orders, blanket purchase agreements, and contracts, you can establish expiration and release control notification conditions and specify the number of days before the condition is met that you want to be notified. In the Notification Controls window, accessible through the Purchase Orders window, you can specify the following notification conditions:
- Amount not released by date
When the notification conditions are met, Purchasing sends you an Alert (or email) so that you can take appropriate action. See: Entering Purchase Order Notification Controls. See: Using Oracle Alert in Oracle Purchasing.
Quick Access to Particular Purchase Orders
You can place purchase orders that you reference frequently in the Oracle Applications Navigator. Placing documents in the Navigator is useful when you need to query large documents with multiple lines, shipments, or distributions. When the purchase order is open, choose Place on Navigator from the Action menu. When you choose the Documents alternative region in the Navigator, you can then access that document directly from within the Navigator. You can also do this with requisitions. See: Using the Navigator's Documents Region.
Note: Once you place a document in the Navigator, it is the first thing you see in the Navigator the next time you log into Purchasing. Choose Functions to return to the Purchasing menu.
Viewing Changes to Purchase Orders
You can view at a glance all past revisions made to archived purchase orders through the PO Change History menu item in the Oracle Purchasing Navigator. This menu item uses a Web browser to display the archived revisions. You can compare the current purchase order with a previous revision or view all past changes to the purchase order. You can see what fields changed and what the fields were before and after the change. This menu item is also part of Oracle Self-Service Web Applications, if you have access to the Purchasing responsibility within Oracle Self-Service Web Applications.
To navigate to this window from the Oracle Purchasing responsibility, choose Purchase Orders > PO Change History.
See also: Predefined Inquiry Flows.
