Procurement follows a purchase from the first request to the supplier’s bill. A person asks for goods, a buyer orders them, the warehouse receives them, and the supplier’s bill is checked against both. Each step says what it commits, and who can take it.
Key Features
- Purchase Requisitions: ask for the goods that you need. A requisition commits nothing. The Procurement manager or the owner of your organization approves it, and approval writes the draft orders.
- Purchase Orders: list what you buy from one supplier, and at what price. An order commits your business when it reaches Sent.
- Goods Receipts: record what arrived against an order, and what you accept or refuse. The accepted goods go into stock when the receipt reaches Completed.
- Supplier Performance: see how each supplier delivers, quarter by quarter. See Supplier Performance.
You can print a purchase order as a PDF in English, French or Arabic. Beelocity does not send it to the supplier, so you send it yourself. See Printing and Sharing Documents.
Procurement Workflow
A purchase usually goes through these steps:
- Somebody writes a purchase requisition: the products, the quantities and an estimated price.
- If no approval workflow applies, the Procurement manager or the owner moves it to Pending approval and approves it. If one applies, somebody presses Submit for approval, and its approver decides.
- Approval writes a draft purchase order for each supplier and currency. After a workflow approves, Place orders writes them.
- Somebody presses Submit for approval on each order. With no approval workflow, this approves the order at once.
- You send the order to the supplier yourself. Then the Procurement manager or the owner presses Sent.
- When the supplier accepts the order, the Procurement manager or the owner presses Confirmed.
- When the goods arrive, you write a goods receipt against the order, with what you accept and refuse.
- When the receipt reaches Completed, the accepted goods go into stock.
A purchase order does not need a requisition. You can write an order directly and start at step 4.
Navigation
Open Procurement in the sidebar. The module opens on what needs doing (below). The sidebar lists the documents of a purchase in the order that a purchase uses them:
- Requisitions: the requests to buy, and their approval.
- Purchase Orders: the orders to suppliers, with their lines, approvals and deliveries.
- Goods Receipts: what arrived, and what went into stock.
- Supplier Returns: the goods that you send back to a supplier.
- Supplier Invoices: the suppliers’ bills, matched against orders and receipts.
- Supplier Debit Notes: what a supplier owes you back after a return or a billing error.
Procurement has no Setup of its own. You set up the partner categories and the payment terms that a buyer works from in Business Partners.
See what needs doing
When you open Procurement, it shows the work that waits for somebody, in five lists. Each row opens the record where you do the job. The lists are read again each time you open the page.
| List | What it shows | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Requisitions to approve | The requisitions that are Pending approval, the one needed soonest first. | The Procurement manager or the owner opens one and approves or refuses it. If an approval workflow applies, its approver decides from their Inbox. |
| Approved, not yet ordered | The Approved requisitions that still have lines on no purchase order. An approval workflow approved them, or a line had no supplier or no price. | The Procurement manager or the owner opens one and presses Place orders (Placing the orders of an approved requisition). |
| Late deliveries | The orders that are Approved, Sent, Confirmed or Partial and whose Expected delivery day has passed. The oldest one comes first. | Ask the supplier when the goods will come. If the order is still Approved, send it to the supplier. Then the Procurement manager or the owner presses Sent. |
| Bills to match | The supplier invoices that are still Draft, the oldest first. A bill whose match failed stays among them. | The Procurement manager or the owner opens one and presses Run Match. The match compares the bill with its order and its receipts. |
| Bills due | The approved supplier invoices with an amount left to pay, due in the next seven days or already past due. | The Treasurer pays them in Treasury. |
Each list shows five rows and how many there are in all. View all opens the whole list with the same filters. At the top of the page, two buttons start the usual documents: New purchase requisition and New purchase order.
Under the buttons, cards show the main figures. The Overdue purchase orders card counts the same orders as the Late deliveries list. Under the cards, Open purchase orders by status shows how many open orders are at each status. You see only the lists, the cards and the buttons that your role lets you open.