Purchase Orders

A purchase order lists what you buy from one supplier, and at what price. A draft commits nothing, and neither does an approved order. The order commits your business when it reaches Sent, after you send it to the supplier.

An order can come from an approved requisition, or you can write it directly.

Creating a Purchase Order

To create a new purchase order:

1. Go to Procurement > Purchase Orders in the sidebar.
2. Click New. A new purchase order page opens, with its lines beside the form, still empty.
3. Fill in the order:
   • Purchase order number: Beelocity fills in the next number of your organization’s series, such as PO-2026-000001. You can type over it.
   • Supplier: the picker offers active suppliers whose supplier status is Active. The supplier fills in the order’s Currency and Payment terms.
   • Warehouse: where you expect the goods. A receipt for this order opens on this warehouse, and you can change it there.
   • Purchase order date: the day that you place the order. It opens on today, and Beelocity prints it on the order.
   • Expected delivery: when you expect the goods. The Late deliveries list and the supplier’s on-time score read it.
   • Contact: the person at the supplier who handles this order. Beelocity prints the name on the order.
   • Currency: the supplier’s currency fills it in (Buying in a foreign currency).
   • Payment terms: the terms agreed with this supplier. A bill made from the order takes its due date from them.
   • Notes: what the supplier should read. Beelocity prints these notes on the order.
   • Internal notes: notes for your team. Beelocity never prints them.
4. Press Add above the lines.

Beelocity saves the order as Draft, gives it its number and opens its first line. If the form still needs an answer, Add stops on that field instead.

To save the order now and add its lines later, click Save instead of Add (see Adding lines before you save).

Buying in a foreign currency

A new order takes its supplier’s currency under Currency. For a supplier abroad, pick the currency that their proforma is written in. The euro, the US dollar and the Chinese yuan are offered beside the dinar (see Currencies).

Pick a currency before you submit the order, even for the dinar. Create Bill refuses an order with no currency, and you cannot change the order after its draft. If nothing has arrived on a Sent or Confirmed order, you can still revise it. Then pick the currency on the new draft (Revising a Sent Order).

A goods receipt for an order in a foreign currency needs an exchange rate on the Exchange rates page. Beelocity takes the latest rate dated on or before the receipt’s day. If there is none, it refuses to complete the receipt.

When an import dossier covers the order, its Supplier and Currency are the dossier’s. They stay so until the Foreign trade officer or the owner of your organization takes the order out of the dossier. That works only while the dossier is Open. If you can see the dossiers, the order’s page shows Import dossier with the dossier’s number, which opens it, and the two fields are closed. If you cannot see the dossiers, the two fields stay open, and Beelocity refuses the save when you change one.

Managing PO Lines

The lines sit beside the order’s details, on the same page. You can add, change and remove them while the order is Draft.

1. To come back to a saved order, click its number in the list.
2. Click Add for each product, then double-click a cell to change it.
3. For each line, fill in:
   • Product: the product from your catalogue. If you leave it empty, Beelocity cannot fill in the price, and a receipt that accepts the line cannot be completed.
   • Description: what you buy, in your own words. Beelocity prints it on the order, and a line does not save without it.
   • Quantity and Unit: how much you order, in one of the product’s units.
   • Unit price: the price of one unit, in the order’s currency. If you leave it empty, Beelocity fills it in when you save the line (Where a Line’s Price Comes From).
   • Tax % and Discount %: the line’s tax rate and its discount. Beelocity takes the discount off before the tax. Tax % opens on the product’s rate when the order is in your own currency, and empty on an import (Taxes).
4. Beelocity works out Total, what the line comes to with its discount and its tax. You cannot type it.

The order line has no column for the supplier’s own code. When approval writes an order from a requisition, each line takes the Supplier reference from the supplier’s products. The printed order shows that code.

On a Confirmed or Partial order, each open line offers Close short. Only the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization can press it. Beelocity stops waiting for the rest of that line, and the other lines go on receiving. If it was the last open line, the order becomes Completed if anything arrived on the order. If nothing arrived on any line, the order becomes Cancelled.

If you close a line short while another line is still open, a later receipt can leave the order Partial. This happens even when the receipt completes the other line. Then the Procurement manager or the owner picks Closed in the list of moves.

Where a Line’s Price Comes From

When you save a line with an empty Unit price, Beelocity looks for a price in the supplier’s products, on the supplier’s page. It takes the row for the line’s variant before the row for the whole product. The price is that row’s Last purchase price, or its Standard price if it has none. A price that you type yourself wins over both.

The Last purchase price is not money that you paid. It is the order line’s unit price, before its discount, from the latest completed receipt that accepted the product.

The box stays empty, and the line does not save, in these cases:

• The line names no product.
• The supplier has no row for the product, or its row has no price. A price of zero is not a price.
• The row’s price is in another currency than the order. A price agreed in euros is not a price for an order in dinars, so Beelocity copies nothing.

An empty box on a product that you know the supplier sells is not a fault. Beelocity has nothing on file to copy, so type the figure that you agreed, such as 1,250.00 DA. To have it filled next time, record a Standard price on the supplier’s products, in the currency of your orders. Only the Procurement manager and the owner can.

A line does not save without a price. Beelocity names the line and the box before it sends anything, so an unfinished line never reaches the order. You can still type 0 on purpose. A free sample or a warranty replacement is a real line, and it saves at zero.

Purchase Order Lifecycle

Approval Workflow

An order needs an approver only if an approval workflow applies to it. The owner of your organization sets up workflows on Settings → Approval Workflows, by total, supplier, warehouse or currency (Configuring Approval Workflows). The workflow picks the approvers, so you do not pick them when you submit.

1. On a Draft, click Pending approval, the next step on the road. You can also open More actions and press Submit for approval. Anyone who can change the order can press it.
2. Press Submit in the dialog.

If no workflow applies, Beelocity approves the order at once. The order moves to Approved, and Approved by names the person who pressed Submit for approval.

If a workflow applies, the order moves to Pending approval. Beelocity puts it in the Inbox of the first step’s approver. Then:

• The approver decides from their Inbox with Approve, Reject or Delegate. On the order, Record approval and Record refusal in More actions do the same as Approve and Reject.
• Only the approver whose step is waiting can decide. Beelocity refuses the decision of anybody else, and the person who submitted the order cannot approve it.
• After the last step approves, the order moves to Approved.
• If an approver refuses it, the order goes back to Draft. Its author can correct it and submit it again.

The order’s Approvals tab shows every decision: who decided what, when, and with what comment. It also shows which step waits now.

Sending and Confirming

Beelocity does not send the order to the supplier. You send it yourself, for example as a printed PDF by email, and then you record that it went:

1. On an Approved order, click Sent on the road, at the top of the order’s page.
2. Click Move to Sent in the dialog. The order now commits your business.
3. When the supplier accepts the order, click Confirmed on the road, and then Move to Confirmed.

Only the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization can press Sent and Confirmed. Beelocity refuses Sent if the supplier is inactive, or if its Supplier status is not Active.

The road runs Draft → Pending approval → Approved → Sent → Confirmed → Completed → Closed. The steps already passed are ticked, and the step that the order is at is filled in. The next step is a button when it is a move that somebody makes by hand. Rest on a step to see when the order reached it and who moved it. An approval shows the approver, and a delivery shows the person who received it.

Click the step that the order is at to open the list of moves. It lists each status that the order can move to from there. Beelocity sets Pending approval, Approved, Partial and Completed itself, so they are not in the list. So a draft has no button on the road. Sent is the first move that somebody makes by hand.

Receiving Against the Order

On a Confirmed or Partial order, open the Deliveries tab and press New. You can also press Create Receipt under More actions. Beelocity writes a draft goods receipt with one line for each order line still to come, and opens it. The Deliveries tab lists every receipt written for the order.

When a receipt reaches Completed, it moves the order. The order becomes Partial while something is still owed, and Completed when everything has arrived. The road keeps the name of the person who received the goods.

Revising a Sent Order

You cannot change a sent order in place, because it is what the supplier saw. Revise it instead. Only the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization can, on a Sent or Confirmed order where nothing has arrived:

1. Open the order, open More actions, and press Revise. You can also pick Revised in the list of moves.
2. Press Create the revision in the dialog.

Beelocity copies the order and all its lines into a new Draft, with a new order number and the next revision number. The original becomes Revised, and you cannot change it. The new draft’s Replaces row links to the original, and the original’s Replaced by row links to the new draft.

The new draft is like any other draft. Change it, press Submit for approval, and send it again when it is approved.

After goods have arrived, you cannot revise the order. Close a line short instead, or cancel the goods receipt first.

Cancelling and Closing

Only the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization can cancel or close an order.

• Cancel: click the step that the order is at to open the list of moves, then pick Cancelled. You can cancel an order that is Draft, Pending approval, Approved, Sent or Confirmed. Beelocity cancels all its open lines.
• Close: pick Closed the same way, on a Partial or Completed order. Beelocity marks every line Closed, except a cancelled one, and expects no more goods on the order.

Finding an Order

The Purchase Orders list searches by number. Its filter button narrows it by Status, Supplier, a Purchase order date or Expected delivery range, or a Total band. It also narrows by Warehouse or Active, which are not columns of the grid (see Working with lists).

PO Summary

Click a purchase order’s number in the list to open its page. The order’s details and totals sit beside its lines, and the Received column of each line shows what has arrived so far.

The totals add up the lines. Subtotal is the lines before their discounts and before tax. Discount adds up the line discounts, and Tax amount adds up the tax. Grand total is the lines after their discounts, with the tax and the shipping charge. No screen fills in the Shipping charge, so it stays empty.

The road runs along the top of the page, beside three tabs:

• Approvals: every decision of an approval workflow on the order. The tab appears once a workflow handles the order.
• Deliveries: the goods receipts written for the order.
• Bills: the supplier invoices made from the order.

To make a bill, open More actions on a Confirmed, Partial, Completed or Closed order and press Create Bill. Beelocity writes a draft bill for what arrived, less what was sent back or billed already (Supplier Invoices). Each bill line takes the order line’s unit price, before its discount. The bill is dated today, and Beelocity counts its due date from today. It uses the order’s payment terms, or else the supplier’s. If neither has terms, the bill falls due thirty days later. When you correct the bill’s date from the supplier’s own invoice, correct its Due date too, because Beelocity does not count it again.