Purchase Requisitions

A purchase requisition asks for goods or services that somebody needs. It says what, how much and by when, and it commits nothing. When the Procurement manager or the owner of your organization approves it, Beelocity writes the draft purchase orders.

A purchase order does not need a requisition. A buyer can also write an order directly.

Creating a Requisition

To create a new purchase requisition:

1. Go to Procurement > Requisitions in the sidebar.
2. Click New. A new requisition page opens, with its lines beside the form, still empty.
3. Fill in the requisition:
   • Requisition number: Beelocity fills in the next number of your organization’s series. You can type over it.
   • Department: the department that needs the goods, in your own words. An approval workflow can apply to one department only.
   • Request date: the day that you make the request. It opens on today.
   • Required date: the day by which you need the goods. Leave it empty if there is no deadline.
   • Priority: Low, Normal, High or Urgent. Buyers see it in the list.
   • Estimated cost: your guess at what the whole request costs. Beelocity does not add it up from the lines.
4. Press Add above the lines.

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

Managing Requisition Lines

The products that a requisition asks for sit beside its details, on the same page. There is no separate tab to open.

1. To come back to a saved requisition, click its number in the list.
2. Click Add, then double-click a cell to fill it in.
3. For each line, fill in:
   • Product: the product from your catalogue. You can leave it empty, but only a line with a product or a variant can find its own supplier.
   • Description: what you need, in your own words. Beelocity copies it onto the order line.
   • Quantity and Unit: how much you need, in one of the product’s units, as its Units tab lists them.
   • Required date: when this line is needed, if that is not the request’s own Required date. Leave it empty otherwise.
   • Estimated price: your guess at the price of one unit. The purchase order does not use it.
   • Notes: anything that helps the buyer, such as a specification or a link.
4. Add as many lines as you need.

You can change or remove the lines while the requisition is Draft.

Requisitions Beelocity raises for you

Two things raise a requisition without anyone typing it. A planning run raises one when a planner promotes its planned purchases. A critical spare policy raises one when a spare part falls below its minimum.

Such a requisition arrives as Draft, and it goes on from there like one that you wrote. Beelocity writes nothing into its Notes, or into the notes of its lines. Each line takes the name of the product that it buys, such as Farine T55. If the line is for one variant of a product, the variant’s SKU follows the name. The purchase order prints that name for your supplier, so the supplier reads what to deliver.

A planning run gathers proposals due on different days into one requisition. So each of its lines carries its own Required date, the day that its proposal is due. The requisition’s Required date is the soonest of them, or today if that day has already gone by.

The requisition’s page shows where it came from, in the Source row. Manual is a requisition that somebody wrote. Planning run and Critical spare are links. Planning run opens the run on its Planned Orders tab, where its proposals are marked converted. Critical spare opens the policy. To see only the requisitions that a planner or a policy raised, filter the list by Source.

The road a requisition travels

Along the top of the requisition’s page runs its road: Draft → Pending approval → Approved → Converted. The step that it is on is filled in, and the steps behind it are ticked. Rest on a step to see when the requisition reached it and who moved it.

The step ahead is a button for the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization. A Procurement clerk sees no button on the road.

Click the step that the requisition is on to open the list of moves. It lists each status that the requisition can move to from there. You pick Rejected and Cancelled there. A status that Beelocity sets is not in the list.

Submitting for Approval

Who sends a request on depends on whether an approval workflow applies to it. Beelocity sets up no workflow for you, so none applies until the owner of your organization sets one up. If none applies, the Procurement manager or the owner moves the request on the road:

1. Make sure that the requisition has at least one line.
2. Click Pending approval on the road.
3. Click Move to Pending approval in the dialog.

If no approval workflow applies, a Procurement clerk cannot send a requisition for approval today. The clerk sees Submit for approval in the More actions menu, and Beelocity refuses it with Couldn’t send this requisition for approval. The request stays Draft, and nothing is lost. Ask the Procurement manager or the owner of your organization to move it to Pending approval on the road.

If an approval workflow applies to the request, use Submit for approval instead (see Multi-step approval below).

Approving or Rejecting

Only the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization can approve or refuse a request. A manager cannot approve a request that they raised, and Beelocity refuses it. The owner can approve their own.

To approve the request:

1. While the request is Pending approval, click Approved on the road.
2. Check the Warehouse the orders deliver to, and press Approve. It opens on your default warehouse, or on your only one, and you can pick another.

Beelocity approves every waiting line. Then it writes one draft purchase order for each supplier and currency, from the lines that have a supplier and a price. A message names the orders it wrote. If it wrote one order, the page opens it, because the order is the next thing to complete. If it wrote several, the page stays on the request. The request’s Purchase orders row then links each order, and each line names its order in the Purchase order column.

If you are the only member of your organization, nobody else approves your requests, so you do not send them for approval. While the request is Draft, click Approved on the road. Then check the warehouse and press Approve, as above. Beelocity approves the request and writes its orders in the same step.

Beelocity picks each line’s supplier from the supplier products that cover the line’s product. It takes only a supplier that can take an order today: an active partner with the supplier role, whose Supplier status is Active. Among those, it ranks the rows in this order:

• A row for the line’s own variant comes before a row for the whole product.
• A row that quotes a price comes before a row that quotes none. A price of zero is not a price.
• If the request names a currency, a row in that currency comes next. A request that you write names none.
• A row marked Preferred comes before the others.
• The cheaper price comes first. Beelocity compares two prices only in one currency, and it never converts one currency into another.
• If two rows are still equal, the older row wins.

The price that the line takes is the row’s Last purchase price, or its Standard price if it has none. If a supplier prices some products in one currency and others in another, you get one order for each currency. So every line on an order is in the order’s own currency.

Each new order is a Draft and commits nothing. It takes the next number of your organization’s purchase order series, such as PO-2026-000001. It opens on today’s date, the warehouse that you picked and the supplier’s payment terms. Its From requisition row names this request. Its Expected delivery is empty, so fill it in on the draft. Then each order still needs Submit for approval, and then Sent (Purchase Orders).

Two kinds of line are left for later, and they stay Approved:

• a line with no product, or whose product no supplier that can take an order covers
• a line whose supplier quotes no price

Beelocity does not put a zero on an order, and it does not use your estimated price. When a supplier’s products cover such a line, the Procurement manager or the owner presses Place orders (Placing the orders of an approved requisition). If every line found a supplier and a price, the requisition moves to Converted. Otherwise it stays Approved.

The Procurement manager or the owner can refuse one line, and not the whole request:

1. While the request is Pending approval, click Refuse on the line.
2. Type a reason if you want one, and press Refuse line.

The reason shows beside the line’s status, and the line’s notes stay as they were. Approval skips a refused line, and the other lines go on to orders as usual. To bring the line back, refuse the whole request, and then press Reopen as Draft.

To refuse the whole request, open the list of moves and pick Rejected. Beelocity asks why, and shows the reason on the request under Rejected. The request’s own Notes stay as its author wrote them.

To put a refused request back, open More actions and press Reopen as Draft. Only the Procurement manager and the owner can. Its refused lines go back to Pending and the reasons are cleared, so its author can correct it. The list of moves offers the same as Draft, and asks you to confirm.

Multi-step approval (optional)

The owner of your organization can set up an approval workflow for requisitions, on Settings → Approval Workflows (Configuring Approval Workflows). A workflow applies to the requests that match its rule, for example one department or a cost above an amount. While one applies, Beelocity refuses the road’s Approved step, and the request goes through the workflow instead:

1. On the draft, open More actions and press Submit for approval. Anyone who can change the request can press it.
2. The request moves to Pending approval. Beelocity puts it in the Inbox of the first step’s approver.
3. Each approver decides from their Inbox. The person who submitted the request cannot approve it.
4. After the last step approves, the request is Approved. Its lines stay Pending, and no order exists yet.
5. The Procurement manager or the owner presses Place orders to write the orders (below).

Every decision is on the requisition’s Approvals tab. If an approver refuses the request, it goes back to Draft, and not to Rejected. Its author can correct it and press Submit for approval again.

While a workflow applies, do not click Pending approval on the road. The request would then wait outside the workflow, and nobody could approve it. If that happened, refuse the request in the list of moves, press Reopen as Draft, and then press Submit for approval.

A workflow can also have no steps and approve at once. Then Submit for approval moves the request from Draft to Approved in one move, and its road marks Pending approval as skipped.

Placing the orders of an approved requisition

An Approved requisition can still have lines that no purchase order covers. An approval workflow leaves all its lines waiting, and approval leaves the lines that had no supplier or no price. Place orders writes their orders.

1. Open the requisition, open More actions, and press Place orders.
2. Check the Warehouse the orders deliver to, and press Place orders again. It opens on the warehouse that this request’s earlier orders deliver to.

Beelocity picks each line’s supplier exactly as approval does. It writes one draft purchase order for each supplier and currency. A line that no supplier can take yet keeps waiting. A message names the orders Beelocity wrote and says how many lines still wait. If it wrote one order, the page opens it, as approval does. Add the product to a supplier’s products, and then press Place orders again. When no line is left to order, the requisition moves to Converted.

Only the Procurement manager and the owner of your organization can place the orders. They can do it on a request that they raised themselves, because somebody else has already approved it.

Finding a Requisition

The Purchase Requisitions list searches by number, department or notes. Its filter button narrows it by Priority, Status, a Request date or Required date range, or an Estimated cost band. It also narrows by Requested by, Source and Active, which are not columns of the grid (see Working with lists).

Cancelling

The Procurement manager or the owner can cancel a requisition that is Draft, Pending approval, Approved or Rejected. Open the list of moves from the step that it is on, and pick Cancelled. Beelocity orders none of its waiting lines after that. The orders already written from it stay as they are.