Purchasing overview
What Purchasing covers, who uses it, and how a purchase moves from a request to a paid supplier bill.
What Purchasing is for
Purchasing is where your company decides what to buy, from whom, at what price, and checks that what the supplier delivers and invoices matches what you agreed. It covers the whole path: an internal request, a quotation or tender, the purchase order, the goods receipt, the supplier's bill, and the payment.
The purchase order and the vendor bill are ordinary documents shared with the rest of the system. The goods receipt belongs to Inventory, and the money belongs to Finance. Purchasing adds the controls around them: approvals, matching, holds, retentions and supplier self-service.
Who uses it
| Role | What they do here |
|---|---|
| Requester | Raises a purchase requisition for something the business needs. |
| Buyer | Turns requisitions into requests for quotation (RFQs), runs tenders and auctions, raises purchase orders. |
| Approver | Approves requisitions and purchase orders above the approval tiers. |
| Storekeeper | Receives the goods against the order. |
| Accounts payable clerk | Enters and posts supplier bills, handles bills held by matching. |
| Administrator | Sets up approval tiers, tolerances, matching policies, approved suppliers and the supplier portal. |
| Supplier | Signs in to the supplier portal to quote, bid, acknowledge orders, announce shipments and send invoices. |
Key ideas in plain words
- RFQ and purchase order. An RFQ is a purchase order that is still a draft. Approve order confirms it and turns it into a purchase order.
- Approval tiers. The company decides how many people must approve an order of a given size. Approvals belong to one version of the order; if you change the order, the old approvals no longer count.
- Matching. When a supplier bill is posted, the system compares it with the order (two-way), with the order and the goods received (three-way), or with the goods received and accepted (four-way). A bill that goes beyond the allowed tolerance is held and cannot post until someone else releases it.
- Segregation of duties. Nobody approves, awards, releases or puts in force their own work. The screens and the system both enforce this.
- Retention. A share of a bill can be held back until the work is accepted.
- Tolerance. How far over or under an order line a supplier may deliver, or how far a bill may go past the receipt.
- Feature switches. Optional parts (tenders, auctions, rebates, the supplier portal and others) can be turned off for a company. Purchase orders, receipts, vendor bills and the three-way match are always on.
How it connects to other modules
| Module | Connection |
|---|---|
| Inventory | Approving an order raises a draft goods receipt. Validating it puts stock in at the order cost. |
| Finance | Posted bills and debit notes make journal entries. Payments, payment holds and the Goods received not invoiced account sit here. |
| Contacts | Suppliers are contacts of type Vendor or Customer + Vendor. |
| Sales | A purchase order can ship straight to a customer (drop shipment). |
| Budgets | An approved requisition records a budget commitment; a blocking budget holds the requisition. |
Where to start
Read Getting started to set up Purchasing, then follow the buying path from Requisitions onward.