Purchase Order Features (Oracle Applications Help)

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.

Oracle Approvals Management (AME) for Purchase Order (PO) Review, Approval, and Multiple E-Signatures

Using Oracle Approvals Management (AME), you can route purchase orders and agreements for review, approval, and e-signature.

Oracle Purchasing provides the flexibility to add any individual or a group of individuals to the approval hierarchy (position or supervisor) so that purchase orders can be routed for review, approval, and multiple e-signatures. To setup and use this feature, Oracle Purchasing provides an AME transaction type and workflow process. Depending on business requirements, Purchasing administrators can setup either parallel or serial process in AME for purchase order review, approval, and multiple e-signatures. Voting method can be First responder wins, Consensus, or Serial. Enterprises can use the predefined AME transaction type and PO workflow process or they can create custom transaction type and workflow process based on the supplied components.

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

You can also unreserve funds that have been previously reserved. This can be done from the Tools menu in the document entry windows or the Approval window. Note that the GL date defaulted depends on the profile PO: Use Document GL Date to Unreserve.

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.

Flexible Pricing

Prices can be manually entered or default into purchase orders from the item setup in Oracle Inventory, pricing information in a referenced purchase blanket agreement, or from more complex pricing rules set up in Oracle Advanced Pricing. To price a purchase order based on pricing rules setup in Oracle Advanced Pricing, its line need simply reference a contract purchase agreement. See: Oracle Advanced Pricing User's Guide.

In addition, purchase orders that reference blanket purchase agreements can have their prices automatically update through the Retroactive Price feature. See: Retroactive Price Process.

Approving Purchase Orders

Purchasing checks purchase orders for accuracy and completeness before you communicate them to the supplier. You can submit purchase orders to the approval process from the Purchase Orders window before you communicate 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.

If you have implemented global supervisors (approvers), your purchase orders can be approved by any authorized approver within your global organization. See: Center-Led Procurement Setup.

Communicating Purchase Orders to Suppliers

You can communicate purchase orders to the supplier at the time you approve them. (See: Submitting a Document for Approval.) Oracle Purchasing supports many communication methods depending on how your system is configured. These are:

You can also print purchase orders, change orders, and RFQs in other languages, if you use Multilingual Support (MLS). See: Printed Purchase Order Overview.

Copying Purchase Orders

You can copy one purchase order to another. For example, if you want to renew a blanket purchase agreement with hundreds of lines, you can copy the previous agreement to a new document and change the effectivity dates. You can copy the following purchase order types:

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 encumbrances for the 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 conce

ntrate 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 Approval. 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 documents, Purchasing automatically creates credit entries in your general ledger system to reverse the encumbrance that corresponds to the purchase order you 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 or a receipt.

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:

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 File menu. When you choose the Documents tabbed 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. See: Viewing Purchase Order Changes.

Supplier Negotiation and Renegotiation using Oracle Sourcing

If you have Oracle Sourcing enabled, you can initiate supplier negotiations directly from AutoCreate or initiate renegotiations with a supplier from the Purchase Order or Purchase Order Summary windows.

Contract Terms Management Using Oracle Procurement Contracts

Oracle Procurement Contracts provides contract terms management capabilities for procurement professionals. Using a contract terms library, deliverables tracking, and formal change management, it extends Oracle Purchasing by offering embedded contract negotiation, contract terms authoring, contract administration, and electronic contract signature capabilities.

If you license and implement Oracle Procurement Contracts, the following features are available in Oracle Purchasing:

Create and Update Purchase Orders (POs) Using the Business Service Object (BSO) Web Service

You can use the Business Service Object web service to create and update Purchase Orders of types: Standard Purchase Orders, Complex Purchase Orders, Global Blanket Purchase Agreements and Global Contract Purchase Agreements. Oracle Purchasing Buyer Work Center functions are supported by this web service. Oracle Purchasing recommends that you use this web service primarily to update Purchase Orders. You can also use this web service to create and update POs during integration with third party systems.

Note: You cannot use the Purchasing Documents Open Interface (PDOI) to perform mass update of purchase orders. Use the Purchase Order BSO web service or PO Update API to update purchase orders in bulk.

For more information on how to deploy the PO Business Service Object, refer to the document Business Service Object Web Service to Create and Update Purchase Orders (Doc ID 1573389.1) on My Oracle Support