Purchase order categories and purchase order types serve as utilities to categorize and group purchase orders, and make it easier to report on several POs concurrently. This article will explore assigning POs to their respective categories and types and how PO assignments affect daily entries.
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Adding PO Categories
PO categories are used to group prchase orders that fall within a given class. For example, one category could group material POs while the other could group equipment rental POs.
To add a PO category, click on Purchasing > PO Categories.
Click the append button (+) on the navigation bar to add a new record. You can also use the buttons to the right of the append button to modify or delete the selected record(s).
The name tells the distinct value for each PO category. The identifiers serves as an abbreviation or shortcuts for each category. The "Use For Daily Entry" column has tri-state checkboxes that determines what PO categories are available by default on hand-entry labor and equipment screens, and also which POs are listed when creating timesheet packages ("New" > From daily entries), authorization packages ("Create" > From daily entries), service entry packages ("Create" > From daily entries), or billing packages ("Create" > From approved records) for a company. These checkboxes are either 'unknown' (included), 'unchecked' (omit from daily entries), or 'checked' (include in daily entries).
You can also set whether the PO category is active or inactive. If loading the labor/equipment hand-entry screens is slow on the first "Loading POs" step, it's recommended you mark PO categories appropriately and assign them to your purchase orders to make loading POs run more smoothly.
After adding the records, click on “Save” to accept changes as the data is not automatically saved after records are added, modified or deleted.
Adding PO Types
PO types are used to group POs with similar behavior, such as universal/blanket, fixed fee/lump sum, etc.
To add a PO type, click on Purchasing > PO Types.
Similar to PO categories, you can add names, identifiers, and set PO types as active or inactive. The major difference here is the ability to set a PO type as blanket, which is basically used in scenarios where the lines on the PO are not work order-specific, and multiple work orders can be charged against PO lines. If "Is Blanket" is set on the PO type and the "Type" field is a mapped field on the PO import, then all newly imported POs with that type assigned will be blanket POs. In this example, POs with the type "Universal" will be blanket POs.
Click on save to accept changes.
PLEASE NOTE: There are no explicit items on the import menu to import PO categories and PO types. However, both grouping utilities can be imported on the purchase order import with the "Category" and "Type" fields mapped, respectively.
