# Entering Vendor Purchase Orders

Purchase orders are used to enter purchase from a vendor. Reports can be generated to list the inventory shortfalls and inventory purchases. Each inventory item has a minimum balance field that can be used to help identify when inventory needs to be ordered. Purchase orders do not affect your financial situation, income statement or balance sheet. they merely act as a placeholder to determine inventory stock levels needed to add or replace inventory stock levels.

1. From the Vendors Menu, select Purchase Orders. The Purchase Order form will load.
2. Enter the Vendor ID and click on the open icon right of the Vendor ID window. The vendor popup window will appear. Select the vendor from the list and the information will be pre-loaded into the Purchase Order form.
   NOTE: The Vendor ID text box also acts as a search box to quickly find vendors.
   Vendor records consist of a main address, billing addresses and shipping addresses. Select the billing address and shipping address from the pull down menus. New addresses may be added to either the shipping or billing address if they cannot be found from either of the menus. Selecting the add/update button will update the database whereas leaving it unchecked will just retain the address for this purchase order.
   Drop Ship - If this is a drop ship, select the Drop Ship box and the drop ship search box will appear. Customers can be searched and their shipping information will be entered into the drop down or the shipping address may be entered directly into the address fields.
3. Enter the purchase order Post Date and expected Receipt Date. Popup calendars are provided to help with the selection.
4. Purchase Order Number - Enter the purchase order number. If left blank, the next sequential purchase order number will be automatically generated by the system.
5. Enter the your purchase reference number, store id and purchase representative. The default accounts payable account is loaded and can be changed. The vendor payment terms are loaded when a vendor is selected from the vendor popup. If a new vendor is entered, the default payment terms are loaded. To change the payment terms, click on the icon next to the terms text field and the terms popup will be displayed. Select the terms for this purchase order and press Save to enter the terms into the purchase order form.
6. Enter the inventory items for the purchase order. The form defaults with a single inventory line but more may be added by pressing the Add button located in the lower left area of the purchase order form. Enter the quantity requested. The item cost value assigned to the sku will be placed in the price field and the line total will be calculated.
   NOTE: The inventory SKU field also acts as a search field for the inventory popup. To quickly find an inventory item, enter part of the item sku or description and press the icon next to the SKU. The SKU, description and pricing fields will be filled in.
   Enter the inventory SKU, description and price (or retrieve from the inventory popup) for the line item. Enter more line items as necessary.
7. Enter the shipping charges (or use the shipping estimator to calculate freight charges).
8. Select the tax authority, the tax will be automatically calculated.
9. Save or Print the purchase order. Error checking will be performed and any errors will be indicated either in a popup for errors before the form is submitted or at the top of the reloaded page (for errors during processing). If the Purchase Order number field was left blank, a number will be assigned by the system. If the Print button was selected, the purchase order will be posted first followed by a popup window displaying the possible forms to print, select the form to print and press the Print button.

### Related Topics

#### Vendor Accounts

Entering a new vendor
Editing a vendor account
Deleting a vendor account
Setting vendor payment terms and credit limits

#### Purchase Orders

Editing a purchase order
Deleting a purchase order
Closing a purchase order
Checking purchase order status (Purchase Order Manager)

#### Purchases/Receive Inventory

Receiving inventory from a purchase order
Receiving inventory directly from a vendor

#### Other Vendor Actions

Generating a request for quote (RFQ)
Writing a check to a vendor.
Issuing a vendor credit memo

#### Reports and Forms

Checking vendor balances

#### Tax Authorities

Setting up tax authorities
Setting up tax rates

#### Shipping Estimator

Setting up the shipping estimator