Purchasing & Payables

The Purchasing & Payables module manages the full procurement lifecycle — from identifying what each project needs, through issuing purchase orders, receiving goods, matching vendor invoices, and posting payments. Every financial step automatically generates the double-entry General Ledger entries behind the scenes, so your books stay current without manual journal work.

Where to find it

Choose Purchasing & Payables from the left sidebar. The module has three tabs across the top:

• Resource Requirements — what each project needs, before a PO exists.
• Purchase Orders — the main workflow hub where POs are created and moved through their lifecycle.
• Inventory — on-hand stock for items you've received.

Under the page title, a workflow breadcrumb reminds you where the current tab's records travel. On Resource Requirements it reads Need → Ordered → Received → Staged → Transit → On Site → Installed → Complete; on Purchase Orders it reads PO Draft → PO Approved → PO Sent → PO Partial Receipt → PO Full Receipt → Invoice Matched PO → Invoice Approved for Payment → Invoice Partially Paid → Invoice Fully Paid.

The purchase-order lifecycle

A purchase order moves through a series of statuses. Each transition is a deliberate action — nothing advances on its own.

You drive a PO through these steps with the right-click menu on the Purchase Orders tab.

The menu covers the whole lifecycle in one place:

• Add Purchase Order — create a blank PO (always available, even on empty grid space).
• Edit — change a Draft PO.
• Archive / Unarchive — tidy finished POs out of the active list, and bring them back. An archived PO must be unarchived before any other action can touch it.
• Delete — remove a Draft PO. (Non-draft POs are voided or archived, never deleted.)
• Approve / Un-Approve — sign a draft off, or send an approved PO back to Draft.
• Send to Vendor — email or print the PO (see below).
• Receive — record what arrived. With several POs selected the item becomes Receive All (n) and receives them in bulk.
• Match Invoice — reconcile the vendor's invoice against the PO.
• Approve Payment — sign off on paying the matched invoice.
• Pay — open the Process Payment dialog and post the payment.
• Void — cancel the PO and reverse its GL entries. POs with posted invoices can't be voided.
• Void Invoice — back out a matched vendor invoice without cancelling the PO itself. Available only on invoiced POs with no payments.
• Duplicate — clone the PO as a fresh Draft, ready to edit.

Every menu item stays visible at all times; anything that doesn't apply to your selection is grayed out, with a tooltip explaining why (wrong status, no permission, or an archived row in the selection). Multi-select works too — actions like Approve, Receive, and Pay show a count, apply to every eligible PO in the selection, and skip the rest.

Step 1 — Review Resource Requirements

Before creating a purchase order, project managers flag what they need on the Resource Requirements tab. Each row is a request from a specific project for a material or labor item, and travels its own path: Need → Ordered → Received → Staged → Transit → On Site → Installed → Complete.

Each row shows the Resource, its Size and UOM, the Project, Task, and Team it's for, and how it will be filled (its Fulfillment method). Use Group (by Resource, Project, Task, or Team) and the search box to find what you need.

Shortcut: select one or more requirements and create a purchase order straight from them — the items pre-fill onto a new PO, so you don't re-key what's already been requested.

Fulfilling from inventory instead of buying

Not everything needs a purchase order. If a requirement's fulfillment method is Inventory and the item is sitting in your warehouse, select the row(s) and click Use Inventory (n) in the selection bar (or right-click and choose Fulfill from Inventory). The items are staged from warehouse stock — no PO, no vendor, no wait. Rows without enough stock are skipped and reported.

Staged the wrong thing? Select the staged rows and choose Unstage / Return to Inventory — the items go back into warehouse stock and the requirement returns to Need.

Step 2 — Create and fill out a Purchase Order

On the Purchase Orders tab, click Add Purchase Order (or use the shortcut above). Each PO lists its ID, PO #, Invoice #, Type, and Vendor.

Click a PO's number to open it and fill in the details.

• Line Items — each item with its quantity, unit price, expense account, and a computed total. Requirements selected from several tasks are consolidated onto one PO, grouped by resource.
• Order Summary — running Subtotal, Tax, Shipping, and the Total (Landed Cost).
• Notes — separate Vendor and Internal notes, plus per-line-item notes.
• Attachments / Files — supporting documents on the PO and its lines.

Click Save Changes. The PO starts as a Draft. You can download any PO as a PDF from its detail view.

Some fields may be locked. Depending on how your purchase-order workflow is configured, certain fields become read-only as a PO advances — for example, line items may lock once the PO is approved. Locked fields show a lock indicator; an administrator configures the locks per workflow state.

Step 3 — Approve the PO

Right-click the PO and choose Approve. It moves from Draft to Approved, ready to send. (Use Un-Approve to send it back for changes.)

Step 4 — Send the PO to the vendor

Choose Send to Vendor. A dialog opens with two delivery methods:

• Email — emails the PO PDF to the vendor. The recipient list is pre-filled from the vendor's contacts; add or remove addresses as needed, then click Send PO.
• Print — prints the PO PDF and records the dispatch. No email is sent to the vendor — use this when you hand-deliver or fax the order. Click Print PO.

Either way, the PO moves to Sent, and you're now waiting on delivery. You can send several POs in one go — the dialog handles each in turn.

Step 5 — Receive the goods

As materials arrive, choose Receive and record the quantities that came in. The PO moves to Partial Receipt or Full Receipt, and received items flow into Inventory. With several POs selected, Receive All (n) receives them in bulk.

Received in error? Open the PO and find the receipt in its receiving section — each posted receipt has an Undo button (you'll click Confirm Undo to be sure). Undoing a receipt backs the goods out of inventory and reopens the line. Receiving — and undoing receipts — can be granted as its own permission, so warehouse staff can receive without being able to approve or pay.

Step 6 — Match the vendor invoice

When the vendor's invoice arrives, choose Match Invoice to reconcile it against the PO's line items (a three-way match of order, receipt, and invoice). You record the vendor's invoice number, date, and amount; the PO moves to Invoice Matched. If the invoice was matched by mistake, Void Invoice backs it out — as long as no payments have been posted yet.

Step 7 — Approve the payment

Choose Approve Payment to sign off on paying the matched invoice. The PO moves to Approved for Payment.

Step 8 — Pay (post the payment)

Choose Pay to open the Process Payment dialog. You can pay one invoice or several at once — each selected PO gets its own payment entry in the dialog:

• Payment Method — Check, ACH / EFT, Credit Card, or Cash. The reference field changes to match (check number, ACH reference / batch, and so on).
• Pay From Account — which bank account the payment draws from.
• Payment Date, Payment Amount, and Memo / Notes — the amount defaults to the invoice balance; paying less records a partial payment and leaves the PO at Partially Paid.

Click Post Payment(s). The General Ledger entries are created automatically — the payable is cleared and the bank account is reduced, with no manual journal entry needed. When the balance reaches zero the PO becomes Fully Paid. Checks go to your print queue, ACH payments feed the bank file, and card payments route to the processor.

Inventory

The Inventory tab shows on-hand stock for items you've received through purchase orders (or staged back from projects). Receiving goods on a PO increases inventory; fulfilling resource requirements from stock draws it down.

Columns: ID, Item, UOM, Category, Location (which warehouse the stock sits in), On Hand, Reorder Pt, Reorder Qty, Std Cost, Avg Cost, Ext Value, Method (the costing method), and Last Receipt.

Standard cost is editable. Click into an item's Std Cost to update it. If there's stock on hand, the system posts a GL revaluation entry for the difference automatically, so your inventory value stays honest.

How it keeps your books current

The financial steps post to the General Ledger for you: receiving goods records the inventory and the payable accrual, matching the invoice firms it up into the payable, and paying clears the payable and reduces the bank account. Because each step generates its own double-entry journal, your books stay in sync with the procurement activity without anyone writing a manual journal entry. Voiding a PO — or voiding a matched invoice — reverses the entries it created.

Permissions

The lifecycle actions are permission-controlled — creating and editing POs, approving, sending, receiving (and undoing receipts), matching invoices, voiding, archiving, and posting payments are each gated separately, so the right people handle each step. A grayed-out menu item with a "You don't have permission" tooltip means exactly that — ask an administrator.

Common questions

Do I have to do the steps in order? Yes — a PO advances only through deliberate actions, and each action is available only at the right status (you can't pay before matching the invoice, for example). The right-click menu grays out anything that doesn't apply and tells you why.

Where do received items go? Into the Inventory tab. Receiving on a PO increases on-hand stock at the receiving location.

I received the wrong quantity — now what? Open the PO, find the receipt, and click Undo (then Confirm Undo). The goods come back out of inventory and you can receive again correctly.

Can I pay part of an invoice? Yes — enter a smaller amount in the Process Payment dialog. The PO sits at Partially Paid until the balance is settled.

What's the difference between Void and Void Invoice? Void cancels the whole purchase order and reverses its GL entries. Void Invoice backs out only the matched vendor invoice (possible while no payments exist), leaving the PO and its receipts intact so you can re-match correctly.

Do I need to make journal entries? No — the General Ledger postings happen automatically as you receive, match, and pay.

Why buy something we already have? Don't — if a requirement can be filled from the warehouse, use Fulfill from Inventory on the Resource Requirements tab instead of creating a PO.

Related topics

• Resources — the catalog the requested items come from.
• Projects — where resource requirements originate.
• GL Entries & Transactions — the journal entries procurement posts.
• Cash & Credit Manager — the bank accounts payments draw from.