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Working with Purchase Orders

Web tracks includes a purchasing module to track equipment that you are buying.  From writing the purchase orders to receiving the items into inventory, you can effectively track your IT purchases.  Upon using the purchasing module, you will be able to generate spending reports by Cost Center, spending reports by Vendor and have an organized way to track your purchases.

To access purchase order records in Web Tracks a user must have Purchaser Permissions.

Defining Shipping Methods
From the Admin Menu, choose Lookup Tables -- Shipping Methods.

Defining Messages to Vendors
From the Admin Menu, choose Lookup Tables -- Messages to Vendors.

Defining Ship To Addresses
From the Admin Menu, choose Lookup Tables -- Ship To Addresses.

Defining Cost Centers
From the Admin Menu, choose Lookup Tables -- Cost Centers.

Warning: Cost Centers have fields that can store credit card information.  It is not recommended that you type in the full credit card number unless you know that your database has sufficient security levels (Standard Edition Microsoft Access databases do not).  To track purchases to credit cards, you may want to enter your credit card numbers in a masked format (e.g., "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1234").  If you are using SQL Server your DBA, Web Tracks Administrators and WebTracks Users with 'Purchaser' permissions will have access to this information. 

Defining Terms
From the Data Menu, choose Lookup Tables -- PO Terms.

Defining Vendors
From the Data Menu, choose Lookup Tables -- Vendors.

Adding Purchase Orders
To add a purchase order to Web Tracks, click the Add command from the purchase order list.

Setting up Purchase Order Defaults
From the Admin menu select Application Settings.  Switch to the Purchasing tab to make changes to your company information, the default tax rate, and the tax ID number that appears on the purchase order.  From this form, the administrator can change the late and warning highlight colors that appear on the purchase order list form.  If a Web Tracks administrator has selected a company logo for your database, the logo will appear in the upper left hand corner of your printed purchased orders.

Duplicating a purchase order
You can quickly duplicate a purchase order record by clicking the duplicate record command on the purchase order list.  When you click this command, you will be prompted for a new purchase order number.  You can also select the option to have the line items copied to the new purchase order.

When you duplicate a purchase order, all duplicated line items will be set to 'Not Received'.  Also, the purchase order date will default to the current day, and the purchase order deliver by date will default to the following day.

Closing Purchase Orders
A Purchase order is only closed once all items in the purchase order have been received.  If you start creating a purchase order and do not add any line items, this will also be considered closed.  As long as there are line items in a purchase order that are not received, the purchase order will be marked as open. 

There are three ways to close line items in purchase orders:

1. From the Purchase Order List, close all the line items for the selected purchase orders by clicking the Receive icon command.
2. From the Purchase Order Detail form, select the items you want to receive and then click the 'Mark Received' Command.
3. From the Purchase Order Line Item Details form, check the box for received.

Deleting Purchase Orders
To delete a purchase order from Web Tracks, select the record from the purchase order list and then click the Delete command.   Make sure you want to delete the purchase order (see Closing Purchase Orders above).

Working with line items
When the purchase order detail form is open, you will see a list of line items for the purchase order.  You can have a maximum of 90 line items for a single purchase order.  The purchase order form will print on multiple pages if it can't fit all items on the same page.

To edit or add a line item, double click on the line item detail record. 

To delete purchase order line item details, select the line item details and then click the 'Delete Item' command.

You may move the focused row up or down by clicking the corresponding arrow command. 

Notes:
Each line item can have a Cost Center associated with it.  For reporting purposes, keep in mind that the tax for the entire purchase order is applied to the primary Cost Center account on the Purchase Order Detail form. 

Individual line items can either be taxable, or not taxable.  However, the taxable status of the entire purchase order overrides line item settings.  Therefore, if the purchase order is tax exempt, and a line item is marked as taxable, no tax will be added.  Tax will only be added to the order if the purchase order is taxable, and at least one line item is marked as taxable.

Attaching Files to Purchase Order Records

1. Switch to the Attachment tab in the Purchase Order detail form
2. Click the 'Add' Command
3. Browse to the file
4. Click the 'Upload' Command

The file is now stored in the database with the associated purchase order.

See also

Web Tracks Report Designer
Application Settings