Shepherd's Staff offers a Purchase Order (PO for short) system that allows you to manage requests for purchasing items and services, the approval of those requests, the issuing of those requests to a vendor (“cutting a PO”), the verification of the shipment (“Did we receive what we ordered?”), known as “matching”, and the payment of the Purchase Order.
Typically, the purchase order process works like this:
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You receive a request from someone in the church (perhaps you) for supplies, equipment, services, etc. – something the church needs to purchase from a vendor.
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The request will normally have some kind of “needed by” date associated with it, the date by which the church needs the product/service delivered/completed.
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This request may or may not go through a formal approval process, with one or more people or groups signing off on the request.
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Once the request is approved, if a vendor has not been selected, or if price is a strong consideration, the request may go through a bidding process, in which you send a RFP (Request for Price / Proposal) out to several vendors.
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There may be a secondary approval process to make sure the price is acceptable before continuing.
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Once a vendor is selected, a Purchase Order is issued to that Vendor.
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The Vendor ships the product and invoices the church. The Invoice normally has an ID number of some kind (the Invoice number), terms (such as “NET 30 DAYS”), and a due date. (The invoice should also include any tax or shipping costs that were not known at the time the PO was issued.)
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Someone at the church verifies that the shipment matches the Purchase Order, and any shortages (or overages) are noted.
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Once the Purchase Order has been satisfactorily filled, the church writes a check or payment and sends that to the vendor.
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At this point the Purchase Order is considered Closed.
- To access the Purchase Orders grid, click on "Activity" and then choose "Purchase orders"
- This takes you to the Purchase orders grid, where you'll see your purchase orders
- You can search for particular Purchase orders using the search boxes
- The "Status" drop list will let you filter your Purchase Orders grid by the status of each purchase order.
- You can Add, Edit, Copy, or Delete a Purchase Order by clicking the corresponding button at the bottom of the grid
- The "Print" button at the bottom of the grid will provide you with a variety of Purchase Order reports, including:
- (default) - This will provide you with a listing of your Purchase Orders, as seen in the grid.
- Request for price / proposal - This will generate a request for price / proposal form for the selected PO.
- PO for approval sign-off - This option will generate an approval form for the selected purchase order to confirm the purchase of the item(s) requested in the purchase order.
- PO to send to a vendor - This option is a form you can send to a vendor requesting the items in the selected purchase order to be sent.
- PO with detail information - This option provides all details of the selected purchase order.