Purchase Orders

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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:

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • This request may or may not go through a formal approval process, with one or more people or groups signing off on the request.

  • 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.  

  • There may be a secondary approval process to make sure the price is acceptable before continuing.

  • Once a vendor is selected, a Purchase Order is issued to that Vendor.

  • 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.)

  • Someone at the church verifies that the shipment matches the Purchase Order, and any shortages (or overages) are noted.

  • Once the Purchase Order has been satisfactorily filled, the church writes a check or payment and sends that to the vendor.

  • At this point the Purchase Order is considered Closed.

  1. To access the Purchase Orders grid, click on "Activity" and then choose "Purchase orders"
  2. This takes you to the Purchase orders grid, where you'll see your purchase orders
  3. You can search for particular Purchase orders using the search boxes
  4. The "Status" drop list will let you filter your Purchase Orders grid by the status of each purchase order.
  5. You can Add, Edit, Copy, or Delete a Purchase Order by clicking the corresponding button at the bottom of the grid
  6. 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.

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