Purchase Order States

This help file applies to an out-of-date version of MainBoss.
The most recent version of MainBoss is MainBoss 4.2.4.
For the latest version of this help file can be found here.

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To accommodate organizations that require approvals before making a purchase, the process of creating a purchase order can have many stages:

Note: Inventory items are considered to be on order as soon as they appear on a draft purchase order. MainBoss does this to avoid over-ordering stock—once an item has been put on one purchase order, the corresponding "stock available" quantities are all updated to show the quantity of stock that will eventually arrive.

The drawback of this approach is that the items are considered on order before the purchase order is actually issued. If the purchase order isn't issued for a long time, you may be misled into thinking that the stock is soon going to show up, when in fact, the purchase order hasn't even been sent to the vendor. For this reason, you should try not to leave any purchase order in the draft stage for an extended period of time.

MainBoss has various buttons for changing the state of purchase orders. These are summarized below:

Purchase orders may be created in a number of different ways. The simplest is creating one directly from the purchase order viewer (Purchase Orders in the control panel). Purchase orders may also be created as part of the process of creating a work order. When a work order requires hiring outside contractors or the purchase of non-inventory materials, MainBoss lets you create a purchase order to cover those labor or material costs. For more on this way to create purchase orders, see Editing Work Orders.

Purchase Order Status Codes: In addition to the standard purchase order states, you can create your own custom status codes to describe the condition of purchase orders. For example, you might have status codes like

Waiting for price quote
Waiting for management approval
Items on back-order

For more on purchase order status codes, see Purchase Order Status Codes.

For information on viewing purchase orders, see Viewing Purchase Orders. For more on creating and editing purchase orders, see Editing Purchase Orders. For more on printing purchase orders, see Printing Purchase Orders. For more on reports related to purchase orders, see Purchase Order Reports.

See Also:

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