Purchase orders make it easy to keep track of what inventory you have coming in and help you make sure that what you received is what you ordered. Sage 50 can automate much of the work of creating PO’s for you, whether you are replenishing inventory or creating a PO to fill a specific sales order.
METHOD 1
Generate PO’s to replenish your inventory requires almost no extra setup other than having the item set up in Maintain Inventory Items. You may also benefit from entering a minimum stock level, reorder quantity, and preferred vendor ID for each item. But you can get started without them if you want. The only other setting you need to check is in Maintain – Default Information – Inventory Items. On the Ordering tab there is a check box that you can click on if you want to include quantities that are on outstanding PO’s when calculating quantity available. If you leave this unchecked, Quantity Available will be equal to Quantity On Hand minus quantity on sales orders. If you check it, then Quantity Available equals Quantity On Hand minus quantity on sales orders plus quantity on purchase orders. Sage 50 Quantum users also have the option to include work orders when calculating quantity available.
To have Sage 50 generate purchase orders for you:
- Go to the Tasks menu and choose Select for Purchase Orders.
- You will see a list of options for selecting which items (including non-stock or service items) you want Sage 50 to evaluate, and how you want to calculate the quantity to order. Make sure the “As Of” date is set to today’s date unless you have a reason base your calculations on inventory quantities as of a different date. After you have made your choices, click OK.
- A list of items to be orders will appear. You can change quantities, costs, and vendors, or deselect an item. You can also click on any column heading to re-sort the list by that column. For stock items Sage 50 uses the cost from the last time you purchased that item; you can change it if you need to. If an inventory item doesn’t have a preferred vendor assigned to it, it will show up in the list without a vendor. You will have to select a vendor before moving on.
- When you are satisfied, you can print a report, and preview, print, or email your purchase orders right from that screen.
METHOD 2
Auto-Create PO’s to fill specific sales orders, and other transactions. If you prefer to have Sage 50 automatically create purchase orders as you enter sales orders, there are 4 simple requirements.
- The security settings for the user entering the sales order or other transaction must allow them to enter purchase orders.
- Sage 50 will only create a purchase order for items that use an Item ID. If you just enter a quantity and description without an item ID, the PO generation will ignore that line.
- The Item ID must have a default vendor established in Maintain Inventory Items or it will also be ignored. This makes sense since a purchase order can’t be saved without a vendor assigned it.
- Turn on Automatic PO Creation on by going to Maintain > Default Information > Inventory Items. On the Ordering tab you’ll see a section for Auto Creation of Purchase Orders. Check the boxes to choose when you want Sage 50 to create purchase orders. The options are as follows:
Drop Ship Transactions – When setting the options for automatic PO creation, if you check the box for drop ship transactions, Sage 50 will always create a PO with the same quantity as your drop ship sales order, even if you have enough in inventory. The sales order number will also be entered in the Customer SO No. field of the PO and the ship to address will transfer automatically.
A purchase order will also be triggered by a drop ship accepted proposal, or a drop ship sales invoice that has line items on the Apply To Sales tab (in other words, line items not converted from a sales order).
Non-Drop Ship Transactions – If you check the box for non-drop ship transactions Sage 50 will create a PO when you enter a non-drop ship sales order that you don’t have enough inventory to fill (based on quantity available), or that puts you below your minimum stock level. In addition to sales orders, a purchase order will also be triggered by an accepted proposal, an invoice that has line items on the Apply To Sales tab, or a receipts with items on the Apply to Revenues tab if they cause the quantity available of an item to drop below minimum stock levels.
Work Tickets – If you check the box for Work Tickets (Quantum only) a work ticket that causes an item’s quantity available to drop below the minimum stock level will trigger a purchase order.
You can view, print, or email the purchase orders that have been created the same way you would a manually entered PO. Go to the Tasks menu and choose Purchase Orders, then click the List button. You can edit each PO before printing or emailing it if you want to. Or if you prefer to print them in a batch, go to Reports & Forms – Forms – Purchase Orders.
In all 3 cases, a separate PO will be created for each transaction. Sage 50 will not add quantities to existing purchase orders.
This is an update of a post from September 2009