Overview

NorthScope allows users to enter accounts payable purchase orders that can be distributed to fishermen, tenders, fishermen/tenders, employees, and projects. Once entered, the purchase order data are accessible when creating invoices and credit memos to allow the user to load data from the purchase order automatically.

Prerequisites

Required Prerequisites

• Vendor setup
• Financial Account setup

Optional Prerequisites

• Projects: Set up projects if licensed for Project Accounting to track expenses against.
• Employees: Set up employees to distribute line items to employees.

Understanding the data flow

Because purchase orders are not transactions, they do not affect the GL and therefore do not integrate to the host system. However, because purchase orders allow the user to distribute line items to fishermen, tenders, and fishermen/tenders, these line items create a settlement transaction in NorthScope.

Step 1: Entering the Purchase Order in NorthScope.

Entering a new Purchase Order

From NorthScope, expand the Purchasing module on the navigation menu and select “Purchase Orders.” This will open the Purchasing Purchase Orders List View, which displays all purchasing purchase orders with a status of Open or Closed.

Click the “New” toolbar icon to open a blank record view.

Completing the header fields

• Description: Enter a description to identify the purchase order. This field is not required.
• Expire By: Enter the date the purchase order will expire. This field defaults to a year from today’s date less a day but can be edited.
• Ordered: Enter the date of the purchase order. This field defaults to today’s date but can be edited.
• PO: Enter the number for the purchase order. This field defaults to use the next PO# available but can be edited.
• Status: Select the status of the purchase order (i.e. Open or Closed).
  • Note: A purchase order may only be “Closed” once its full amount has been accounted for on a posted Invoice.
  • Type: Select the desired type for the purchase order – whether it allows one or multiple invoices.
  • Vendor: Select the vendor the item(s) are being purchased from. This field provides a lookup of all active vendors with a vendor type of “Vendor.”

Adding line items

By default, new purchase orders open with 5 blank rows for data entry. Complete the data entry for each line item the user wishes to add.

Required line item fields:

• Description: Enter a description of the line item being purchased. This field defaults to blank but must be entered for the line item to be saved.
• Extended: This field is read-only and displays the product of the price per UOM and the quantity. 
• Price: Enter the price for the line item. Prices must be greater than or equal to 0.
• Purchase Account: Enter the expense account that will be used for the debit side of the journal entry for an applicable invoice and the credit side for an applicable credit memo. This lookup contains all the active financial accounts that are marked as “Use in Purchasing”. This field is blank by default but is required in order to save the line item.
• Quantity: Enter the amount of the line item. This field defaults to 1 and must be greater than or equal to 0.
• UOM: Identifies the unit of measure for the line item. This defaults to the purchasing preference for “Unit UOM”.

Optional line item field(s):

• Distributed to: If the line item is being distributed, use this lookup to select the project, fisherman, tender, or employee. The lookup contains a list of all active projects (if the Project feature is licensed), all active vendors with a “Vendor Type” of Fisherman, Tender, or Fisherman/Tender (if the Seafood Purchasing feature is licensed), and all active Employees.

Step 2: Saving the purchase order in NorthScope.

Once the user has entered all desired information on the purchase order, click the “Save” toolbar icon.

Upon saving the purchase order, the following will occur in NorthScope:

• The purchase order data become accessible from Invoices and Credit Memos.
• Each line item distributed to a fisherman, tender, or fisherman/tender will create an “Open” settlement transaction “Due From” the vendor.

Step 3: Applying transactions to the purchase order.

Because purchase orders are requests for items, transactions must be created to complete the process of purchasing the requested items. To do so, the user must create invoices to account for the purchase orders.

To create an invoice for a purchase order, enter the PO number in the invoice’s PO header field with the preceding “PO” and exit the field. Upon exiting the PO field, the “Load from PO” toolbar icon is enabled. Click the “Load from PO” toolbar icon to load the data from the selected purchase order. All data loaded from the purchase order may be edited on the invoice.

Once the invoice is saved, the Purchase Order List View will update to reflect the remaining amounts. If an invoice applied to a purchase order has not been posted, the amount of the invoice will appear on the purchase order line item in the “Unposted Amt” field. If an invoice applied to a purchase order has been posted, the amount of the invoice will appear on the purchase order line item in the “Posted Amt” field.

In addition, if the invoice was applied to a purchase order with Fisherman, Tender, or Fisherman/Tender distributions, the corresponding settlement transaction will update from a transaction type of “Purchase Order” to “Invoice” if the entire distributed amount was applied. If only a partial amount of the distribution was applied on the invoice, the Purchase Order settlement transaction will remain but the balance owed will be reduced by the applied amount and a new Invoice settlement transaction will be created to reflect the change.   

Note: Credit memos may also be applied to open Purchase Orders that allow multiple invoices.

Note: Posted transactions applied to purchase orders will integrate to the host system and affect NorthScope per the transaction type. To view the data flow of invoices, click here. To view the data flow of credit memos, click here.

Step 4: Closing the purchase order.

Only once the full amount of a purchase order has been posted by an invoice can the purchase order be closed. This automatically updates when the total amount of the purchase order has been posted by an invoice.

To close a purchase order, open the purchase order and select “Closed” from the Status drop-down menu in the header and click the “Save” toolbar icon. Closing the purchase order will disable all fields from edits other than the “Type” and “Status” fields in the header. To reopen a purchase order, change the “Status” selection to “Open” and click the “Save” toolbar icon. This will reopen all fields for edits.