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.
• Attributes Setup for AP Purchasing - Purchase Order Transactions. 

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.

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.
  • Note: The Expire Date must b later or equal to the Ordered date.
• 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

Click New from the grid toolbar to add blank rows for data entry. By default clicking New creates 5 blank rows. Complete the data entry for each line item you wish to add. Complete the data entry for each line item the user wishes to add.

Note: Clicking New from the grid toolbar saves the transaction.

Note: Additional lines can be added by clicking New grid toolbar icon.

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. Note: New line items on these transactions, without a Description, will not 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.  This will be displayed in the currency of the Vendor assigned to the Purchase Order record.
• 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 required and defaults to the Vendors default "Purchase Account" (this can be assigned from the Accounts tab on the Vendor record view) and can be edited while the transaction is 'New'.
• 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 field displays a drop-down menu of all active UOMs to select the unit of measure for the line item. This field defaults from the Purchasing preference "Default Invoice, Credit, & PO UOM", but can be changed to any active UOM in the Units of Measure master file. If no default preference is set, or the UOM is inactive, new transaction lines will not default a UOM value.  This field can be edited while the transaction is set to a status of 'New'.

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.

Assigning Attributes (Optional)

The Attributes tab on the record will include all user-defined Attributes assigned to AP Purchasing  - Purchase Order Transaction.

To setup Attributes for the AP Purchasing - Purhcase Order Transaction, navigate to Company → Attributes → AP Purchasing → Transactions → Purhcase Order. 

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 if the line item has a Purchase Account selected.

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. Paid amounts from invoices assigned to POs are not assigned at the line item level so distributing PO lines to multiple fishermen is problematic as the remaining balance for the entire PO will display on each distributed fisherman’s settlement balance. 

Note: Credit memos may also be applied to Purchase Orders and will return the amount on the credit memo to the purchase order even if the PO is closed. 

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 an invoice is posted for an 'Allow Single Invoice' purchase order will the purchase order be closed. This automatically updates when the Invoice is posted. 

To close a 'Allow Multiple Invoices' 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, the Purchase Order must be saved as a 'Type' of 'Allow Multiple Invoices'. To reopen a purchase order of this type, change the “Status” selection to “Open” and click the “Save” toolbar icon. This will reopen all fields other than the PO and Description header fields for edits. To reopen a purchase order with a 'Type' of 'Allow Single Invoice,' change the 'Type' selection to 'Allow Multiple Invoices' and change the 'Status' selection to 'Open' and click the 'Save' toolbar icon.