Update a purchase order from an incoming document
- 5 Min.
“Sometimes our vendors make adjustments to purchase orders, such as quantities or prices. I never know if it’s better to manually update the original order and risk making keying errors, or to just make a new purchase order for each update.”
Ester, Accounts Payable at Cronus
In the early steps of the ordering workflow, it’s common for a vendor to inform the customer of adjustments to quantities, prices, delivery dates, or other details in the purchase order. Document Capture can smoothly handle these order updates using the values recognized during document import.
Hinweis
To use Document Capture for purchase order documents, you need to activate the Advanced Capture module – which is an addition to your subscription policy. This module includes the Purchase Orders (PURCHORDER) document category. Review your module activations on the Continia Solution Management page.
Take a tour in the solution
In this scenario, you're working in accounts payable at the demonstration company, Cronus. You have just received a purchase order confirmation in PDF from a vendor, which includes changes to the original order.
To process these changes, identify them. Then, update the purchase order.
- Import the purchase order confirmation into the document journal.
- Check the template settings for updating or creating purchase orders.
- Review the document comments to see the changes to the purchase order.
- Register the purchase order confirmation and simultaneously update the purchase order.
Tipp
To manage the entire workflow of sending and receiving order documents, you can use Continia Document Capture in combination with Continia Document Output. See the Learn module about using Document Output to send emails and attached documents.
Receive purchase orders and purchase order updates
If your vendors send purchase order updates in PDF, the ideal workflow requires that:
- Vendors submit purchase order update files to the relevant email address for the Purchase Order document category. See the previous Learn unit about receiving and importing files.
- You ask vendors to include your original purchase order number in the purchase order update documents.
Hinweis
If your order process with a vendor uses an eInvoicing network such as Peppol, the receiving of purchase orders and purchase order updates is handled through the Continia Delivery Network. See the learning unit about using eDocuments as a customer.
After you receive and import purchase order or purchase order update documents, these are displayed in the document journal – just like purchase invoices and documents from other categories. To open the document journal, either:
- Click the Ready to Register cue to open the document journal for purchase orders.
- Navigate to the Document Categories page, then click the Purchase Order category to open the document journal.
In the document journal, check that Document Capture has correctly recognized the value for the Our Order No. field from the received document. See the earlier Learn unit about recognizing document contents.
Configure a source template for purchase order updates
You can configure Document Capture to automatically identify adjustments that a vendor has made to a purchase order update, and update your original purchase order accordingly when you register the document. This configuration is part of the source template related to each vendor for the purchase order document category.
To configure the source template for purchase order updates:
- Navigate to the document journal and check that the document category is set to PURCHORDER.
- Select the line with the relevant received document.
- From the Template action menu, click the Template Card action.
- On the Purchase Orders FastTab, configure the setting Order Reg. Step 1 according to the following options:
- Choose Create Order to create a purchase order, even when you have a previous order with the same number.
- Choose Update Order to identify any adjustments made to an existing purchase order for the field values recognized in the incoming document.
- Choose Create or Update Order to follow the update order workflow if you have a previous order with the same number. Generate a new purchase order if there is no previous order with the same number.
- Return to the document journal and click the Recognize Fields action to apply the changes to your received documents.
Hinweis
By default, Document Capture updates the field values for Vendor Order No., Vendor Shipment No., Promised Receipt Date, Quantity, and Direct Unit Cost. To configure more fields to update when a purchase order is registered, use the Transfer Value to … options on the relevant Template Field Card. When you register the purchase order update, these adjustments are updated in the original purchase order – and a copy of the purchase order update document is added as an attachment.
Review order update details
With the template configured to either Update Order or Create or Update Order, Document Capture automatically identifies changes to the original order and adds details to the Comments FastTab of the document journal and document card.
From the document card, use the Match Lines action in the Home action menu to view the original order lines and compare these to the received document lines on the same page.
More resources
- The Purchase Order category (Continia Docs article)