Work with purchase orders when vendor collaboration is used
When you work with vendor collaboration, you also work with purchase orders:
- Send a purchase order to a vendor.
- Confirm and accept a purchase order by a vendor.
- Change a purchase order.
- Cancel a purchase order.
- Add attachments to a purchase order.
- Update a purchase order when a vendor suggests changes.
Send a purchase order to a vendor
Purchase orders are prepared in Supply Chain Management. Navigate to Accounts Payable > Purchase Orders > All purchase orders.
When a purchase order has a status of Approved, you can send it to the vendor by selecting Send for confirmation on the Purchase tab in the Action Pane. The purchase order status is then changed to In external review.
After the purchase order has been sent, the vendor can see it on the Purchase orders for review page in the vendor collaboration interface. The vendor can then accept the purchase order, reject it, or suggest changes to it. The vendor can also add comments to communicate information such as changes to the purchase order. If you want to draw the vendor's attention to a new purchase order, you can also use the print management system to send the purchase order by email.
Confirm and accept a purchase order by a vendor
After a vendor accepts a purchase order, the purchase order can be automatically confirmed, or it might have to be manually confirmed. The behavior depends on whether the Collaboration activation field is set to Active (PO is auto-confirmed) or In-Active (PO is not auto-confirmed) for the vendor.
Refer to the previous Configure vendor collaboration unit for an overview of the responses that the vendor can give.
You can use the Purchase order preparation workspace to monitor which purchase orders that the vendor has responded to. This workspace contains two lists that contain purchase orders that have a status of In external review:
- In external review requires action
- In external review awaiting vendor response
Change a purchase order
To change a purchase order that a vendor has already responded to, you must send the vendor a new version of the purchase order. The new purchase order will have a version suffix to indicate that it's a modified version of a purchase order that was previously sent.
The Purchase order vendor confirmation history page, which is found in Accounts payable > Purchase orders > All purchase orders under the Purchase tab in the Action Pane, lets you and your vendors track the history of each order. The previously-confirmed version of a purchase order remains in the list of confirmed purchase orders until the new purchase order has been confirmed.
Cancel a purchase order
When you cancel a purchase order, the status is changed to Approved. You must send the purchase order back to the vendor so that the vendor can confirm or reject the cancellation. After the cancellation is confirmed, the purchase order appears in the vendor's list of confirmed purchase orders as Canceled.
Add attachments to a purchase order
You can add attachments such as files, images, and notes to the purchase order by using the document management system. Attachments of the External type will be visible to the vendor when you send the purchase order.
Update a purchase order when a vendor suggests changes
If a vendor has responded to a purchase order and suggested changes, the next step is to process the response.
On the Purchase order preparation workspace, in the In external review requires action list, you can identify purchase orders that a vendor has accepted with changes or rejected or accepted where no autoconfirm is configured. From this list, you can also go to the vendor's response.
On a response, a vendor can change the following information on the header:
- Vendor document reference
- Mode of delivery
- Delivery terms
- Confirmed delivery date
The vendor can also add a note or attachment.
On the purchase order lines, the vendor can change the quantity and the delivery dates, add notes and attachments, reject a line, substitute a line with another product that is entered as text, and split a line into multiple deliveries. The status of a purchase order line varies, depending on the changes that the vendor has suggested:
- Accepted with changes
- Rejected
- Substituted - In this case, an extra line is added that has a status of Substitute.
- Confirmed
- Split into schedule - In this case, extra lines are added that have a status of Schedule lines.
If a line has no changes, the line status is Accepted.
On the response, the line statuses indicate the types of changes that the vendor has made. Also, all fields that were changed appear in bold to help you identify the changes.
You can update a purchase order by selecting Process PO update on the response or on one line at a time. An Is PO update processed? field on the header and the lines indicates whether the system has processed the header or lines to update the purchase order with changes that originate from the response. You can run the Process PO update action only one time for each header or line.
Not all suggested changes can be updated on a purchase order. Only updates on the header and updates of dates and quantities on lines can be automatically updated on the purchase order. For other changes, you must manually update the purchase order. In this case, the value of the Is PO update processed? field is Manual update.
For example, if a vendor suggests that a line be split into a schedule, this change must be made manually.
Every line that has a status of Accepted will have a confirmed delivery date. When you run the Process PO update action, this date is updated on the purchase order.
Notes and attachments aren't automatically transferred to the current purchase order. Additionally, trade agreements aren't reassessed on the purchase order lines when you update the current purchase order with the Process PO update action.