Understanding Purchase Order Entry

Each time you want to purchase goods or services, you must enter a purchase order. You enter orders to specify details about the goods or services you are purchasing, to indicate the supplier from whom you are purchasing, and to specify other pertinent information.

An order consists of two parts:

Header information - general information that relates to the entire order, such as the supplier name and order dates.
Detail information - line-by-line details about the items or services you want to order, such as item numbers, quantities, and costs.

You can enter header information and detail information separately. Depending on the volume of orders and the amount of header information you need to enter, you use processing options to select one of these methods to enter orders:

Enter header information first, followed by detail information.
Enter detail information only, allowing the system to apply limited default values for header information.

The system maintains header and detail information in two separate tables:

Purchase Order Header table (F4301)
Purchase Order Detail File table (F4311)

Several tools are available to help you create orders. These tools allow you to generate multiple orders at the same time, locate item and supplier information, and so forth.

You can have the system check orders to verify that costs do not exceed budget limits. You can place an order on hold if it exceeds budget or for any other reason. You can review up-to-date commitment, budget, log, and order hold information.

After you generate orders, you can make changes to the orders and print the orders.