Understanding Subcontract Orders

Each time you want to purchase services, you must enter an order. You enter orders to specify details about the services that you are purchasing and to indicate the supplier from whom you are purchasing and the account to which you book the service order, and to specify other pertinent information.

A subcontract 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 services to order, such as account number, quantities, and costs.

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

• Enter header information first, followed by detail information.

• Enter detail information only, enabling the system to apply limited default values for header information.

Several tools are available to help you create orders. These tools enable you to generate multiple orders at the same time.

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.

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

• Purchase Order Header (F4301)

• Purchase Order Detail File (F4311)