Source Transactions for Authoring Purposes

You use three types of sources to generate authored documents: purchasing contract, purchase order, and ad hoc.

The purchasing contract source transaction enables you to create contract documents that can reference and include transactional purchasing contract information such as supplier name, maximum amounts, and line items in the authored Microsoft Word document. This source also enables you to define rules specific to the purchasing contract that can control document content. The system uses field values from the transactional contract to replace predefined bind variables in documents.

Ad hoc contract documents are stand-alone documents that are not associated with a transactional purchasing contract. For example, you can create a nondisclosure agreement as an ad hoc document. The system processes ad hoc and purchasing contract documents in a similar manner, but their primary difference is that documents that are generated from the purchasing contract (source transaction) are linked to the purchasing contract. The link occurs when the contract number and the values in the authored contract document refer back to specific values (bind variables) in the transactional purchasing contract. The ad hoc document content can reference only wizard-based bind values or bind values related to the Document Management page, such as external contacts.