A debtor may have a specific budget against which they require their spending to be tracked. Where this is the case, purchase orders can be added to the debtor to define the available budget and the bill elements that draw on the purchase order budget. Once purchase orders have been created, any job orders that are billable to the debtor can be assigned to a purchase order and therefore any items billed for those job orders can draw on the budget of the respective purchase orders.
It is possible to configure the following types of purchase orders against a debtor:
single line
multi-line
multi-line master.
Single-line purchase orders have a single budget whereby all bill elements invoiced to the debtor draw on that single budget regardless of the bill element that is being invoiced. For example, ordinary time spending and overtime spending draw on the same budget.
Multi-line purchase orders have a single budget but allow spending to be tracked against specific bill elements. For example, ordinary time spending and overtime spending draw on the same budget but the spend for ordinary time and overtime is tracked individually so that it is possible to report on ordinary time spend versus overtime spend.
Multi-line master purchase orders allow multiple line budgets to be defined, whereby each line budget applies to a different set of bill elements that are tracked against a separate, secondary purchase order. Each line budget has its own budget amount, bill code group that defines the bill elements to which it applies and a secondary purchase order number.
Before purchase orders can be created for a debtor, the following maintenance items must be configured:
purchase order bill code groups
purchase order alert templates.
For more information about configuring these maintenance items, see Purchase Order Bill Code Maintenance and Purchase Order Alert Template Maintenance.
How Are Job Orders Assigned to Purchase Orders?
Job orders can be assigned to purchase orders in the following ways:
individually from the job order itself via the Job Order screen in Agency Portal > Recruitment Manager
in bulk via the Agency Portal > Billing > Maintenance > Debtor > Debtor Maintenance > Debtor Maintenance > Purchase Orders > Purchase Order Details screen (for more information, see How to Bulk Assign Job Orders to a Purchase Order).
A Debtor record can be flagged to enforce purchase orders, in which case it is mandatory for all job orders that are linked to the debtor to be assigned to a purchase order that is defined on the Debtor record. Where this is the case, a front office consultant must select a purchase order number from a list of purchase orders, which are defined on the Debtor record, when they create a job order in Agency Portal > Recruitment Manager.
If purchase orders are not enforced for a debtor, a front office consultant can select a purchase order number from a list of purchase orders, which are defined on the Debtor record, or they can key in a purchase order number on-the-fly when they create a job order in Agency Portal > Recruitment Manager.
If a purchase order number is keyed against the job order on-the-fly, the is no budget associated with the purchase order and the purchase order number can on be used for reporting and invoice grouping purposes only.
Security Permissions
The ability to access debtor purchase order functionality is controlled by security permissions. The table below lists and describes the user security permissions that must be applied to a user security role of a user in Agency Portal > Maintenance > Security to allow access to the debtor purchase order functionality.
Application | Permission Item | User Type | Permission Level | Description |
Billing | Purchase Order Maintenance | Agency | View | Allows the user to view the purchase orders that belong to a debtor. |
Agency | Add / Edit | Allows the user to do the following:
| ||
Agency | Full | As per Edit but also allows editing and deleting of purchase orders that have been created by other users. | ||
Purchase Order Assign Invoiced Item | Agency | Full | Allows the user to assign/reassign items on a closed invoice to a new purchase order. |