Month: September 2012

Who can’t use a free Purchase Order system?

Last week, our Sales Manager hosted a free system setup meeting for the owner of a small residential cleaning service company in California.

What I found interesting was this customer’s unconventional use of the software.  She has a team of cleaners and is using SpendMap to keep track of their work by setting up each cleaner as a supplier in the Supplier Master File, and then creating a Purchase Order for each cleaning job, which she auto-emails from the system.

In addition to being an easy way to communicate with her team, she’ll have a complete history of all the jobs (orders) to refer back to as needed.

No budgets.  No requisitions.  She won’t even be using the Item Master File.

An unconventional use of a Purchase Order system, for sure, but why not?  After all, the software is free and accomplishes the task.

So it got me thinking, what else might people use this free PO software for?  I mean, since most of the system’s features are compartmentalized, there’s no reason why you need to use everything that the system offers.

Are you making use of the free version of SpendMap in an unconventional way?  If so, we’d love to hear your story.  Please shoot us an e-mail at free-procurement@spendmap.com.

Thanks!

Copying Purchase Orders in your free PO System

We’ve had a few questions about copying Purchase Orders to create new POs in the free version of SpendMap.

There seems to be a bit of confusion about why there are two [COPY] buttons, one on the PO Work Area Summary Screen (where you see the list of Purchase Orders in your PO Work Area) and the other button on the Purchase Order Header Screen (where you see a summary of line items at the bottom of the screen).  The later is actually called [COPY/CUT] since it provides dual functionality, as outlined below…

So, to clarify, one is used to copy an entire Purchase Order (including all details, and all line items) while the other is used to copy individual line items, either to somewhere else on the same PO or onto another PO in your Work Area.

If you select the [COPY] button at the bottom of the PO Work Area Summary Screen, you will be prompted to copy either the PO that is currently highlighted/selected in the list, or you can copy an already processed (i.e. live) PO, or a PO Template.  In all cases, you’ll get a brand new Purchase Order in your PO Work Area, which you can then modify as needed before processing.

Quite separately, if you click the [COPY/CUT] button at the bottom of the Purchase Order Header Screen (just below the list of line items), you’ll see that “Copy” shows in the Line Column for the selected line item.  Click the button again and it will change to “Cut”…

purchase order line items

You are essentially “tagging” line items to be either duplicated or moved from their current location.  You can tag as many items as you want and when you’re ready, just click the [ADD] button to add the lines to the bottom of the order, or click [INSERT] to paste the lines above the currently selected line.

TIP:  When copying and cutting line items like this, you’re not restricted to the Purchase Order that you’re currently working on.  You can also copy or move lines to and from other POs in your Work Area as well.  For example, if you want to consolidate two POs into one, just [CUT] all the lines from one Purchase Order and add them to the other PO.

Hope this helps.

Skype support for free Purchase Order Software

Our Support Group is now supporting Skype for our worldwide users.

So if you buy a Service Plan, per-incident support or other professional services, you can now call us free of charge from anywhere in the world.

Seems like a nice complement to the free Purchase Order Software.

As always, you can still get totally free support with the free support ticket system.

We’ll provide you with our Skype contact details when you place your order for services.

Have a great day!