This new video tutorial shows you how to quickly and easily approve supplier invoices by matching them to Purchase Orders and Receipts already in SpendMap (three-way matching).
The video also reviews Invoice Discrepancy approval and Non-PO Invoices as well.
Click the image below to watch the tutorial on YouTube, and don’t forget to visit our Channel to see 15 other video tutorials that will help you get started with the most popular features in your free Purchase Order system…
When you start using the free version of SpendMap in your business, it is very important that you implement a backup procedure. Your IT Department should be backing up your Purchase Order System when they backup the other applications on your PC or network servers.
We moved the backup and restore procedures into the Online Help system. To update your Online Help, from the Main Menu of SpendMap, select the menu Help > Check For Updates, then exit the system.
At the bottom-left of the Help window, click “Free version guide” and look for the new subsection called “Backup
and Restore Procedures”.
If you have any questions, feel free to log a support ticket.
Have you ever encountered a situation where a Purchase Order or other transaction that you need is in someone else’s Work Area but that person is not available?
There are a few options in SpendMap for dealing with priority transactions when other users are either temporarily unavailable or have left your company without first delegating their work to others.
SpendMap includes a series of “Work Areas” that contain pending documents/transactions that you are working on (i.e. your work in progress). For example, your PO Work Area is where you can work on unprocessed Purchase Orders.
If you ever need to get a document/transaction out of another user’s Work Area, you can use the related “Transfer” utility to move the document from one user to another. For example, to move a PO from one user’s Work Area to another, use this menu option…
> PURCHASING > Purchase Orders > Transfer POs to another user’s work area
Again, that is just one example. Most documents/transactions include a Transfer utility, such as Requisitions, RFQs, Invoices, etc., which you’ll find right next to the menu to access the actual Work Area.
TIP: It’s fairly common for a System Administrator to remove the Transfer Utility when setting up some users’ profiles, so if you don’t see the menu option, ask your System Admin to adjust your User Definable Menus.
If someone leaves your company permanently without completing or delegating their work in SpendMap, you can either transfer the transactions in each Work Area individually, or you can just go ahead and delete the user’s account, in which case you’ll be notified that the user has pending transactions in their Work Areas, and you’ll be given the option to transfer all documents in all Work Areas in one shot.
If you have lots of users and aren’t quite sure where a document/transaction is (i.e. whose Work Area it’s in), try the Document Finder, which will search the entire system for the Purchase Order or other document number. From any modules, select…
> Help > Document finder
Finally, if a requisition approver is out of the office (the most common reason why a document/transaction might get tied up), use the Proxy approver feature rather than a Transfer utility…
> REQUISITIONS AND APPROVAL > Approval > Enable proxy approver
…or you can upgrade to the web-based version of SpendMap, so that you can approve requisitions using your smartphone or tablet while on the road.
Hope that helps.
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!
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”…
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.
An update has been posted to correct two issues in the free version of SpendMap.
Screen Size Test on Start Up
In some cases, the start-up test was not always catching if your computer’s screen resolution was below the minimum 1024 wide by 768 high. As a result, it was possible under certain circumstances to get into the system with screen settings below the minimums, which caused display issues in SpendMap.
PO and Other Form Layouts
Some of the settings that control the position and titles of some fields on printed Purchase Orders and other forms were not set correctly. This resulted in some fields being left blank on some form layouts, even though the fields were populated during data entry for the transactions.
Update Now Available
If you already have the free version of SpendMap installed, your system will be updated automatically. You can either wait for the next auto-update cycle (could take up to a week) or you can select the menu HELP > CHECK FOR UPDATES from within SpendMap to update your system immediately.
Alternatively, if you’re still evaluating SpendMap (i.e. not gone live yet), you can download a new copy here.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to use our free support ticket system.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
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!
There seems to be some confusion about multi-user access to the free version of SpendMap.
We’ve had quite a few questions about upgrading to the (paid) web-based version of SpendMap in order to have more than one person using the system at the same time, but upgrading is often not necessary.
So to set the record straight, in this post I’ll outline how you can install your free Purchase Order Software on a network server for multi-user access, and I’ll also outline the additional benefits of (optionally) upgrading to the web-based version of SpendMap.
So for the record, “web-based” and “multi-user” are not the same thing. The free (Windows/desktop) version of SpendMap can be installed on your server, and you can roll it out to as many people as you want. Each user will run the software on their PC workstation, while accessing the shared database on the network server. So when someone creates a Requisition or a Purchase Order or whatever, other users will be able to see and work on the order as well (provided you give them the ability to see other people’s orders).
To install your free Purchase Order Software on a network for multi-user access, just follow the instructions in the Getting Started Documentation that came with your free software…
You might not!
If you’re working in a small business or a small buying group of a larger organization, you might not need a web-based e-procurement system. If you don’t mind setting up software on each PC workstation, then our free Purchase Order Software might certainly be enough for you.
But if lots of people need to access your Purchase Order System, then you might consider upgrading to the web-based version, which runs inside your web-browser, so your staff can access it from anywhere, without having to set up software on their PCs.
So for most companies, it comes down to ease of deployment. While there are some other benefits, in general the more users you have, the more benefit there is to upgrading to the web-based version. But if you don’t have too many users, then the free version is probably all you’ll need.
And yes, you can start with the free version and upgrade to the web-based version down the road if you like, with no loss of data…everything in your free version will be brought forward automatically, including Master Files, settings, Purchase Orders and other transactions, etc.
A few of the new features that you asked for in last week’s survey were already added to SpendMap earlier this year and will be available in the next release of your free Purchase Order Software.
Thanks to all who took the survey. When creating our development schedule, we take valuable input from the users of the free version of SpendMap, and combine it with new feature requests from our paying customers (who are using the web-based version of SpendMap), so both communities benefit from your input.
If you haven’t yet taken the survey, please take a moment now and join the conversation.
Thanks and have a good day.
I can’t believe that it’s been six months since we introduced the world’s first free e-procurement system. It’s like watching my kids grow up…goes by so quickly.
People in over 100 countries have downloaded our free Purchase Order Software and we’re only getting started.
And while we’re happy that many users of the free software chose to upgrade to the paid version of SpendMap for one reason or another, we’re even more thrilled about how many smaller companies have implemented the totally free version.
It feels really good to help so many people who could never have afforded this type of technology before.
We were actually hoping that you can tell us!
We have a few ideas of our own for how to improve the project, like some cool new software features or maybe some new tools to help bring the members of the Free-Procurement community closer together (yes, that’s you!), but we thought we’d start by asking what you would like to see added. Or changed.
After all, this is your Project, as much as it is ours.
So could we ask a small favor in return for your free Purchase Order Software system? Could you take a couple minutes and answer this short survey?
I know, I know, we all have a bazillion things to do but it won’t take long and this type of feedback is really important to keep things moving in the right direction.
Thanks in advance for taking the survey, and also for downloading the free Purchase Order Software in the first place.
Have a great day!
The Free-Procurement Project 