configuration

Terms and Conditions on PO Form (Ts and Cs)

Jody works in the hospitality industry in California and was asking how to include terms and conditions (Ts and Cs) on her PO form in the free version of SpendMap.

There are actually two options when it comes to terms and conditions on your Purchase Order form…

Short Terms Text

If you just need a few lines of text, try using the Short Terms Text in PO Printing Settings, which will be included on the face of the PO form, at the bottom, next to your signature line.  Here is where you can find the setting, and what it looks like…
– PURCHASING > Setup system> Purchase order settings > PO printing settings > Settings

Short terms and conditions on PO form

Long Terms Page

If you need more than just a few lines of text, the other option would be to use the full Terms and Conditions Page that will automatically accompany each PO that is printed or e-mailed to your suppliers .  You can configure the Terms Page using the [Setup Your Terms Page] button on that same PO Printing Settings screen.

When you click the [Setup Your Terms Page] button, you will be brought to a screen where you can either 1) enter lots and lots of text for your Terms Page, or 2) if you already have an existing Terms Page, you can scan it and upload it into SpendMap as an image file.

Finally, don’t forget to enable the Terms Page for one or more copies of the PO (likely only the Supplier’s copy) using the applicable check-box on the main PO Printing Settings screen…

PO Printing Settings

Removing toolbar buttons in your free Purchase Order Software

Tom works in the hotel industry in Florida and asked how to remove buttons from the toolbar at the top of the Main Menu in SpendMap.

Toolbar Button

There are actually two ways to do that – you can remove toolbar buttons for only certain users or you can remove them altogether, for everyone.

By User

To remove a toolbar button from someone’s User-Definable Menus, use this…
– PURCHASING > User Setup > User definable menus and pop-up prompts > Add/Remove individual menus and pop-up prompts

Just remove the menu option associated with the toolbar button.  As a reminder, toolbar buttons are shortcuts to menu options in SpendMap, so if you take the menu away from the user, the toolbar button will also disappear automatically.

System-Wide

If you would like your users to have access to a menu option but prefer to NOT show the associated button in the toolbar, you can remove the toolbar button with this…
– PURCHASING > Setup system > User defined terminology and settings > Modify menu titles and toolbar buttons

Just UN-check the option to “Include this menu option on the toolbar” and the button will be removed from everyone’s toolbar but they will still be able to select the applicable menu option (unless you removed it from their user-specific menu, per above).

turn-off-toolbar-option

 

Sender of email messages in your free Purchase Order Software

mail-GREENMichael works in the construction industry in England and was asking about the “From” field when sending Purchase Orders and other documents to his suppliers by e-mail…

“Do all emailed purchase orders need to be sent from the same email address irrespective of user? … Is it possible to have individual email addresses for each user, if so how do I set this up?”

You actually have both options.  The e-mail can come from the individual Buyers (i.e. the person who processes the Purchase Order in SpendMap) or it can be the same e-mail address regardless of who is sending the order, such as “Purchasing@YourCompany” or similar.

It’s controlled by the setting “Sender of external automatic messages” in…
– PURCHASING > Setup system > e-mail settings

Per the Online Help for that setting, the “sender” is noteworthy as the recipient might reply to a message or an error might occur during transmission (in which case the sender would typically get an “undeliverable mail” message from the outgoing mail server), so if you decide to use a single e-mail address for all messages, make sure that someone is set up to receive messages to that account.

Hope that helps.

Only one sales tax in your Free Purchase Order Software

Sohan works in the automotive tire industry in Australia and was asking how to remove the second Sales Tax field from his printed Purchase Order form in the free version of SpendMap.

“I want to configure tax…in Australia we only have one tax but PO shows tax 2 as well. I don’t want TAX 2 to be seen on PO. How can I do it?”

Tax-on-PO-form
Sure thing Sohan, you can remove TAX 2 from your printed PO form.  Just go in here…

– PURCHASING > Setup system> Purchase order settings > PO printing settings > Text-Based Field Positions and Field Settings > Standard

…scroll down to Field #89, and un-check the box called “Print Title”.

That will remove the Tax 2 Total from your PO form, but you may (or may not) want to also make a couple changes to the PO Work Area screen, to avoid potential confusion about that field on the users’ part.

For example, you might want to rename the Tax 2 Field to “N/A” or similar, so they know not to use it.  You can do that in here…
– PURCHASING > Setup system > User defined terminology and settings > User defined field names and terminology

If you like, you can go one step further and actually suppress/lock/restrict the field during PO entry, so that users can’t even get to the field by accident. You can do that using…
– PURCHASING > User setup > Field restrictions by user access level > Set field restrictions

Hope that helps!

How to edit company address in your free PO Software

Dan works at a mechanical contracting company in Calgary, Alberta, and was asking how to change the company address information that shows at the top of the PO form in the free version of SpendMap…

PO-form-header

That comes from the Bill-To address, which you’ll enter during the Setup Wizard that runs automatically when you log into your Live Copy of SpendMap for the first time.  But there are two ways to modify your Bill-To or Ship-To address information after you have already completed the Setup Wizard…

  1. Just go into the Cost Center Master File here…
    – PURCHASING > Master Files > Cost Centers > Add/Modify/Delete
    …and look for the codes BILL-TO and SHIP-TO, and change the address information associated with those codes. The next time you enter a new PO, the new address info will carry forward to the new PO.
  2. If you just want to modify the bill-to or ship-to address info on individual POs but not all POs going forward, rather than modifying the default bill-to/ship-to information, you can modify it on a PO-by-PO basis, by clicking the “Address” hyperlink, to the right of the Bill-to and Ship-to fields on the PO Header Screen in your PO Work Area.

PO-Header-Screen

How to enable modules in your Free Purchase Order Software

Update 07/29/2015:  Our Free Version now includes the Purchasing, Receiving and Email Integration modules.  Read the announcement here.

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We’ve had a few Support Tickets from people asking about the message that you get when you try to access certain modules in the free version of SpendMap, stating “To use this feature, you need to enable the feature (or the entire module) in the Setup System area“.

enable-module in Free Purchase Order Software

Sometimes people misinterpret this message to mean that the feature or function is not available in our Free Version, when in fact it is and just needs to be turned on and/or configured.

All of the modules are enabled by default in the Evaluation Copy of SpendMap but in your Live Copy, some modules are disabled by default to improve system performance.  You can enable some of the modules during the Setup Wizard that runs automatically when you log into your Live (production) System for the first time, otherwise you can visit the Setup System menu group to enable them after-the-fact…

  • Main Purchasing Module (Purchase Orders) – Enabled automatically when you run the Setup Wizard.
  • Requisitions and Approvals – Does not need to be enabled (always turned on).  Just start entering requisitions when you’re ready.
  • Receiving – Can be enabled during Setup Wizard or with first check-box in…RECEIVING > Setup system > Receiving options
  • Invoice Approval – Must be enabled with first check-box in…INVOICE APPROVAL > Setup System > Invoice Options
  • Request For Quotation (RFQ) – Does not need to be enabled (always turned on).  Just start entering RFQs when you’re ready.
  • Inventory Control – Must be enabled with first check-box in…INVENTORY CONTROL > Setup system > Inventory options
  • Asset Management – Does not need to be enabled (always turned on).  Just start entering or purchasing assets when you’re ready.
  • E-mail Integration – Enabled by configuring the settings in …PURCHASING > Setup system > e-mail settings
  • Faxing – Due to licensing restrictions related to the third party fax technology that we use for this module, which limits the number of copies that we are allowed to distribute, the Faxing Module is not available in the Free Version of SpendMap.  Please consider using the E-mail Module instead.
  • PunchOut (e-commerce integration) – This web-based component is only available in the Paid Version of SpendMap.

New Tutorial: Simple Requisition-to-PO Processing

We added a new feature in the 2014 Release to convert approved Purchase Requisitions into Purchase Orders, as soon as the last approval occurs, so you no longer have to run the Build PO Utility as a separate step.

We had a few requests for this feature from smaller companies that don’t have Purchasing Departments or dedicated Buyers (i.e. the Requisitioners are responsible for placing the orders once their Requisitions are approved).

The Tutorial also reviews a few other related features that are popular with smaller companies (and larger companies that have “end-user Purchasing”), so we rolled it all into this video, which we’re calling “Simple Requisition-to-PO Processing”.

Click the image below to watch the tutorial on YouTube, and don’t forget to visit our Channel to see 20 other video tutorials that will help you get started with the most popular features in your free Purchase Order system…

Tutorial: Simple Requisition-to-PO Processing

PO numbers by Ship-To location in your Free Purchase Order Software

Jody is using the free version of SpendMap to manage spending for a chain of bar/restaurants, and was wondering if there is a way to set up a separate sequence of PO numbers for each Ship-To location.

While there is no “direct” link between Ship-To locations and PO Number Sets, you can set up an indirect relationship by way of the user accounts.  That is, in the User Master File, you can 1) set up a default Ship-To for each user, and separately 2) assign each user a default PO Number Set.

If you do both those things for all users at a location, and assuming they don’t change the defaults when entering POs (and/or if you lock out those fields so that they cannot change from the defaults), then all POs for each Ship-To will also be for that PO Number Set…

PO-BY-SHIP-TO

Again, this is not a “hard relationship” (i.e. rule) in the software per se, it is simply one way to configure it.  That said, it seems to work well for most people who ask about this.

You can set up your Ship-To locations in here…
– PURCHASING > Master Files > Cost Centers > Add/Modify/Delete

You can set up your PO Number Sets in here…
– PURCHASING > Setup system > Incrementing document number sets > POs

You can specify the default Ship-To and PO Number Set for each user in the [Settings] Folder of the User Master File, in here…
– PURCHASING > User setup > Add/modify/delete users

And, if you want to, you can lock/restrict access to the PO Number Set field and/or the Ship-To field in the PO Work Area (so that users can’t change from their defaults), using this…
– PURCHASING > User setup > Field restrictions by user access level > Set field restrictions

Using vs. Implementing your Free Purchase Order Software

needs-help

Brenda was struggling a bit with her implementation of the free version of SpendMap, so we helped her by providing free support when she had questions about setting up her Master Files, using the built-in integration tools, and otherwise configuring the system to her needs.

But she still had a concern…

“I’m worried that if I’m having trouble, it will be impossible for our staff as they are not very computer savvy at all“.

Fair enough, but keep in mind that implementing a business application like this is more involved than just using it for your day-to-day work.  For example, entering a Purchase Order or Requisition in SpendMap is much easier than setting up the master files, going through system configuration, etc.

Our customers tell us all the time that their users can handle the “day-to-day” stuff, with no training at all!

And remember, with User Definable Menus, you can remove everything from your staff’s field of view that they don’t need, leaving only the few functions that they’ll use to do their daily tasks (e.g. Enter a PO or Requisition, check the status of their order, etc.).

But Brenda certainly has a valid point.  This type of system is definitely more involved to set up than, say, a simple word processor or something, that you can just install and start using.  There are configuration settings, workflow options, master files to populate, not to mention mapping the functionality to your business processes, which in and of itself can take some time.

All that said, keep in mind that there is definitely a big carrot to keep you motivated while you work get the system going.

On a separate but related note, we will soon be offering Getting Started training and implementation consulting packages for users of the free version (until now, these services were reserved for people using our paid version only).  Make sure to follow our Blog, where we’ll make the announcement when the Getting Started package is available.

Don’t give up folks.  Rome wasn’t build in a day.