purchase orders

Printing POs to disk in your Free Purchase Order Software

Alan works in the graphic design industry in Glasgow, UK, and he was asking why he’s getting the message “PDF file creation is not available from here” when he selects the “Disk (PDF) file” option when processing new Purchase Orders in his PO Work Area…

Save PO to Disk

As it turns out, we recently added support for PDF file creation in that area, so if you’d like to save new POs to disk rather than printing a hard copy, that option is now available.  If you’re still getting the message “PDF file creation is not available from here”, just select the menu HELP > CHECK FOR UPDATES to update your free version of SpendMap.

But please note that printing POs to disk is usually not necessary (which is why that option was not available previously).  Here are a few reasons why you might be doing that, along with alternate (recommended) functionality to consider…

PO history

If you are saving a copy of your POs to disk to have around for historical/audit purposes, please note that every new PO that you process is stored in SpendMap automatically, whether or not you print a hard copy or save a copy to disk.  At any time, you can reprint a processed PO, or pull up the details of the order on-screen.  Here are the applicable menu options…

– PURCHASING > Purchase Orders > Re-print or re-send a processed PO
– PURCHASING > Status & Inquiries > PO Status
(TIP: you can also re-print a copy of the actual PO document, using the [Print] button at the bottom of the screen)

There are also many reports that show Purchase Order history, under…
– PURCHASING > Reports > Purchase Order Reports >

E-mailing POs to suppliers

You might be saving a copy of new POs to disk in order to e-mail them to your suppliers.  But a better alternative would be to select the “e-mail” option in the Send Document Via field on the PO Header Screen, in which case the PO will be e-mailed to the supplier automatically (with no extra work) when the PO is processed…

Send Purchase Order by e-mail

That way, you won’t have to manually create an e-mail for each PO, manually attach the PDF file that you created, etc.

In addition, if you process a batch of POs for multiple suppliers, SpendMap will automatically create a separate e-mail for each supplier, and attach only their POs.  By comparison, if you use the “Disk (PDF) file” option when processing new POs, you’ll get a single PDF file with all POs that you’re processing (for all suppliers), so you’d have to process the batch in pieces in order to get a separate PDF file for each supplier.

Anyway, we took all that into account with the “e-mail” option in the Send Document Via field.  For more details on how we intended for you to send POs to your suppliers by e-mail, check out this section of the Online Help…
– System-Wide Features and Information > Documents and Reports > Sending Documents Electronically

Don’t need a copy of your Purchase Orders at all?

Some of you might be printing to disk because you don’t need any hard copies at all (e.g. if you’re calling in your orders to your suppliers), so perhaps you’re using the “Disk (PDF) file” option to avoid sending the print job to your printer?

If so, please consider using the “None/verbal” option in the Send Document Via field, in which case new POs will not be printed or transmitted when processed.  Again, you can use this option when you only want to store the PO in the system, but you have another means of informing the supplier about the new order (e.g. by phone).

Got anymore feedback for us?

We’re not exactly sure why a few of you have asked for the ability to (manually) save a copy of each new PO to disk, but we try to listen so, again, we did add that ability recently.  If you still want to, you can now select the “Disk (PDF) file” option when processing new Purchase Orders from your PO Work Area.

If there are other reasons why you’re manually saving POs to disk that we haven’t thought of, please let us know by adding a comment to this blog post, or e-mail us at free-procurement@spendmap.com

Thanks!

E-mail Setup in your Free Purchase Order Software

email purchase order

>>> 07/29/2015 update – The free version of SpendMap now includes a free, built-in e-mail service, which you can use instead of configuring the system to use your own e-mail server or ISP.  This post has details.  The balance of this post, below, still applies if you want to set the system up to use your own e-mail server or ISP.

Most people who use the Free Version of SpendMap want to send Purchase Orders and other documents to their suppliers by e-mail.

You can also enable various e-mail notifications, to let people know about important events, without them having to log into the system (e.g. “You have a new Requisition waiting for your approval” or “Your Requisition was rejected”, and so on).

For SpendMap to send e-mail to your suppliers and staff, you need to enable and set up the e-mail connectivity module, which is included in your free PO software.

Everything you need to know to get e-mail going is in the Online Help system, but I’ve taken the liberty of writing it out in detail here, to save you some time…

E-Mail Server Settings

Before we get started, it helps to understand that SpendMap is no different from any other e-mail client (e.g. Outlook, etc.) when it comes to sending e-mail. Just like Outlook needs to “connect” to your outgoing e-mail server to send messages, so does SpendMap. So you can probably borrow the settings from your standard e-mail software and plug those into the E-Mail Settings Utility in SpendMap, using this menu option…
– PURCHASING > Setup system > e-mail settings

Most people use the SMTP protocol (as opposed to MAPI), so I’ll assume SMTP for now. If you have any questions, or if you prefer to use MAPI and need any tips after reading the Online Help, please log a free support ticket.

>>>CORRECTION<<<  After we posted this article, we realized that the MAPI option might be better than SMTP for many smaller companies (the target market for the Free-Procurement Project).  If you have any trouble using the SMTP option outlined below, you might want to give MAPI a try instead.  Here’s another post with more details.

OK, back to what we were saying…

On the E-mail Settings screen, select “ISP or SMTP server” in the two fields at the top of the screen.

Then, in the block of fields labeled “SMTP” just below that, enter your outgoing mail server’s name or IP address. It will usually look something like “smtp.service-provider.com”. Again, you can probably get that from the Settings area of your e-mail software, or you might have to contact your service provider or IT Department.

Next, enter “587” for the port number, unless your service provider advises you otherwise.

Then enter the user account (or e-mail address) that you use to log into to your e-mail account, and the associated password in the adjacent field.

That’s usually all that is needed for SpendMap to connect to your outgoing mail server.

Other E-Mail Settings

Other than that, you will need to fill in the three fields at the bottom of the screen (Proper User Name, User E-mail Address, and SpendMap User ID). This will improve the formatting of the e-mail messages that your suppliers receive.  Again, the Online Help has details of what those fields are used for.

So those are the only mandatory (i.e. minimum) fields that you have to fill in. You may, however, want to review the other (optional) fields. For example, if you want to add some text to the cover page of the e-mail that goes along with each new Purchase Order to your suppliers, you can use the Boilerplate field in the center of the screen. If so, this blog post may also be of interest.

And it’s also quite popular to enable the setting to “Maintain a log of sent e-mail messages” but, again, all that stuff is optional. And again, the Online Help has all the details.

Test to Confirm Settings

Once the E-mail Settings are configured per above, it’s time to test that SpendMap is in fact able to connect to your outgoing e-mail server. Rather than processing a new PO to do this test, I prefer to just try e-mailing a report, which has less variables than processing a PO, so it’s faster/easier to confirm that it’s working.

So just run any report and select the “e-mail” option when it asks you “Where do you want to send the report?”. Any report will do, but personally I like to use a small report for testing, so maybe try the User Master File report, which you can find here…
– PURCHASING > Reports > Master file reports > Users master file

So, assuming the report shows up in your e-mail client, then that means that SpendMap is able to send e-mail.

Additional Setup for Specific Types of E-Mail

Once you have the e-mail feature working per above, you can enable the various types of e-mail messages in SpendMap.

Sending Documents by E-Mail

If you would like to e-mail Purchase Orders or other documents to your suppliers, please see this section of the Online Help…
– System-Wide Features and Information > Documents and Reports > Sending Documents Electronically

E-Mail Notifications

If you would like SpendMap to send e-mail notifications to your users when certain events occur (e.g. an e-mail to the Approver when someone processes a new Requisition, etc.), please see this section of the Online Help…
– System-Wide Features and Information > System-Wide Features and Utilities > Automatic E-mail Notifications

Keep your Purchase Orders out of your supplier’s Junk Mailbox

Are you sending Purchase Orders to your suppliers using the e-mail feature in the free version of SpendMap?

If your e-mailed POs are getting caught in your suppliers’ Junk Mail filters, you might want to try adding some text to the e-mail cover page.  Without some content in the body of the e-mail, the e-mail will include only an attachment (the attached PO) and one line of text (the default e-mail footer “Get your FREE Purchasing Software at…”, which also includes a hyperlink).  In some cases, a one-line e-mail with a hyperlink and an attachment will be enough to trigger a supplier’s SPAM filter.

So consider adding some text to your e-mail cover page for Purchase Orders, using the field called “Boilerplate for POs/Releases/RFQs”, in the E-mail Settings utility, which you can find here…
– PURCHASING > Setup system > e-mail settings

Here’s some sample cover page text to consider…

—

Dear Supplier,

Please process the following orders/confirmations.

If you have any questions, please contact us before processing this order.

Also please add this e-mail address to your “safe sender” list or address book, to help ensure that you get our Purchase Orders going forward.

Thank you,

ABC Company – Purchasing Department
(other contact info here)
(avoid adding hyperlinks like e-mail addresses or your company’s URL, as additional links can increase an e-mail’s SPAM score)

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.

How to set up PO access by user in free Purchase Order Software

I was speaking with Gwen in Connecticut about setting up user accounts in SpendMap for 20 or 30 of her staff.  Gwen wondered if there was a way in SpendMap to only display information on each user’s own Requisitions and Purchase Orders but not orders that the other staff had placed.

While it’s common for managers/approvers to have visibility over an entire department or across a division, sometimes policy requires a more restricted view at the end-user (requisitioner) level, while sometimes document level filters are put in place just for ease of use (e.g. to simplify searches).

You can limit the scope of documents that each user will have access to by locking the document filter option on the way into View PO Status, View Requisition Status, the Receiving utility, etc.

Just use “Add/remove individual menus and pop-up prompts” and navigate to the applicable utility, then select “Lock-out this option” and select the desired filter…

If the user will need access to all documents within their cost center, you can specify their default cost center in the [Settings] folder of the User Master File.

On a related note, there’s also a setting in PO Processing Settings to hide pricing (dollar amounts) in these areas in case your pricing information is confidential but you need users to view other people’s orders, which is not uncommon in some central Receiving and Accounts Payable environments.

TIP: Use your Testing System to play around with this stuff without fear of messing up your Live System. When you run the Testing System, it will give you an opportunity to copy your Live System’s data into the Test System, including all the user accounts, settings, etc.

When a PO is just a PO

We still see it from time to time; the 13-digit PO number.  You know, first you take an incrementing PO number, then you jam the date at the front, stick on the cost center or job number, and maybe sprinkle in the Buyer’s initials for good measure.

If you’re coming from a manual, paper-based process to manage your Purchase Orders, you wouldn’t be the only one to use your PO numbers for purposes other than identifying the order.  After all, when all you have to rely on to track your spending history is a filing cabinet, what other alternatives are there?

(more…)

First Things First

Launching the world’s first free e-procurement system got me thinking about “firsts”. Where does it all go?

If you’re going to automate your company’s purchasing and control your spending, you need a place to start. So for my first “real” blog post (so far, they’ve mostly been about the status of the project), I thought I’d point you in the right direction with a little piece of Purchasing 101.

Managing your company’s spending is just like managing your personal finances.  If you want to cut the waste and spend less, the best place to start is by just keeping track of your expenditures.

Even before you set yourself a budget or try to change your spending habits (that comes later), if all you do is keep track of where the money is going, somehow magically you will spend less. (this is well documented – I didn’t make it up)

In the business world, that means using Purchase Orders.  If you don’t start recording it, if you don’t have one place that everyone has to go before pulling out the check book or that corporate P-Card, there’s no way you will ever get to Step 2.

So if you’re not using Purchase Orders to track your spending, forget everything else for now and do just that.

Even something as basic as a Purchase Order form or an Excel template is better than nothing.  Better yet, download a free copy of SpendMap.  It’s way easier and you’ll get much better reporting so you’ll have the information you need to get to Step 2, whatever that may be.

Do you have any other tips or tricks that you can share with our readers?  If so, please add a comment, below.