Set up Procurement

The Procurement settings decide which requests are approved at once and which need one or two approvals, how far an invoice may differ from the order, and how much each category may spend in a month.

Before you start

• Switch on Procurement for your organisation: see Pick your apps. It needs Inventory.
• You need to be a manager. Only the owner changes who approves.
• Give your team the rights they need: Raise purchase requests, Approve purchase requests and invoice differences, Record and match supplier invoices. See Roles and rights.

Steps

1. Open Settings → Procurement settings.
2. Tick Procurement on. Requests, approvals, quotes, delivery notes and the invoice match appear in the menus of every branch.
3. Under Approval amounts, for Every branch or for each branch, type Approved at once up to (leave empty for never) and Two approvals above (leave empty for never).
4. Under Who approves, tick the people for First approval and Second approval. With nobody ticked, anyone with the approve right gives the first approval, and the owner or a manager the second.
5. Under Invoice match tolerances, type the Quantity tolerance % and the Price tolerance %. A difference within them is accepted by itself.
6. Under Monthly budgets, add a Category, its Budget a month, and tick Firm if passing it should need two approvals.
7. Under Payment terms, type the Days to pay for your organisation, and for any supplier with its own terms.
8. Under Alerts, set Alert when a request waits (hours) and An order is late after (days).
9. Select Save.

Good to know

• Defaults: no automatic approval and no two-step amount (one approval for everything), price tolerance 1 %, quantity tolerance 0, payment terms 30 days, a request alerts after 24 hours, an order is late one day after its date.
• A soft budget only warns on the request. A firm budget makes the request need two approvals, whatever its amount.
• Budgets count what approved requests committed in the same month, per product category.
• Nobody approves their own request. The owner may approve their own one-step request, but never as one of two approvals.
• Next: Raise and approve a purchase request.