Invoice entry against blanket purchase orders

Invoice entry against blanket purchase orders

ISSUE: Invoicing against POs where the accounts to be expense do not appear in the order

Issue: Many boards issue blanket purchase orders with only one detail line committing the full anticipated amount of the contract.  When the invoice comes in, the expense needs to be against various accounts other than the account to which the blanket was committed.  But when a purchase order number is referenced in invoice entry, the details of the PO will be displayed in the grid without the ability to override the G/L when entering an invoice.  And only items entered in this grid will be decommitted (your visual clue being the ‘PO’ in the leftmost column of the grid).   In order to expense other accounts, the Add G/L Distribution button must be used but again, entries done in this manner will not decommit the purchase order.  

Solution:  There is a way by which both decommittting the appropriate amount and expensing appropriate accounts can be accomplished:

1. To decommit the appropriate amount: In the grid, enter the full amount of the invoice.   This will decommit the appropriate amount (even though the expense will be to the wrong account, but we’ll take care of that in the next step).
2. To reverse the expense to the wrong account: (caused by step 1), click Add G/L Distribution and reverse the entry made in step 1.  This will take care of the fact that the expense was to the wrong account, but will not reverse the needed decommitment, since it was done via Add G/L Distribution (again: no commitment or decommitment transactions are included in this method).
3. To expense the appropriate G/L accounts: Use the Add G/L Distribution button as many times as needed to enter the expenses to the appropriate G/L accounts.

When finished, notice that the leftmost column contains GL except for the very first entry which shows PO.  This indicates which transactions were entered in the grid (and therefore will have decommitted) and which were entered via Add G/L Distribution for expense-only transactions.

(Steps 2. and 3. are essentially journalizing the amounts from the PO account to the desired expense account after the decommitting entry is made.)  

Note: If the order is to be closed when the invoice is saved, none of this will be necessary since all remaining commitments are relieved when an order is closed – just expense everything via Add G/L Distribution and close the PO when saving the invoice.

Please log a ticket with Edsembli FIN if you have any questions, comments or concerns with the above.