The Purchase Order extension is used in Uptick to purchase any materials, hire any equipment or send a PO to a contractor to complete a task. It also allows the system to accurately understand the costs you incurred on a task and keeps your accounting system up to date while doing so.

This feature is also available to field staff.

We highly recommend integrating your accounting partner with purchase orders as it allows you to keep track of what has been raised or paid easily.

If you also have the Warehouses extension on, doing bulk ordering of stock for your warehouses or vans is also made easy.

In order to create purchase orders against tasks the following extensions need to be enabled:

Can create and update purchase orders and dockets: Allows office staff to create and update any purchase orders & docket any deliveries.

Can create and update purchase order bills: Allows office staff to create a bill (invoice) against a purchase order in Uptick.

Can create partner purchase orders: Allows office staff to push and create a bill into your accounting partner.

Can approve and submit any purchase order: Allows office and technicians approve any purchase orders.

Can email purchase orders to suppliers: An extra permission just for field staff which allows them to send an purchase order to supplier.

Can view purchase orders: An extra permission just for field staff which allows them to see purchase orders in the app.

Anyone with the Can approve and submit any purchase order permission can approve any purchase order.

For anyone without that permission, either they must go to the person with the permission for approval or you can also set up a 'auto-approval limit' for all staff. This approval limit allows anyone to approve a purchase order under a certain amount.

You can find this setting in Control Panel > Purchase orders.

You can also set up per-staff authorisation limits.

You need Suppliers in your Uptick system so that you can send purchase orders in Uptick. This list will match your list of contacts in your accounting partner if an integration is set up. This list will include contractors you may have set up in your accounting partner.

Read this article to learn how to set up a supplier.

1. Click on Create purchase order under the Process section.

2. When you initiate the PO, you will be taken to the Create Purchase Order screen where you will need to fill out the purchase order details:

3. You may see a list of products available to you at the bottom of the create page. These are products you've added to the task already. If you wish to purchase these products on the task, it's important you select them now. This lets the system know that the products are being purchased and the costs of these products should come from the purchase order, not from the warehouse or your product catalogue. This ensures we capture the right costs if they end up being more expensive or cheaper than expected.

4. Click Save purchase order
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5. Once you've saved you'll be taken to the main purchase order page, where you will see a summary of details and currently added products from step 3. You may add any extra products you wish to purchase by clicking 'create new item'. There is also a section for uploading documents against the purchase order (these are internal only and will not be sent to the supplier as part of the PO, nor be visible to the client).

If you have approval, you will see the option to Approve this purchase order straight away:

If you don't have approval, you will only be able to submit the purchase order for approval or delete it.

If you are a person who has the authorisation to approve a purchase order, you may have to keep an eye on purchase orders coming in that need approval.

We suggest setting up your dashboard so that you can see purchase orders requiring your approval. Several filters can help you find those purchase orders on the purchase order list such as, created by, submitted by, servicegroup, subtotal above this amount, office assignee etc.

To approve a purchase order, simply:

Alternatively, you can reject it or revert it back to draft to edit it.

When a PO has been approved, you have two options, you can Submit to Supplier which sends an email to the supplier with the attached PO, or you can Mark as Manually Submitted which simply puts the purchase order into the submitted status without sending an email. This is used when purchase orders are sent externally or down ove the phone.

The email and purchase order PDF that is sent to the supplier by default looks like the below, but is customisable with a fee.

Dear {{ supplier name }},

Please find attached our purchase order for {{ task.name }}.

​Regards,

{{ your organisation }}

Tracking when goods have been received can be done through Uptick. It's not a required step, but gives office staff an easy way to know when a task is ready to schedule, invoice or needs follow-up.

There are two workflows you can follow when tracking delivery via Uptick.

When goods have been delivered and double-checked by staff, a delivery docket can be added to a purchase order. This docket represents what has actually been delivered (which isn't always what the supplier says has been delivered!).

2. Fill in the docket:

3. Once the docket is saved, the system will automatically move the purchase order into a Partially Delivered status, or tick the 'All Goods received' checkbox.

This option is for companies who don't see a benefit in tracking the delivery of individual goods.

Or you can select the 'All Goods Received' option if goods are received in full:

To find tasks that are ready to schedule as all goods are received:

To find purchase orders needing to be followed up:

A purchase order ready to invoice can be found using the below filters:

To raise an invoice against a purchase order:

2. Fill in the bill information:

3. Click Save. If this was the final invoice, the system will automatically put the purchase order into Fully Billed.

4. The final step is pushing and creating an identical bill in your accounting partner for later payment. Click Create New in the integration panel.

Once all this purchase order's bills have been paid in your accounting partner, the overnight sync will move your Uptick purchase order into PAID.