Purchase statuses

Over the course of the purchasing process, purchase offers and purchase orders will be handled by different departments. As the file will be handled by a large number of different people, it is important that its status can be checked. Everyone must be able to see the progress of the file. Has a purchase order been created yet? Have the parts been ordered yet?

To be able to track the progress, purchase statuses are used. The status classification serves as:

• The thread of your administrative logistics
• The file's course through your company
• An indication of the person handling the file

The use of purchase statuses is mandatory.

Statuses can be used in combination with purchase routings to define a fixed status flow.

In addition to providing information about the progress of a purchase order, statuses have a number of other functions:

• Statuses are used to lock purchase offers and orders. Locks will enable you, for instance, to prevent a purchase order from being created while it is still in the offer stage. Locks are automatically applied based on status types.
• Purchase statuses can be used to create lists of all purchase offers and purchase orders that are in a particular phase.

Tip: Overly detailed status classifications may not be useful in practice, as files will require frequent status changes, without this providing much additional information. Statuses should serve as a guide, but often there is no need to create a status for each and every step in the process. You are therefore recommended to create an initial, concise classification of the statuses that represent the most important steps in your process. Leave sufficient room between status numbers, to allow you to add statuses if you later realize that you need more statuses.

Fields

Status type

Department