Manually Reducing Open Commitments on Purchase Orders

Overview

When vendor invoices are processed by the accounts payable department, and the Veracross Purchase Order module is being utilized, it is extremely important that the purchase order (PO) information be recorded on each AP invoice.  (Instructions for doing this can be found in the Section titled “Creating Invoice Items from a Purchase Order” of the Accounts Payable User’s Manual).  When the AP invoices are ultimately posted (and when those invoices have been linked to purchase orders), the open commitment amount on the purchase order will be automatically reduced when the AP invoices are posted.

When the amount invoiced is equal to or greater than the amount of the associated purchase order, the open commitment amount of the purchase order will be reduced to zero.  When this is achieved, these purchase orders will no longer appear on “Open Purchase Order” reports, and the system will not allow any other AP invoices to be linked to these PO’s.   Tracking the open commitment is vital to the purchasing agent and accounting staff so that they can monitor invoice commitments that can be expected from vendors.

Occasionally, the total amount invoiced by the vendor will not exactly match the amount of the original purchase order.  This will commonly occur if the prices for items recorded on the original order do not exactly match the actual prices charged by the vendor.   Or, this can occur when a vendor does not ship the fully quantity ordered, and they invoice only for the amount actually shipped.  In these instances, if the open commitment amount for the invoice is non-zero, but it is fully understood that there is no outstanding commitment to the vendor (and no additional invoices will be forthcoming), then it is important to flag the purchase orders as “fully invoiced”.

Fully Invoicing a Purchase Order

Navigate to the Purchase Order homepage and click on “Purchase Order Header Listing.” Enter desired search criteria (or leave blank to find all POs) and click “Run Query.” Select the desired PO by clicking directly on the PO number.

Each purchase order item can be individually flagged as “invoiced”.  This allows the system to precisely track items that have or do not have remaining open commitment. To flag specific PO items, manually update the “Full Inv?” box for each item.

If there a multiple items for a PO with a non-zero open commitment, and all should be flagged as fully invoiced, simply check the “Fully Invoiced?” box located on the PO header display.

Click the “Update”  to save any changes. The system will automatically reduce the Open Commitment amount(s) to $0.00.