Purchase Orders and Budgets Overview Follow

Purchase Orders

Purchase Orders (POs) track available funds or hours for billable time to a project. When an invoice is exported for a project that has an open PO, that amount is applied and considered "used", and the invoice is marked with that PO number. POs typically track a dollar amount, but it can also track a number of hours.

Set Up a Project with a Purchase Order

• Click Settings, and click Projects.
• Select the project to edit.
• Click on the Budget tab. In the Purchase Orders heading, click Add P.O. Numbers. 

• Enter the PO number, and enter either an amount or total hours (or both). Set the status of the PO as Open or Closed by clicking on it. 

• Click Add P.O. Numbers. Now, click Save and Exit.

Please Note: Previous invoices for this project will not get assigned this project (invoices that are already exported). This PO will apply to invoices in future invoice exports. If you need this PO to apply to previous invoices, re-export those invoices (from "Previous" in Invoices) to software "Archive (None)" and they will get the PO. Make sure not to supply a new invoice number to retain the existing invoice number (you are just applying the PO, not really exporting them).

Tracking a Purchase Order

You can see how much of a PO is remaining by running a PO Status Report. This will show you how much has been used, and how much is remaining (amount or hours, depending on what you entered in the PO).

Please Note: PO amounts are only decreased when the amounts are exported to the accounting system. Therefore, it is important to check the amount remaining on the PO before processing. When exporting invoices that contain POs, you will be presented with "hot report" links to see this report. This is an easy way to be reminded to check the status of each open PO.

Budgets

You can also implement and keep track of budgets for your projects. The functionality of budgets will be very similar to POs. To add budgets to projects, follow these instructions:

• Click on Settings, then Projects.
• Click on a project’s name.
• Click on the Budget tab.
• Click on Add Budget. 

• Toggle the status of the budget to Open, input a name or description of the budget, and enter either a monetary amount OR hours. 

• Click on the green Add Budget, and click Save and Exit when ready.

Please Note: You can only have one budget per project and these budgets will only be utilized and tracked in SpringAhead. They will not be carried over into your accounting software.