Role guide: procurement user

This guide is for the buyer: your xMatix day follows one chain of documents — requisition, purchase order, goods receipt, supplier bill — and your job is to keep that chain moving and honest. Order what the business needs, chase what hasn't arrived, and make sure each bill pays only for what was ordered and received. Documents connect through release actions rather than a wizard, so most of your work happens on a document's record page and its header buttons.

Overview

A buyer's week in xMatix is one loop:

Two rules run through all of it:

• Line quantities are the truth. Every line carries pending counters (what is still to order, receive or bill). Releases work from them, and the shipped status rules move a document's Status from them when it is saved. Read the lines, not just the status pill.
• Nothing blocks a bill that disagrees with the order. xMatix keeps the counters for a three-way match but does not hold a bill or a payment on a difference. The check is yours, before the bill is posted.

Where you work

The Procurement app holds the document chain. As shipped, its menu has these entries, each shown only if your profile grants it (see Permissions):

The same documents are available in the xMatix mobile app for profiles your administrator assigns to it. Supplier balances and the accounting side of bills are read in the Finance app's AR and AP subledgers. The stock a receipt creates is read in the Inventory app's ledger.

Your path

Read these in order. Each one is the full procedure; this guide doesn't repeat them.

1. xMatix Procurement: the product overview and the document chain.
2. Requisitions: from request to purchase order: where demand enters, and the release to an order or a transfer.
3. Auto-order: rules-based purchase suggestions: letting reorder rules draft the routine buying.
4. The purchase order lifecycle: header, lines, the line counters and the release paths.
5. Inbound shipments: tracking goods in transit before they are received.
6. Receive goods against a purchase order: the three quantities on a line, receiving, inspection, the bill and the accrual.
7. Inspect received goods: the inspection lines a receipt creates.
8. Supplier bills: recording and posting what the supplier asks to be paid.
9. Match orders, receipts and bills: checking a bill against the order and the receipt.
10. Frequently ordered item suggestions: faster lines on orders you place by hand.
11. Troubleshooting procurement: the refusals and counters that confuse people most.

Prerequisites

Before your first day, your administrator must have:

• Given you a profile that opens the Procurement app and grants the release, receive and posting actions you are trusted with. The shipped Procurement profile is not enough on its own; see Permissions.
• Set up the suppliers you buy from as accounts, and the items you order, with their units, tax groups and purchase prices on a Purchase price list.
• For receiving: set the inventory settings on each item (Track Inventory, Track Lots, Inspection On Receipt) and created the storage locations goods are received into.
• For bills that post: turned on general-ledger posting for the company. See Supplier bills.
• Licensed your organization for Procurement, and left Enable Procurement on under Setup → Feature Hub → Procurement → Settings.

Procedure

This is a normal buying cycle. Each step links to the page with the full detail.

Step 1 — Review and release requisitions

Open Procurement → Requisitions. A requisition at Status Draft with pending quantity still needs action. Open it and check the lines' Pending Quantity, then:

• Release Order creates a purchase order for every line still pending. Selective Release Order takes only the lines and quantities you choose.
• Release Transfer or Selective Release Transfer creates an outward stock transfer from the requisition's From Branch instead, when another branch holds the stock.

The release buttons show only while the requisition is Draft and something is pending. When nothing is left pending, the next save moves Status to Confirmed. See Requisitions.

Step 2 — Turn auto-order suggestions into orders

Open Procurement → Auto Orders and open the worksheet, or create one with New (choose the Auto Order Type and the supplier). Select Generate Lines to build the suggestion lines from current stock and documents. Review them: delete what you don't want, change a quantity on the line record. Then select Purchase Order to order every pending line, or Selective Order to order chosen lines at chosen quantities.

Generate Lines replaces the existing lines, so don't run it on a worksheet you have already ordered from; start a new auto order instead. See Auto-order.

Step 3 — Create and check purchase orders

Open Procurement → Purchase Orders. Orders released from requisitions and auto orders already have their lines. For a hand-made order, select New, choose the supplier, partner account and branch, save, and add lines on the Lines tab. The order is numbered and opens at Status Draft.

Before you send it, check each line's unit cost and taxes and the Amount Summary, and use Apply Scheme if the supplier runs a scheme. To pull open requests into an existing order, use Add Requisition or Selective Requisition Lines. See The purchase order lifecycle.

Step 4 — Release the receipt, or track a shipment

When the goods arrive in one delivery, on the order select Release Receipt (every pending line) or Selective Release Receipt (the lines and quantities that actually came). Each creates a goods receipt linked to the order.

When the supplier ships in consignments, select Release Shipment instead. The order's Status becomes Shipment, and the goods receipt is released later from the shipment with its own Release Receipt, when the goods arrive. See Inbound shipments.

The order's release buttons show only while its Status is Draft. Orders still at Draft with pending quantity on their lines are your chasing list.

Step 5 — Receive and inspect

On the goods receipt, enter what the supplier's papers say in Supplier Quantity, then select Receive: tick the lines that arrived, correct the quantities, and save. The stock is posted into the storage location on each line. Lines you leave unticked stay pending, so a delivery can be received in several passes.

For items with Inspection On Receipt, select Inspection to create the inspection lines, record the findings, then Inspection Complete to release the quantity into available stock. Receiving is often done by the warehouse; see Receiving into the warehouse and Receive goods.

Step 6 — Release, match and post the bill

When the supplier's invoice arrives, release the bill from the purchase order with Release Invoice (or Selective Release Invoice). Releasing from the order, once the receipt exists, links each bill line to both the order line and the receipt line. A bill released from the goods receipt with Release Bill carries only the receipt link, so a later Release Invoice on the order would bill the same goods again.

Compare the bill lines with the supplier's invoice and the receipts. Then, if the bill is your stock document, select Post Inventory, and select Post General Ledger. The bill's Status moves from Draft to Posted. See Match orders, receipts and bills and Supplier bills.

Step 7 — Chase what is still open

Filter All Purchase Orders by Status and supplier, then open each order and read its lines' pending receipt and invoice quantities. Goods received through a shipment don't reduce the order line's pending quantity, so for those orders follow the shipment lines' Pending Quantity instead. See Troubleshooting procurement.

Example

A buyer at a farm-equipment parts distributor runs the week of 9 November.

1. On Monday they open Requisitions and find two Draft requests from the service branch: 40 oil filters and 12 hydraulic hoses. The hoses are in stock at the main depot, so they run Selective Release Transfer for the hoses and Release Order for the filters. A purchase order opens at Draft with one line for 40 filters.
2. They open the weekly Minimum Stock Level auto order, select Generate Lines, delete a slow-moving belt, and select Purchase Order. A second purchase order is raised on the regular supplier.
3. On Wednesday 30 filters arrive. On the first order they run Selective Release Receipt for 30. The stores team enters Supplier Quantity 30, runs Receive, and the filters are in stock. The order line still shows 10 pending.
4. The supplier's invoice for 30 filters arrives on Thursday. The buyer runs Selective Release Invoice for 30, checks the unit cost against the invoice, and the accounts team posts the bill.
5. On Friday the buyer filters All Purchase Orders for Draft orders on that supplier. The filter order is on the list with 10 pending, so they phone the supplier about the rest.

Training

Practice exercise

In a sandbox, with a profile that has the Procurement app and the release, receive and posting actions (System Admin or Standard User is enough for practice):

1. Create a purchase order for a test supplier with one line: 10 units of a stock item.
2. Select Selective Release Receipt and release 4.
3. On the new goods receipt, enter Supplier Quantity 4 and run Receive.
4. Back on the order, select Release Receipt.
5. Select Release Receipt once more.
6. Select Release Invoice.

Expected result: after step 1 the order is Draft. After step 2 a goods receipt appears on the order's Related tab and the line shows 6 pending. After step 3 the stock of the item rises by 4. Step 4 creates a second receipt for 6. Step 5 is refused with No pending quantities found in order lines to create goods receipt. Step 6 creates a bill whose lines are linked to the order lines.

Quick reference

• Requisitions release to an order or a transfer; release buttons show only at Draft with something pending.
• Generate Lines replaces an auto order's lines: one worksheet per buying run.
• Release the receipt from the order, or from the shipment if you used Release Shipment.
• Supplier Quantity is required before Receive.
• Untick lines that haven't arrived: they stay pending for the next pass.
• Release the bill from the order, not the receipt, so its lines carry both links.
• Nothing blocks a bill that disagrees with the order: compare before posting.
• Pending quantities on the lines are the truth; Status follows them on save.

Permissions

There is no complete shipped buyer profile. A procurement user needs four kinds of access:

1. The app and its pages. The Procurement app needs an app grant. Home, Bulk Conversion and Settings are pages that each need their own page grant.
2. The records. Read, create, edit and delete on Requisition, Auto Order, Purchase Order, Shipment, Goods Receipt, Bill and their lines follow the profile's entity permissions.
3. The actions. Every release, receive, inspection and posting button is an action granted on the profile's Actions tab. A user with record access but without the action can create and edit documents but doesn't see the button. This is how you let a buyer raise and release orders while only the warehouse receives and only finance posts.
4. The product. Your organization's licence must include Procurement.

What the shipped profiles give a buyer:

The four broad profiles all have full record access to the procurement documents and their lines. As shipped, only System Admin sees Bulk Conversion and Settings, and no shipped profile has Selective Release Shipment.

A user without a menu entry doesn't see it. A user without an action doesn't see its button, and running it another way is refused with The current user is not allowed to execute server action …. If a screen or button is missing, start with A user can't see something.

Configuration

This section is for the administrator setting up a buyer.

Set up a procurement user

1. Clone Standard User on Setup → Access control → Profiles: it already has the procurement entities and most of the actions. Cloning the Procurement profile instead means adding all of them yourself. See Build a profile for a role.
2. On the clone's Entity Permissions, keep Requisition, Auto Order, Purchase Order, Shipment, Goods Receipt, Bill and their lines, plus read access to the masters a buyer looks up (accounts, items, price lists, tax groups). Remove what the role must not touch.
3. On App Permissions, keep the Procurement app. Under App Page Permissions, add Settings if the person maintains items and price lists, and Bulk Conversion if they convert in batches.
4. On the Actions tab, take away what this person shouldn't do: for example remove Receive and the inspection actions from a buyer when the warehouse receives, or remove the bill's Post General Ledger when finance posts. Add Release Shipment if the buyer works with consignments.
5. Invite the user with the profile, and remove Standard User from them, because access is additive.

Settings that shape the buying day

Common problems

I can't find Settings or Bulk Conversion in the Procurement menu

Your profile doesn't grant those pages. As shipped, only System Admin has them. Ask your administrator for the page grant.

The release buttons are missing on a purchase order or requisition

They show only while the document is Draft and something is still pending. If Status moved on (for example to Shipment after Release Shipment), release from the shipment instead. If Status is Draft and the buttons are still missing, your profile lacks the action grants; Sales Executive has none of them.

"No pending quantities found in order lines to create goods receipt."

Every line on the order has already been released to receipts. Check the Related tab for the receipts, and receive on those. See The purchase order lifecycle.

"Supplier Quantity is required for Goods Receipt Lines before receiving."

Enter Supplier Quantity on the lines, from the supplier's delivery note, and run Receive again. See Receive goods.

The same goods were billed twice

A bill was released from the goods receipt and another from the order. The receipt's bill doesn't reduce the order's pending invoice quantity. Delete or reverse the duplicate, and release bills from the order from now on. See Match orders, receipts and bills.

The order still shows quantity pending after the goods came in through a shipment

Receipts released from a shipment don't reduce the order line's pending quantity. Follow the shipment lines' Pending Quantity, and set the order's Status by hand when you are done. See Inbound shipments.

Common questions

A bill disagrees with the order. Why isn't it blocked?

xMatix has no automatic match hold: nothing stops a bill or a payment for a quantity or price difference, so the check is yours before posting. Each order line counts what was received and what was billed, and each bill line released from the order points to both the order line and the receipt line. Match orders, receipts and bills shows which counters to compare and how to resolve a difference. If your organization wants a formal sign-off, an administrator can add an approval process on bills.

Does a goods receipt change stock, or is it just paperwork?

Both, in two steps. Releasing the receipt from the order only records what is expected. Receive posts the received quantity into stock in the storage location named on each line, and items that need inspection stay out of available stock until Inspection Complete. The cost of the new stock is the line's unit cost, copied from the order, so check it before you receive. Receive goods against a purchase order walks through the three quantities on a line, and the inventory ledger shows the movement.

Who approves my purchase orders?

No approval process ships for purchase orders, so out of the box nobody does and no order waits for sign-off. Your organization can add one in Setup → Process Studio → Approvals, with its own thresholds and approvers. Separately, an order that breaches the supplier's credit limit is refused unless your administrator has routed credit-limit breaches to an approval process. See Approval processes and Credit limits.

Should I raise a purchase order or a transfer?

Buy when no branch of yours has the stock to spare. Transfer when another branch does. A requisition can do either: release some lines with Release Order and others with Release Transfer, as long as From Branch is set for the transfer. A transfer then follows its own steps in the Inventory app. See Requisitions and Transferring stock between branches.

Related topics

• Procurement configuration reference: the settings behind branch defaults, planning data and receiving.
• Receiving into the warehouse: what the floor does when the truck arrives.
• Bulk conversion: converting many documents in one batch.
• AR and AP subledgers: where your bills land in finance.
• Inventory valuation and costing: how purchase prices become stock cost.
• Role guide: warehouse operator: the team receiving what you order.
• Role guide: finance user: the team posting and paying your bills.
• Role-based guides: every role and the shipped security profiles.