There is one more aspect to purchasing. Once you become comfortable and confident in your purchasing activity, there is a way to group purchases from more than one Job in a single order. It is called the Master Purchase Order.
The Shopping Cart we have been working with is part of the Job we have been working on. When we load a new Job, we get a new Shopping Cart. If we reload this Job, we get this Shopping Cart back.
The Master Purchase Order is not part of any Job. It exists as a stand-alone independent entity. You can access the Master Purchase Order from any Job, however, the Master Purchase Order is the same one, regardless of which Job you access it from.
Unlike the Shopping Cart, there is no way for things to automatically show up on the Master Purchase Order. You must specifically send things to the Master Purchase Order.
The things that are sent to the Master Purchase Order are the complete contents of Shopping Carts. The contents of an entire Shopping Cart is sent to the Master Purchase Order by pressing the Add to Master PO button. There is no way to send a partial list or just a few items, the complete Shopping Cart is sent each time Add to Master PO is pressed.
If you just want to send a few items, start a new Job, place the items in the Shopping Cart for the new Job and send it to the Master Purchase Order.
Another important concept is that, within the Master Purchase Order all the items from a particular Shopping Cart are associated with that cart and the cart is identified by the Job name. If you already sent the contents of a Shopping Cart to the Master Purchase Order and you send it again, the system first removes all the items currently existing for that Job and replaces it with the current contents of the Shopping Cart.
This means that you can update the Master Purchase Order from a Shopping Cart at any time by just pressing the Add to Master PO button. And, you can press the Add to Master PO button as many times as you want and all it does each time is make sure that the requirements in the Master Purchase Order match the requirements in the current Shopping Cart.
This also means that the Job you
are working on must have a name and must have been saved so that the Master Purchase Order knows what Job
name to assign. It is common to get to this point before ever having saved the
Job so, should that happen, a dialog appears asking you to save the Job.
The dialog can be a bit confusing because it doesn’t specifically tell you what you are saving. You are, in fact, saving the Job under a Job name so that the Master Purchase Order can assign a Job name to the items you are sending to it.
We now end up with a document that
looks much like the Buy Now purchase
order we worked with in the Shopping Cart
with a couple of additions.
The first thing you will notice is that items are grouped by Job. All the items for a particular Job are together and are identified by the Job Name.
Notice that our Job, which we just saved under the name User Guide Job is circled.
The four columns showing the origin of the quantity requirements remains the same. Again, this is simply the quantity of items you need for that Job.
The Order Qty. is the quantity of the item you plan to purchase, and as before, it can be changed at will.
In addition, there are some other controls for managing the contents of the Master Purchase Order.
There are two buttons at the upper
left of each Job that affect the entire Job within the Master Purchase Order.
The first, Clear All leaves the Job in the Master Purchase Order but clears all items from the Job.
The second, Remove removes the Job and all items associated with the Job from the Master Purchase Order.
In either case, the Job and all associated items can be added back by going to the Shopping Cart for that Job and pressing the Add to Master PO button.
At the bottom you will notice that there is a single shipping cost for each vendor even though you are buying for two or more Jobs. This is the real benefit of the Master Purchase Order. The only negative is that you must wait to purchase until two or more Jobs are ready. If you run several Jobs a day or even several Jobs a week this might make sense. If you don’t, then it is probably better to send each Job in one at a time using the Buy Now approach.
Once you press the Submit Order button, the procedure is identical to that we just covered in the Buy Now process.
A feature of both this area and the Buy Now process is that they are operating using HTML so you can move back and forward through the screens using the navigation icons.
Once the Master Purchase Order has been successfully sent, it is cleared and ready to begin collecting Shopping Cart items for the next order. A receipt file is generated, just like the Buy Now process.
The same satisfaction guarantee and return policy applies to orders received thorough the Master Purchase Order as applied to the Buy Now order.
Once you use this process and these screens a few times they become easy and comfortable. They are actually much harder to explain in a guide like this than to actually use.
An again, we want to stress the importance of purchasing through our program. When you need something, anything, check and see if you can get it through eCabinet Systems first. When you compare prices, please remember that the eCabinet Systems cooperative gives you software, technology and support worth thousands of dollars a year so if the prices are close you should support the people that are supporting you.