Purchase order management – A to Z (v 6.0+) - LabCollector

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The Reagents & Supplies and Primers modules are linked to an order management system. This tool can simply be used to notify that articles need to be purchased or it can be a real order management tool.

Go to Reagent & Supplies modules and open the record you want to work on.
The record needs to have this icon called “Add to order list” to be available to order. Users need to click on this icon to open an order form.

Once you click on the icon the below page will appear.

Add to shopping cart come with various options where you can:-

  1. Enter the quantity desired.
  2. Indicate to the administrative staff if this order is urgent or normal. It will result in this alert icon appearing in front of the product.
  3. Users can write a comment that the administrative staff will see before the final order.
  4. Suggested Delivery: Optional and relates to the e-ordering tool. Users can select the shipment address (See under Admin –> Preferences –> Reagent & Supplies).
  5. Suggested Budget: Users can select the budget related to this order (See under Preferences –> Reagent & Supplies–> Budget accounts used for ordering).
    Preferences –> Orders –> Associate Budget to order, if this option is selected “on” then the “Suggested Budget” option becomes mandatory
    Tools –> Purchase Order Management–> Budget Follow-up and can add new budget period, Budget reference or import budget.
  6. The v6.0 allows you to also add a quote to your purchase order. By clicking on plus sign you can choose to add the quote of your choice.

Submit to send the order request to the people responsible for the orders.

Note: If the article in the record is already in the order list, this icon appears.

e-ordering tool: Go to Preference –> Orders and the scroll down to page. It’s possible to use e-ordering for Sigma-Aldrich, VWR, Life Technologies, Qiagen and Storage Accessories.

How to view and edit your order

Depending on your permission level and the configuration that has been set by the Super Administrator, you can edit and approve your order, generate a Purchase Order and process deliveries.

Go to Tools –> Purchase Order Management.

The home page shows the Current Order List.

  • To cancel an order click on the Cancel radio button () for that item and click on Process Selected Changes.
  • To approve an order click on radio button with this thumbs up icon () and click on Process Selected Changes.
  • To assign a PO number to an item click on the PO radio button and either add a particular PO number or hit the hash key to generate one automatically. At this point, a budget and discount can also be assigned.

Once a PO has been sent to the seller the column with this symbol () will have a green tick mark.

How to generate a Purchase Order document

Go to Tools –> Purchase Order Management–>Generate PO forms.

  • Find your PO number.
  • Ensure that you have the correct budget and that all items in the PO are for the same supplier (as appropriate).
  • Select the correct PO template. Click on Process Selected Changes.

How to send a Purchase Order

 

Go to Tools –> Purchase Order Management–> PO to Sellers.

Find the correct PO and check both the Sent to Sellers box and the Email Seller box at least. There are also options to cc Requester, Orderer and to have a custom cc.

 

In order to see these cc options, the setting “Activate email sent to sellers in PO to sellers, with PO form attached to the email” must be ticked in Manage PO Templates. It’s located at the bottom of the main page.

 

How to add an Invoice to the Invoice Vault

 

Go to Tools –> Purchase Order Management–> Invoice Vault.

As well as being able to add invoices directly to the order in the Past Orders tab you can also add them via the Invoice Vault tab. It’s also possible to add more than one invoice to a PO in this section.

Go to Invoice Vault and click on Add Invoice.

Select your PO number and fill in the relevant details and add a copy of the invoice.

 

Configuration and Usage for Administrators

REAGENTS & SUPPLIES OPTIONS

Preferences –> Reagents & Supplies–>Orders

Some settings related to the Purchase Order Manager are in Reagents & Supplies Options.

  1. Budget accounts used for ordering – budgets can be added individually or loaded via a CSV file. For further configuration of budgets go to Tools > Purchase Orders Management > Budgets Follow-up. The Budget Follow-up section will also deal with this in more detail.
  2. Staff access to orders
  3. Order requests validation – when switched ON an administrator must approve an order if the value of the order exceeds the threshold in this setting. The administrator is not specified. See the section on Budget Follow-up below for details on the second threshold level.
  4. Request editing after approval – this setting controls the possibility to change price and quantities.
  5. Who can place orders.
  6. Associate budget to order – this setting determines if a budget must be selected at the time of ordering. This is related to step 4 in the section How to put items in the order list.
  7. Delivery: sends to sellers the PO (Purchase order). If the option is “on” then it becomes mandatory field to fill.
  8. PO number editing – this setting controls the possibility to edit current and past orders.
  9. Order types: In this setting, users can add and define their own custom order types that reflect the workflow and categorization preferences in their labs. Once the custom order types are set up, be sure to click Update & Save to apply them.
  10. R&S code: This section controls the R&S (Reagents & Supplies) Code feature. The two main options are:
    • Code Disabled: This turns off any coding system for reagents and supplies.
    • Code Enabled: When enabled, you can choose between:
      • No Association (Webservice/External Update): No specific code system is used, but data can still be pulled via external services.
      • NACRES Association: Automatically associates items with the NACRES classification system.

    Additionally, there’s the option to Reinstall NACRES Data if necessary. After making the appropriate selections, remember to Update & Save.

  11. Seller status: Users can define and manage custom seller statuses to keep track of various stages of interaction or order processes with their suppliers. These custom statuses allow for better communication and organization in managing relationships with vendors. Be sure to click Update & Save after configuring.
  12. In this section, users can configure specific account settings related to each supplier, such as billing preferences, payment terms, and shipping ID. Once configured, ensure the changes are saved with the Update & Save button.

 

PURCHASE ORDERS MANAGEMENT

A) How to cancel an order

Tools –> Purchase Order Management

To cancel an order click on the Cancel radio button () for that item and click on Process Selected Changes.

NOTE: DO NOT use the Clear All Entries function on the top-left corner of the Current Orders List page for this purpose. This function results in the deletion of all entries in the order lists of Reagents & Supplies and Primers.

 

B) Budget Follow-up

Tools –> Purchase Order Management

In the Budget Follow-up tab of the Purchase Orders Management tool, there are three sub-sections.

  1. Budget Refs brings you back to the Reagents & Supplies Options settings.
  2. Add New Budget Period is where you can define a specific amount of money for a time period for each budget.
    Note: if a budget has an end date in the past or a start date in the future it will not appear in the list of current budgets on the Budget Follow-up main page.
  3. Import budgets here, instead of adding budget periods one-by-one, it’s possible to import a CSV file with this information

When you select the “Add new Budget period”

  1. Select from a drop-down of budgets that have already been defined in the Preferences –> Reagents & Supplies Options section.
  2. Select a Start Date for the budget period.
  3. Select the End Date for the budget period.
  4. Enter the allocated amount for this budget and period.
  5. Select the budget Manager from a drop-down of users. This manager will have permission to approve orders that exceed the Approval Threshold.
  6. Approval threshold – anything over this amount cannot be approved by an ordinary administrator, and must instead be approved by the Manager of this budget period.
  7. Select the group for which this budget will be visible to or leave it as Visible to All users.

 

C) Manage PO templates

Tools –> Purchase Order Management

The main page under Manage PO templates shows all the tags that can be used in both the HTML and Excel templates.

 

Those marked with an asterisk can only be used in Excel.

 

Note
Item Name (##chem_name##) and item Reference (##chem_ref##) tags need to be present before the others in your XLS PO templates, like in below image.

 

Warning
Name the excel sheet as: LabCollector
Pay attention to the uppercase of the L and C, since is case sensitive.

 

Within the HTML template text editor, it’s possible to create tables within tables to achieve a variety of layouts and formatting.
The demo template provides a sample to get you started.