Purchase order

A purchase order is a one sided declaration of a customer towards a supplier.

Structure

Each purchase order has the same structure containing a header and one or multiple positions. The header holds information, which regulates general information like target supplier and holds status information. On position and subposition level the information on the products to purchase and the delivery requirements are defined. For more information please read up the purchase order processing article.

The processing of a purchase order typically has these phases:

• Contracting / Negotiation phase
• Creation
• Fulfillment phase

Detailed information on purchase order processing can be found in this article.

Creation

There are two ways of purchase order creation:

• Individual purchase order - once a buyer and a seller have finalized their negotiations through the purchasing contract negotiation process an agreement has been reached, a purchasing contract is created.
• master contract based purchase order - the contract has been prenegotiated and the purchase order is directly created based on it, so no negotiation phase is required.

The purchase order is the business object on the customer side, the customer order is the business object on the supplier side. They are bound together through the B-Op supply chain network connector in the b-op network, if both parties have their b-op digitals and they share enough trust.

Related Articles

• Procure-To-Pay
• Purchasing contract

Related development articles

• Dev:Purchase order processing - Developer information page on purchase order
• Dev:Purchasing contract negotiation process - b-op supports a fully digitalized RFP and negotiation process