The purchase order lifecycle
Lesson 19 of 24 9 min read
How Unleashed purchase orders move through their statuses, what a partial receipt does, and how Supply Lens reads approvals and receipts.
If you connect Unleashed to a purchasing or spend tool, purchase orders move in both directions: approvals go in, receipts come out. Unleashed's purchase order rules are strict, and a partial receipt does something many people do not expect. This lesson explains the lifecycle so you know what to expect in each system.
The statuses
An Unleashed purchase order moves through: Unapproved, Parked, Placed, Costed, Receipted, Complete, Deleted.
Over the API, which is how Supply Lens talks to Unleashed, a purchase order can only be moved between Parked, Placed and Costed, in any direction. Every other status is refused, including Unapproved and Deleted. From there, receipting is the only way forward.
- Costed comes before receipt. A Costed order is receipted exactly like a Placed one.
- Unapproved cannot be set by an integration. So it cannot be used as the status an order waits in while an outside tool approves it.
- Purchase order custom statuses cannot be set by an integration. Unleashed accepts the update but quietly drops the custom status.
What a partial receipt does
Receipting less than was ordered splits the order.
A short delivery
Hilltop orders 10 sacks of green beans on PO-00000096. Only 4 arrive. When the receipt is posted:
PO-00000096becomes Receipted, and its order quantity is reduced to 4. Nothing on it records that 10 were ordered.- A new order,
PO-00000096/1, is created as Placed for the remaining 6.
When 3 more arrive against /1, it becomes Receipted for 3, and PO-00000096/2 is created for the last 3. Splits always number off the base: /1, /2, /3, never /1/1.
Things to know about splits:
- The only link between the original and the follow-on is the order number. There is no other reference tying them together.
- Line numbers survive a split, but the product code alone does not identify a line, because one product can appear on two lines.
- The total received against the original purchase is the sum of each order's received quantity, counted once.
What is locked
Once Receipted, an order's status, lines and receipt cannot be changed. It can only be completed. A Complete order is locked in the same way.
Closing short
To close a purchase order without the remaining goods, the balance order is deleted, which soft-deletes it to Deleted. Note that Complete is not a short close: completing an order with goods outstanding receipts them all into stock first.
How Supply Lens handles it
| Approvals written back | An approval read from the purchasing tool can be written to Unleashed as Costed, and a rejection as Parked with the rejection reason added to the order comments. Rules in the order status map decide which, based on the tag the purchasing tool writes. With no matching rule, the status Unleashed already holds is kept. |
|---|---|
| Update status only | A purchase order create option that sends only the mapped status, no lines or details. Used for writing approvals back. |
| Update comment tag | Names the tag whose value is added to the order comments, after the comments Unleashed already holds. |
| Receipts | Goods inbound receipts are read as their own document type. By default the receipt import picks up Receipted, Complete and Deleted orders, so a completed order and a short close are both seen. |
| Follow-on orders | Not imported as new purchase orders by default (an AllowImportOfFollowOnPurchaseOrders option changes this), so a balance is not pushed out as a separate purchase. The receipt import does pick them up, because each one is a receipt. |
| Deleted orders | A deleted purchase order is read as a receipt with no lines and a fulfilment status of Cancelled, which tells the purchasing tool the order was closed short. |
One line per product
Because receipts are matched back to lines, a purchase order with the same product on two lines can be ambiguous. Where the purchasing workflow is one line per product, Supply Lens refuses a purchase order that repeats a product before creating anything.
Recap
- Integrations can move a purchase order only between Parked, Placed and Costed; receipting is the way forward.
- A partial receipt splits the order: the original keeps what arrived, and a
/1follow-on holds the balance. - Receipted and Complete orders are locked; Complete receipts outstanding goods first.
- Closing short means deleting the balance order.
- Supply Lens writes approvals as Costed and rejections as Parked with a comment, and reads receipts, completions and short closes separately.
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