Purchasing

Finance > Purchasing has three tabs: Suppliers, Purchase orders and Bills, with the accounts payable ageing beside them. It is how committed cost gets on a budget before any money moves.

If a tab has no matching records, its message explains what to add next. The message stays visible on narrow screens. When records are present, scroll the table sideways to reach the remaining columns.

Reading needs a purchasing capability; approving and paying need their own. Cost figures need finance:view_cost for the document. Bill access uses its project and that project’s current client. Purchase order access uses the project and client recorded on the order. Changing a draft order’s project updates both; changing the project’s client later does not rewrite existing orders. Organisation, client and project grants apply in that order, so a project grant can override a client grant. Managing a bill or order does not itself grant cost access. You do not also need selling-price access to read permitted order and bill costs, receipt values or matching figures. Selling totals need price access; markups need both cost and price access.

Purchase approval totals also need View costs for the scope recorded on the approval. Selling-price access alone does not show them. Notifications use a general purchase heading; open Approvals to review the details available to you.

Suppliers

Choose Archive on a supplier page when you no longer use that supplier. This needs supplier-management access and is blocked while open purchase orders or bills remain. Existing order and bill lists and detail pages keep the supplier’s name. The name on a detail page links to the supplier, where you can choose Restore. Archived suppliers are excluded when creating a new purchase.

A supplier is anyone you buy from: a printer, a photographer, a freelancer. The list shows Spend in past year, open purchase orders and open bills. A supplier page holds the contacts, the default category and accounts, the payment terms, the ABN and GST registration, and the bank details.

Spend adds the saved bill totals separately for each currency, including tax. It covers bill dates from 365 days ago through today in your organisation timezone and excludes drafts, voids and future bills. For example, AUD 100 and USD 50 stay as two figures. The supplier’s default currency does not convert earlier bills. No spend means there are no bills in that period. Spend stays hidden if you cannot view costs for every included bill; a hidden value does not mean zero.

Choose Edit supplier on the supplier page to change its name, legal name, code, currency, tax details, payment terms, address or internal notes. This needs supplier-management access. Choose Save to apply the fields you changed. If validation fails, the form stays open so you can correct it. Bank account changes use the separate bank-details controls.

For Australian bank accounts, enter the BSB as six digits (123456 or 123-456). An invalid proposal keeps your entries so you can correct them. See bank details and dual control for correcting an older pending proposal.

Confirm or reject bank details

You need Manage bank details permission. Bank numbers are masked on the supplier page. One person proposes a change and a different authorised person confirms it within 24 hours. Existing details stay in place until confirmation, but payment runs skip a supplier while a change is pending.

1. Open Purchasing, choose the supplier, and find Bank details.
2. Review the pending account holder, currency, country, masked numbers and expiry. Check the details against the bank letter.
3. Choose Confirm change, or enter an optional reason and choose Reject. If you proposed the change, you can only Withdraw it.
4. Check the refreshed account and Change history. A confirmed change shows the current account. Rejection or withdrawal keeps any previous account unchanged; history retains the reason.

If a request fails, review the refreshed state before trying again. Reload bank details repeats a failed read without submitting another decision. An expired or already decided proposal cannot be confirmed again. Propose a new change if needed.

Freelancers on your team are linked to a supplier record automatically, so their time and their invoices meet in one place. An internal supplier is another unit of your own business: it never enters a payment file and never syncs to your accounting system.

Purchase orders

A purchase order is a commitment: what you have asked for, at what price, against which budget line.

When creating an order or supplier bill, enter each line’s Quantity and Unit price, then select its budget line, tax and any on-charge. Unit prices show the currency symbol and complete decimal value. If the table is wider than the window, scroll it sideways to reach the other columns.

1. Raise it with lines, quantities and prices, the supplier and the budget.
2. Issue it. Issuing numbers it, freezes the document, and starts the commitment showing as committed cost on the budget. If an approval policy applies, it goes for approval first and issues once approved.
3. Receive against it as the work arrives, quantity by quantity. A receipt is a dated row that cannot be edited: to correct one, Reverse part or all of it, which writes its own dated row bounded by the receipt it corrects.
4. Revise it when the scope changes. That creates a new version and, over the threshold, needs approval again. A line cannot be revised below what has already been received or on-charged to a client. Removing the line is subject to the same limit. A refusal leaves the current order unchanged and does not include the consumed quantity in the error message. While approval is pending, the issued order stays in force and the page shows the pending revision. Approval applies the new version after checking what has since been received or on-charged. The original issue approval does not approve the revision. Repeating the same submission keeps the existing request. If you need different changes, resolve the current request before submitting another revision. Automatic application also requires the requester to remain an active member who can manage orders.
5. Cancel releases only the balance that has not been received.

During a revision, a quantity below the received or on-charged amount shows an explanation beneath that input. The other inputs stay aligned with it. Correct the quantity or choose Cancel to leave the revision without applying it.

A purchase order and its budget lines must use the same currency. Changing a draft order’s currency or date requires replacing its lines so their values are recalculated together.

The order page shows ordered, received, billed and still committed per line, and the value accrued for what has been received but not yet billed.

Cost access applies to the order’s project, its budget lines and saved versions. If any of those costs are hidden, descriptions, supporting notes and document references are unavailable too. You can still read the order’s status and saved policy finding states. A sell total can remain visible when you have price access.

Revise, Receive and Reverse need visible cost and quantity details on the order page, as well as purchase-order management access. If the order cannot be loaded, the page shows the error and does not offer changes based on an older copy. Matched bills need cost access too; a loading or failed bill read is shown as such. After a receipt reversal, the revision minimum uses the remaining net received quantity. Request access from your administrator if you need to edit hidden details.

Correct a saved draft

Open a saved ordinary purchase order or supplier bill and choose Edit draft. You need permission to manage that document and access to its costs.

1. Correct its project, dates, reference, note and lines. Orders also offer Terms; bills offer Entered amounts for tax-inclusive or tax-exclusive entry. Changing the entry basis reinterprets the entered amounts.
2. For a saved bill, Amount is the complete entered line amount, even when quantity is greater than one. Existing fixed markups and purchase-order links are retained. On-charge values you cannot see stay unchanged.
3. If changing Currency, enter new amounts and review allocations, which are cleared along with an order’s saved supplier quote amount. This choice needs price access when billable terms are hidden.
4. Choose Save draft. A failed save keeps your input. If someone changed the draft while you were editing, close and reopen the editor to review their saved version before trying again.

Changing the project clears the line allocations and bill-to-order links so you can select suitable ones. The currency must agree with any budget allocation. To remove an unused draft, choose Discard draft and confirm the permanent removal. Issued orders still use Revise. Approved bills and self-billed supplier documents retain their separate correction workflows.

Review an order with Ru

Ask Ru to review a specific purchase order. Where the compact review is available, it shows the saved status and version, any pending revision, net received and billed values, and remaining commitment. Draft line value is shown separately from an issued commitment. Amounts exclude tax.

Received value already includes reversals. Billed value covers linked approved, partly paid, paid and disputed bills; it does not show payments or supplier credits. Accrued value is received cost that has not yet been matched to a bill. If receipts exceed the remaining ordered value, the saved commitment can be negative. Hidden amounts and quantities stay unavailable.

The review shows up to ten line positions and states the coverage. Scroll sideways for the remaining columns. Choose Open this purchase order to review the exact order in Purchasing. Showing the review does not issue, revise, receive, cancel or pay anything. If the source changes, ask Ru to refresh it.

Review the document and its lines

New previews and newly issued documents show line quantities with up to four decimal places, leaving off trailing zeros. For example, a quantity of 1.3333 is shown as 1.3333. Earlier issued documents keep their original presentation.

Draft previews and new documents show each saved tax rate beside its line and a tax breakdown between subtotal and total. The breakdown uses the saved rounded amounts. If an older order has no saved rate breakdown, its new document shows the saved total tax. Previously issued documents keep their original tax display.

Open an order and choose Document preview. You need cost access as well as purchase read access. Drafts show current saved values; issued orders show their saved document. Previewing does not issue or send an order. If the document is being prepared, wait and choose Refresh preview. Close preview returns to the order.

When creating or revising an order or entering a supplier bill, complete every partly entered line or remove it. Each line needs a description and a valid quantity with up to four decimal places. Enter a unit price, or enter zero for a free item. Invalid money or markup prevents saving; an untouched spare row is ignored.

Supplier bills

A bill is what the supplier actually charged. Enter it, or let Runnit read it from the document, then match it.

Their invoice number must be different from other non-void bills for the same supplier. If it is already used, the save explains the conflict and keeps your entered fields. Open the existing bill to check it, or correct the number and choose Create the draft again. A refused save creates no second bill. Another supplier can use the same number; a voided bill does not reserve it.

Three-way match compares the bill against the purchase order’s frozen values and what has been received. Both tolerances have to pass, the percentage and the amount, and quantity and price variances are measured separately. Quantity and price checks include everything already billed on the line. A bill cannot match a draft order or be approved against quantity that has not been received. A bill can span several purchase orders for the same supplier, currency and entity, and lines that match nothing are marked standalone.

Changing or clearing a draft bill’s project requires cost access to its current scope. This also applies to a bill created from a supplier upload.

Changing a draft bill’s currency, date or tax entry mode requires replacement lines. Fixed markup inherited from an order is shared across partial bills, including the final rounding remainder.

Once approved, the bill’s cost lands on the budget and the accrual for what was received is relieved. Void reverses the matches on the void date, so last month’s accrual is left exactly as it was. The voided bill shows its saved Reason for void when you can view its costs. Its original total and payment history remain visible, but it no longer shows a remaining balance or an ageing badge. You cannot dispute, void again or record a payment from that page.

Dispute is available on approved or partly paid bills. On a disputed bill, choose End the dispute to return it to its payment state.

Attach the supplier’s invoice

After creating the draft, open Finance → Purchasing → Bills and select it. You need permission to manage bills and view the bill’s costs.

1. Under Supplier invoice, choose an Invoice file. Use a PDF, PNG, JPEG or WebP with content, up to 10 MB.
2. If the bill falls in a soft-closed period, enter the reason for the change.
3. Select Attach invoice and wait for Invoice attached and saved.
4. Use Download invoice to check the saved document, then review the purchase order matches before submitting when the bill is ready.

Attaching the invoice does not submit, approve or pay the bill. Other policy checks still apply. The current file remains available to people with purchasing access and permission to view the bill’s costs.

While an ordinary bill is a draft, choose Replace invoice file and then Replace invoice to correct the document. Earlier versions are retained. Files cannot be replaced after submission or approval, in a closed period, on a self-billed invoice, or when a supplier upload is already linked. Self-billed invoices use their own document.

If a save is interrupted, Runnit checks the saved bill before offering another action. If that read also fails, select Reload bill and review its attachment. Changing a bill or signing in as another person clears an unsaved file selection.

Match a manual bill to purchase orders

You need permission to manage bills and view costs for the bill and every order you select, including when saving the same matches again. Open the saved draft, then:

1. In Three-way match, select Match purchase order lines.
2. Find and choose an issued Purchase order. It must have the bill’s supplier, project, billing entity and currency. Use Next orders for more results.
3. For each bill line, choose its purchase order line. You can switch orders to match lines from several orders, or choose Standalone (no purchase order) to remove a link. Each order line can be selected once.
4. If the bill line has no budget allocation, review the order allocation and select Use this purchase order line’s budget allocation. An existing allocation must already match. A draft without a project can only match orders without a project; create a draft with the correct project for a project order.
5. Enter a reason if the period is soft-closed, then select Save matches.
6. Review the refreshed Three-way match before Submit for approval. Record any missing receipts on the order first.

Saving matches keeps quantities, prices, tax, currency values and on-charge choices as entered. It does not approve or pay the bill. You cannot change these links after submission, on a self-billed invoice or in a closed period. A changed bill, its project client or the order allocation requires a fresh review. Fixed markup already reserved by other bills can also prevent a new match.

If the save response is interrupted, Runnit checks the saved bill. Use Reload bill if that check fails, or Reload matching preview if the preview cannot load. Review the recovered state before trying another action.

Who can see saved matching details

Bill amounts follow your cost access for that bill’s project and current client. Matching details also need cost access to every linked purchase order and contributing bill. Saved matching figures can include a bill that has since been voided, so that bill still needs cost access. If you can read a bill but cannot access one of its orders, the bill’s permitted amounts remain visible and the matching figures are hidden. This applies to saved and approved bills as well as previews. Changing access does not change the saved bill or its totals.

Supplier spend needs organisation-wide cost access and cost access to every bill included in the year. If any bill is restricted, the spend figure is left blank. An order’s billed quantity, billed total or accrued amount can also be blank when a linked bill is restricted. A blank figure does not mean zero.

Accruals

At any month end, work received but not yet billed sits as an accrual. Runnit computes it from the dated receipts and the bills that relieve them, so posting April’s bill never changes what March said. The Periods page compares any stored balance with the computed accrual and the rows behind it. When no stored balance is available, it computes the first currency with receipts dated on or before the month end. These complete figures need cost access to every contributing order and bill, including earlier receipts and bills whose effect now nets to zero. If access is incomplete, the figures are unavailable. See Month End.

On-charging

An approved bill line or purchase order line can be on-charged to the client, with a markup or at cost. It appears in Uninvoiced work and on the invoice composer alongside time, and Runnit tracks the shared consumption so a purchase order line and the bill that settles it can never both be invoiced.

If a policy blocks issuing an order or submitting a bill, the page shows the reason even when there are no saved policy notes. The record stays in draft. For a pending bank change, open the supplier’s Bank details and ask a different person with bank details permission to review it. For a missing invoice, use Supplier invoice on the bill. Correct missing budget allocations, then try the action again. See Paying Suppliers and People for payment entry and amount checks.

Next step

Pay what you owe: Paying Suppliers and People. To give a supplier access to their orders and bills, see Supplier Portal.

On smaller screens, finance navigation appears above the page. Scroll wide order and bill tables horizontally to reach every column. Creation forms scroll within the screen so their actions remain reachable.

Help from Ru

Ask Ru to explain this workflow, inspect records you can access, or carry out supported steps when you authorise them. Your permissions and approval rules still apply. See Finance with Ru.

Purchase amounts on budgets and reports

Approved billable purchases add their client charge to budget used. Approved purchases also add their cost, including purchases you do not charge to a client. Percentage fees follow the combined time and purchase base.

A supplier bill remains in reports for its original month when it is voided later. The void adds a negative amount in its own month. Recorded currency values remain unchanged after exchange-rate corrections. See Finance Reports and Budgets.

Received but unbilled purchase order work contributes to actual cost. Its bill replaces that receipt cost when approved. You can reverse only the quantity that has not already been matched to an active bill. Partial reversals and bill matches share the recorded amounts; the final movement takes the exact balance.

Payment corrections keep their original currency valuation and post their reversal on the chosen date. See Paying suppliers and people.

Internal unit chargebacks

An internal unit can charge another budget without creating a supplier payment. Create an active Internal budget for the providing unit, with a Non-billable line to receive credits. You need access to that budget and permission to manage supplier defaults.

1. Open Settings > Finance > Supplier defaults, then edit the internal supplier.
2. Turn on Internal unit. Choose the Providing internal budget and Non-billable credit line, then save.
3. Create a supplier bill and allocate every line to a receiving budget. Use no purchase tax for an internal chargeback.
4. Review and approve the bill. Approval records the receiving cost and matching providing credit together. Open the bill to see Providing unit credits and follow the link to the providing budget.

Each new draft keeps its chosen destination. Changing supplier defaults affects future drafts. If an older draft has no destination, save it after configuring the supplier. Both accounting periods must allow posting, and the receiving budget must differ from the providing budget.

Voiding an approved bill reverses both sides on the correction date using the original currency values. Closed months stay unchanged. A credit line with recorded history must remain non-billable and cannot be archived. Older approved internal bills do not gain credits automatically; correct them through a reviewed void and replacement in an open period.

Internal chargebacks stay out of payments, ageing and the BAS purchase figures. Use an external supplier bill for a taxable intercompany invoice. See Finance reports and Month end.

Set the matching limits under Organisation Settings > Purchasing policy. Choose the billing entity, enter the percentage and cash amount, then select Save tolerances. See Finance setup for bank-file originator details and the separate bank-account setup.

For employee claims, use reimbursement account setup.

If a refreshed bill loses cost access, Runnit hides its payment form and matching figures. Reload the bill after access is restored before continuing.

For payment totals and access to payments covering several bills, see Paying suppliers.

Closing a period saves purchase accrual balances separately by currency. Repeating a close keeps them; reopening and closing again replaces them. You still need cost access to every contributor to read the saved figures. See Month End.

A bill shows Record a payment after approval, while a positive balance remains and you have payment permission and cost access. Draft, pending approval, disputed, void, fully paid and internal bills do not show the form. Its payment history remains readable with cost access. See Paying suppliers.