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.

Reading needs a purchasing capability; approving and paying need their own. Cost figures need finance:view_cost, and the pages say so rather than showing blanks.

Suppliers

A supplier is anyone you buy from: a printer, a photographer, a freelancer. The list shows spend for the 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.

Bank details are masked everywhere and protected by dual control: one person proposes them, a different administrator confirms, and until then the previous details stay in force. A run skips anyone whose bank details are waiting on a confirmation, and says why.

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.

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 billed. 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 billed.
5. Cancel releases only the balance that has not been received.

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.

Supplier bills

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

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 shows the stored and computed accrual side by side with the rows behind them. 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.

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.