Purchasing Guides

Which purchasing guide do you need? It depends on what is in front of you: a purchase order waiting for goods, a pallet that arrived with no order, a bill with nothing to receive, a deposit demand before anything ships, or stock a supplier still owns. Each of the five guides starts from one of those and ends at “the supplier is paid and the ledger agrees”, using GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd, which buys most of its stock locally in RM and some laptops in USD from regional distributors. They are written for the buyer, the receiver and the accounts-payable clerk.

Find your situation

What you are asking	Read
An order is out and the goods are on their way — order, receive, bill, pay. Every other shape departs from this one	Standard Procurement Workflow — read it first
“Can I receive goods without a purchase order?”	Direct GRN Workflow
Rent, utilities, a subscription, a professional fee — a bill with nothing to receive	Direct Invoice Workflow
“The supplier invoiced before delivering. Which document comes first?”	Invoice-First Workflow — includes a USD deposit
“How does consignment stock work when I don’t own it until it sells?”	Consignment Purchasing

Two questions are answered elsewhere: buying in a foreign currency starts with the day’s rate in the Forex applet, before anyone raises the order; and the Stock Replenishment applet turns minimum and maximum levels into draft orders a buyer reads and finalises.

What clicking FINAL actually starts

FINAL saves the status and queues one job, which hands the document to every follow-on job your tenant subscribes to — the journal, stock, costing and the open queue — so the screen comes back before any of that work is done. If the supplier’s creditor code is missing, the journal job fails and the invoice stays FINAL, and nobody who clicked is told. The mechanism is on Purchasing — core concepts.

Which document does what

Only the Purchase Invoice, the Purchase GRN Stock In and the Purchase Return move stock; a plain Purchase GRN moves nothing and posts nothing. Your company uses either Purchase GRN → Purchase Invoice or Purchase GRN Stock In → Purchase Invoice No Stock In — choose once per company, because mixing them is silent: it counts the goods twice or never. The sign table is on Purchasing — core concepts; what mixing does, and the two ways out, are under Mixing the two receipt paths in Receive the goods.

Matching is a knock-off, not an engine

Order, GRN and invoice are tied by knock-off: each document pulls the previous one’s open lines. There is no variance engine — no tolerance bands and no flag when a supplier bills a different quantity or price; comparing the supplier’s paper is the AP clerk’s job, before FINAL (Core concepts §4: Matching is a person, not an engine).

Approvals

Purchase approvals are optional. Only purchase requisitions and purchase orders can be submitted for one, and approvals do not enforce your spending policy: an order can still be finalised by hand while an approval is pending, and the first approval sets it FINAL. Setup and thresholds: Document Approvals.

When it goes wrong

What you see	Read
The invoice is FINAL and the supplier’s ledger account has not moved	Financial Report Trace Document, Missing Journal — map the creditor code, then Resolve; do not void and re-key (Finalised, and nothing happened)
A supplier’s bills are missing from the Creditor Report, or sitting in Debtors	Purchasing configuration — the AR/AP type on the supplier’s link to this company
KO For on the invoice is empty although the GRN is FINAL	Purchasing configuration — no Knock Off Configuration row for the pair
Stock is higher than the shelf after a delivery on the Stock In pair	Receive the goods — a standard invoice over a GRN Stock In
Part of an order arrived, or the rest never will, or some arrived damaged	Receive the goods — GRN what you accept; CLOSE (not VOID) an order that will not complete (Approve and send the order)
Goods on the floor, no bill	Purchasing reports — Stock Availability’s GRN quantity
The supplier overcharged and the invoice is FINAL	A Purchase Debit Note lowers what you owe; a Credit Note raises it (Book the invoice and pay)

Where each purchasing figure comes from — stored or read live, and which report to trust when two disagree — is on the module’s Reports page.

Who does what

Nothing stops one person keying all three steps, so the finance manager decides who holds each finalise permission (Purchasing best practices §3).

The buyer raises, finalises and CLOSEs orders — done when the Purchase Order Queue holds only deliveries still expected.
The receiver finalises GRNs for only what the business will pay for — done when the GRN matches the signed delivery note.
Accounts payable knocks receipts into invoices, compares the paper, finalises and pays — done when the Outstanding Document Report agrees with the supplier’s statement.

How you know a purchase went through

On one invoice: its Posting tab shows Journal and Inventory posted; the line’s Costing Details shows a moving average and a Last Purchase Price; the Outstanding Document Report lists it until paid; and the order’s queue keeps only what has not been delivered — the Standard Procurement Workflow’s success check runs the whole order. Before the first purchase, the Purchasing configuration page lists what must exist.