What your customer ordered, and how much of it is still to come — transcript

Play this as a presentation — one slide per step, with the same narration. Every word of every step is on this page.

This presentation is for a supplier who can see a customer’s purchase order on screen and wants to know how much of it is still outstanding. In about nine minutes you will know where that figure lives, why the order screen does not carry it, and why a column that looks like the answer usually is not.

Step 1 — Read the order as your customer holds it

After this step you will know what the order screen is good for. It is your customer’s own record of what they asked you for, and you are reading the same rows their buyer reads. The header carries the branch, the transaction date, the credit terms, the due date, their reference and their remarks. The line grid carries the item code, the item name, the quantity, the unit price, the tax and the line amount. That is the agreement as their system holds it, and it is the thing worth checking against your own order acknowledgement before anything ships, because after that it is the version everybody else will work from.

Reference: Purchase Order Supplier Access (Internal) — Line Items

Step 2 — Notice that there is no outstanding column

After this step you will stop hunting for a figure that is not there. The order portal’s line grid has seven columns and none of them is an outstanding or remaining quantity. So to know what is still to come you do the arithmetic yourself: take the quantity on the order line, then open the goods received notes screen and add up what your customer has recorded as received for that item against that order. The difference is what they still expect. It is tedious on a long order and it is the only method the portal gives you. Tell your customer if you need it regularly; the figure exists on their side.

Reference: Purchase GRN Supplier Access (Internal) — Overview

Step 3 — Understand the Open Qty column, which is not it

After this step you will not be misled by the one column that appears to answer the question. On the purchase invoice and purchase credit note screens there is a column headed Open Qty. It is not a live balance. It holds a number stamped onto the line at the moment your customer drew that invoice from an earlier document, recording how much was open right then, and nothing ever changes it afterwards. It is evidence of what was agreed on that day, which is a genuinely useful thing to keep, and it is the wrong thing to read as a balance. Measured across ninety production systems, it is empty on the overwhelming majority of purchase lines.

Reference: Purchase Invoice Supplier Access (Internal) — Line Items

Step 4 — Learn where the live figure really lives

After this step you will know what your customer can see that you cannot. Their system keeps outstanding quantities in a separate register, written when a document is finalised, one row for each line and for each kind of document that may follow it. It is rewritten the moment a link between two documents is saved, and when it reaches zero the row is deleted rather than left showing a zero. Their purchase reports and their stock availability figures read that register. None of it is exposed to a supplier portal, which is why the arithmetic in step two is your version of it.

Reference: The order still shows a quantity outstanding after I invoiced it all — How the number is kept, and why that matters

Step 5 — Know why their figure and yours can honestly differ

After this step a disagreement will start in a better place than blame. Two ordinary reasons account for most of them. First, that register holds a separate balance for every kind of follow-on document, so the balance still waiting for a goods received note and the balance still waiting for an invoice are different numbers, and both are right. A buyer quoting one and a supplier assuming the other will argue for an afternoon. Second, the register is only kept at all when your customer has switched the configuration on for that pair of document types; about half of the live systems hold any such configuration.

Reference: The order still shows a quantity outstanding after I invoiced it all — The three ordinary causes

Step 6 — Run the check that catches the common mistake

After this step you will have a habit worth thirty seconds. The commonest error on these screens is reading a blank Open Qty as a zero and concluding an order is complete. Blank means the figure was never stamped; it is not a quantity, and it is not zero. So never settle a balance question from that column. Settle it from the order quantity minus the receipts, quote your customer the order number and the item code when you raise it, and ask them for their outstanding figure by name. Their answer comes from the register, which is the only thing either of you should be arguing about.

Reference: Purchase Invoice Supplier Access (Internal) — Line Items

Check yourself

Three to five questions on what you just heard. Every correct answer links to the page that makes it correct, so you can check the source, not just the mark.

Next: How your invoice was matched to the goods receipt · Back to the series · Play this as a presentation