Purchase order (PO) types

• Standard Purchase order: This type of PO is used when you know the Item, Price, Delivery Schedule and payment terms. Most of the time Standard PO is used to fulfill sporadic demands or say demand coming once or twice a year. In this type of PO you are committing a purchase of item/s with particular quantity and particular price at particular shipment schedule.

For example

• Purchasing for any specific event happening in Company
• Where purchasing item/s is one time job.
• Planned Purchase Order (PPO): This type of PO is used when you are not sure about the exact delivery schedules but other details are quite clear (like Item, Quantity, Price, approximate Delivery Schedule and Payment Term). For PPO Need-By-Date has to be entered, but this date will be treated as tentative date only. Once you are sure about the delivery schedule you create releases against this PPO with detailed delivery schedule. In this type of PO you are committing a purchase of item/s with particular quantity and particular price but with tentative shipment schedule. When you make a release, you are committing the delivery also.

For example

• You need 1200 notebooks yearly, so you can raise PPO with quantity 1200 and in shipment details you can have shipment schedule as per your need (Say 12 shipments with 100 quantity each). This will be tentative schedule, you need to generate a release as and when you need the good and supplier will provide you material.
• Blanket Purchase Order: This kind of PO is used when are not sure about quantity, price, delivery schedule. As soon as you select PO type as Blanket Purchase Agreement the fields for quantity  gets disabled. Blanket PO can be based on max agreed amount. Exact quantity Delivery Schedule and price will be informed to supplier by creating Blanket releases against blanket PO. You can have different ‘Price Breaks’ and specify the quantity / discount / effectively details. In this type of PO you are not committing your supplier at the time of creating PO, all the commitments are done when release is sent.

For Example:

• A car manufacturer needs dashboard for each vehicle and it is purchased from selective suppliers only. But demand for dashboard is not clear. In this case Blanket PO is used and whenever demand comes, releases are sent to supplier.
• Contract Purchase Order: This type of PO is used when you are not sure even about the item which need to be purchased J. The only information that you provide in a Contract PO is supplier, supplier site, payment terms and agreement control details (header part only). Standard PO are created by referring the Contract PO when some thing is to be purchased against the Contract PO from that supplier.

For example:

• You need to import many items to run your business, but you don’t have Import/Export license. In this case you create Contract PO with supplier who has Import/Export license and whenever you need something to be imported, you generate standard PO referring the Contract PO for that Item/s.

Out of above 4 types you can add only Blanket and Contract POs in Approved Supplier List (ASL).