Procurement & Purchasing
| Site: | Learn at Merupu AI |
| Course: | SamvraCore ERP |
| Book: | Procurement & Purchasing |
| Printed by: | Guest user |
| Date: | Tuesday, 27 October 2026, 7:29 AM |
Description
Request-to-receipt procurement with approval routing and inventory/ledger integration.
1. Purchase Orders as the Core of Procurement
The Procurement module in SamvraCore ERP is built around the Purchase Order (PO) as its central document, surfaced in the PurchaseOrdersPage list view and the PurchaseOrderDetailPage detail view. A PO captures the complete request-to-receipt flow for buying goods from a vendor.
When creating a PO, the buyer selects a vendor and a warehouse that will receive the goods. The document carries one or more line items, each referencing a product with a quantity and pricing. Both discount and tax can be calculated at the line level and at the order level, so a single PO can combine per-line discounts with an order-wide adjustment.
Each PO also records separate shipping and billing addresses, allowing goods to be delivered to one location while invoices are directed to another. The module supports preferred-supplier tracking, helping buyers favour established vendors.
A typical flow begins with a buyer opening a new PO, choosing the vendor and destination warehouse, adding product lines with quantities and prices, and letting the system compute discounts and taxes. The PO is then advanced through its approval and sending lifecycle. Every PO maintains an audit trail with timestamps and user attribution, so the organisation always knows who created, approved, or changed an order and when. This audit history is a standing part of each order rather than an optional add-on.
2. The Purchase Order Status Workflow
Purchase Orders move through a defined, multi-stage status workflow rather than existing in a single editable state. The sequence is: Draft, Submitted, Approved, Sent, Partial Received, Received, and finally Closed.
A PO starts in Draft while the buyer builds and edits it. Submitting the PO moves it to Submitted, which routes it into approval. Once an authoriser approves it, the PO becomes Approved, and marking it as sent to the vendor moves it to Sent. As goods arrive, the status reflects how much has been received: Partial Received when some but not all ordered quantity is in, and Received when the order is complete. A finished PO can be Closed.
The backend exposes dedicated transition endpoints for these steps, including submit-for-approval, approve, mark-as-sent, cancel, and close actions on a purchase order. Cancellation is supported at appropriate points with reason tracking, so a cancelled order records why it was stopped.
Importantly, the Partial Received and Received statuses are not set manually in isolation; they are driven by the receiving process. As receipts are posted against the PO, the system automatically updates the PO status based on cumulative received quantities, keeping the order state in sync with physical reality.
3. Approval Routing for Purchase Orders
Purchase Orders participate in SamvraCore's organisation-wide approval workflow engine. Procurement includes vendor selection and PO approval routing, and Purchase Orders are one of the document types the Approval Workflows module can govern.
Approval workflows are configured as multi-step chains. Each step defines an approver type that can be a specific user, a role, the requester's manager, or a department head. Steps can carry amount thresholds (minimum and maximum) so that a step only applies when the PO value falls in a certain band, and steps can be marked required or optional with an explicit ordering for sequential approval.
When a PO is submitted, it enters this chain and appears in the Pending Approvals queue of each designated approver. From that centralised queue an approver can view the document's details and amount, see the approval history, and approve or reject with comments in a single action. Workflows also support auto-approval behaviour, such as auto-approving after a configured number of hours.
Because approval history is retained on the record, a PO carries a complete trail of who approved each stage. A worked example: a PO above a configured threshold routes first to a manager step and then to a finance role step; only after both approve does the PO reach the Approved status and become eligible to send to the vendor.
4. Receiving Goods Against a Purchase Order
Receiving is handled through the PO Receive flow (PurchaseOrderReceivePage) and recorded as PO Receipts (POReceiptsPage, POReceiptDetailPage). A receipt documents the quantity received versus the expected delivery for each line.
The process supports partial receiving: a warehouse can accept whatever portion of the order physically arrives and record additional receipts later as more stock comes in. The system performs quantity validation against the ordered amounts, preventing receipts that exceed what was ordered. Receiving staff can also perform unit cost adjustment at receiving time, so the actual landed cost can be captured even if it differs from the PO price.
A receipt is created against the PO and then posted; posting is the step that makes the receipt affect inventory and accounting. Receipts can also be cancelled. As each receipt is posted, the parent PO's status updates automatically, driving it toward Partial Received or Received.
A typical receiving workflow: a shipment arrives for part of an open PO, a receiver creates a receipt capturing the received quantities and any corrected unit costs, and posts it. The PO status becomes Partial Received; when the remaining goods arrive and a second receipt is posted, the PO becomes Received and can then be closed.
5. Inventory and Accounting Integration on Receipt
Posting a PO receipt is the integration point that connects procurement to inventory and the general ledger. On receipt posting, the system performs automatic inventory updates: stock levels are increased through the same ReceiveStock flow used elsewhere in inventory.
For traceability, a stock movement is created for the received goods with a reference back to the originating PO receipt. The application provides click-through navigation from a stock movement to its source receipt, so a stock analyst can trace any increase in on-hand quantity to the exact procurement document that produced it.
At the same time, a balanced journal entry is generated automatically. For both the Receive Stock action and a PO Receipt Post, the entry debits the Inventory Asset account (1400) and credits Accounts Payable (2100) for the amount of quantity multiplied by unit cost. This assumes stock is purchased on account, so the liability to the vendor is recorded as inventory value increases.
These GL accounts must exist in the Chart of Accounts for the integration to work: account 1400 for Inventory Asset and account 2100 for Accounts Payable. Because the journal entry is posted automatically with a reference to the source transaction, the financial records stay aligned with physical receipts without manual journal creation.
6. Three-Way Matching and the Vendor Portal
SamvraCore supports 3-Way Matching, the control that reconciles a purchase order, the goods received, and the vendor's invoice. The procurement module lets staff link purchase orders to vendor invoices: a PO can be matched to an invoice for reconciliation, and the match can later be removed if needed. Matches support explanatory notes, and the backend provides endpoints to match an invoice to a PO, list the matched invoices for a PO, and remove a specific match.
This matching complements the receiving flow (which already compares received quantity to ordered quantity) by adding the invoice side of the reconciliation, giving a complete picture across order, receipt, and bill.
The Vendor Portal extends procurement to suppliers themselves. It is invitation-only: a vendor accepts an invitation and sets up an account, then can view the purchase orders assigned to them and acknowledge a PO with an expected delivery date. Vendors can also track payment status and upload documents such as tax forms, insurance certificates, and invoices, which internal staff review through a pending-to-approved-or-rejected workflow.
Together, PO acknowledgement from the portal, receiving against the PO, and three-way matching give the organisation visibility from the moment an order is placed to the point its invoice is reconciled and paid.