ANTE User Manual

Purchase Orders

Purchase Orders record what your company has committed to buy from a supplier — the items, quantities, costs, supplier, and terms. In ANTE, Purchase Orders are created and tracked through the Purchasing screen inside the Assets module.

Assets → Purchasing, on the Purchase Orders tab. The counter cards and Procurement Pipeline at the top are shared with the Purchase Requests tab; the table below lists the purchase orders themselves.

Overview

A Purchase Order (PO) captures a supplier, line items with quantities and costs, tax and payment terms, and an optional delivery date. Once created, the PO tracks how much has been paid against it, so its status reflects payment progress (Open → Partially Paid → Paid) rather than shipping steps.

Purchase Orders are workflow-driven. Creating one starts a Purchase Order process and opens a form (the Purchase Order step) where you enter the supplier, items, and terms. A PO can be started on its own, or it can flow out of an approved Purchase Request after canvassing and supplier selection.

Finding Purchase Orders

  1. Open the Assets menu in the sidebar.
  2. Click Purchasing.
  3. On the Purchasing page, click the Purchase Orders tab.

The Purchasing page header also shows summary counter cards — Active Requests, Completed, Active Templates, and Pipeline Value — and a Procurement Pipeline strip (Supplier Outsourcing, Materials Approval, Canvassing, Supplier Selection, Purchase Order).

Purchasing Page Tabs

TabContents
Purchase RequestsPurchase requests and their procurement workflows
Purchase OrdersThe list of purchase orders
DocumentsItem receipts tied to purchase orders and requests
TemplatesProcess templates for Purchase Request and Purchase Order workflows

Purchase Orders Table

ColumnDescription
PO CodeThe purchase order reference code
SupplierThe supplier the order is placed with
Total AmountThe order total
PaidAmount paid so far
BalanceRemaining amount due
StatusPayment status (see below)
CreatedDate the order was created

You can search the list by PO Code or Supplier, and filter by Status.

Purchase Order Status

Status reflects payment progress:

  • Open (Unpaid) — no payment recorded yet
  • Partially Paid — some, but not all, of the balance has been paid
  • Closed (Paid) — the order is fully paid
  • Voided — the workflow that raised this order was cancelled while the order still had no payments and no vendor bill recognized against it, and the cancel's void cascade nullified it. A PO that already has a payment or a recognized bill is left standing even if its workflow is cancelled — it's listed as excluded in the cancel's warning instead.

Linked Request for Payment

Every purchase order automatically gets its own Request for Payment in Treasury — the payee is the order's supplier, the amount is the order total, and the PO number is recorded on the request. When Tax type is VAT, that total already includes the 12% VAT, so the request amount matches the supplier's VAT-inclusive invoice — not just the net cost of the goods. Nothing extra needs to be created here, and there is no separate "Create Payment" step on the order itself — paying it IS approving and releasing that request.

Once a request is linked, the order's detail page shows a View Payment Request button that jumps straight to it — if you have access to Request for Payment. If you don't, you instead see a read-only payment-status pill (Awaiting payment approval, Approved — awaiting release, Paid, Payment rejected, or Payment cancelled), so you can still see where payment stands without needing Treasury access. Releasing the request pays the order (moving its status toward Partially Paid or Paid) and prevents the order from being paid twice. See Treasury → Payables → Request for Payment for how requests are approved and released.

When a Supplier Selection award splits across several suppliers, submitting the Purchase Order step generates one purchase order per supplier — and each of those orders automatically gets its own Request for Payment, the same way a single-supplier order does.

Common Tasks

Creating a Purchase Order

  1. On the Purchasing page, open the Purchase Orders tab.

  2. Click + New Order.

  3. In the New Purchase Order dialog, select a Workflow template (a default Direct PO Creation template is preselected).

  4. Click Start Order.

  5. The Purchase Order form opens. Fill in the fields:

    • Supplier (required) — choose the supplier from the list
    • Delivery date — the expected delivery date
    • Delivery terms (required) — Delivery or Pickup
    • Tax type (required) — Value Added Tax (VAT 12%) or Non Taxable. If the workflow's Tax handling setting is fixed to one of these instead of Filer's choice, this field is pre-selected and locked, with a note that it's set by the workflow.
    • Payment terms (required) — Cash on Delivery, Payment Upon Invoice, Post Dated Check, Dated Delivery Upon Payment, or No Terms of Payment
    • Vendor address — optional; printed on the PO header
    • Attention — optional; the vendor contact person
    • Quotation ref. — optional; the supplier's quotation number

  6. Add line items in the items table. For each item set:

    • Item — search for an existing item or create a new one
    • Qty — quantity ordered
    • UOM — optional unit of measure (for example pcs, MT, or box)
    • Description — optional line description
    • Cost — unit cost
    • Total — calculated automatically (Qty × Cost)

    Use Add item to add more lines.

  7. Add Notes for any special instructions to the supplier (optional).

  8. Review the Subtotal, VAT (12%) (shown when Tax type is VAT), and Grand total. This Grand total — VAT-inclusive when Tax type is VAT — is what gets recorded as the order's Total Amount and what the linked Request for Payment will ask Treasury to release, so it matches the supplier's VAT-inclusive invoice.

  9. Click Submit Purchase Order.

Creating a Purchase Order from a Purchase Request

A Purchase Order can be pre-filled from an upstream Purchase Request in two ways, depending on the workflow template:

  • Via Supplier Selection — when the workflow includes a Canvassing and Supplier Selection step, the awarded items and the winning supplier are carried into the PO automatically, and the Supplier field is locked (with a note that it was awarded by the Supplier Selection step) since the award already decided it. The costs from the Supplier Selection step are used as the starting PO cost.
  • Direct PO flow — when the workflow goes directly from Purchase Request to Purchase Order (no canvassing), the items and their estimated unit costs from the approved Purchase Request are pre-filled into the PO form. You can still adjust the cost before submitting.

In both cases a banner at the top of the form confirms how many items were pre-filled. Review the costs before submitting.

When Supplier Selection Splits the Award Across Suppliers

If Supplier Selection awarded the request's items to more than one supplier, the Purchase Order step renders one tab per winning supplier instead of a single form — each tab shows only that supplier's awarded items and its own Supplier field locked to the award. A banner above the tabs states how many suppliers won and confirms that submitting will generate that many purchase orders, one per supplier.

Fill in every tab's delivery date, terms, and any other details before submitting — each tab needs at least one line item, and the form blocks submission (switching you to the offending tab) until every one has some. Clicking Submit Purchase Order opens a confirmation dialog listing every purchase order about to be created — its supplier, items, and total — so you can confirm all of them at once or go back and keep editing.

Each resulting purchase order gets its own linked Request for Payment — see Linked Request for Payment above.

Viewing a Purchase Order

  1. On the Purchase Orders tab, click the order's row.

  2. If the order's workflow is still running, a tracking dialog opens instead — the same interactive view used for Purchase Requests — showing the current fulfillment step (acknowledgement, delivery, receiving/QC) so you can act on it right away without leaving the list.

  3. Once the workflow is completed or cancelled — or the order has no linked workflow at all (an older order) — the row instead opens the Purchase Order Details page, showing:
    • Overview — PO code, supplier, created date, status, and the Total, Paid, and Balance amounts
    • The payment affordance (top right) — a View Payment Request button, or a read-only payment-status pill if you don't have access to Request for Payment; see Linked Request for Payment above
    • A Workflow card — a read-only timeline of the order's process (instance code, template name, a Completed or Cancelled flag, and each step's name, status icon, and assignee), shown only when the order carries a linked workflow
    • Order Information — PO Code, Supplier, Tax Type, Payment Terms, Delivery Terms, Delivery Date, Notes, and Status
    • Order Items — item name, description, quantity, unit price, and line total, with the order total. When Tax type is VAT, the order total includes 12% VAT on top of the item lines, so it reads higher than their sum — matching the supplier's VAT-inclusive invoice, the amount the linked Request for Payment releases.
    • Payment History — recorded payments showing date, fund account, amount, and fee

Tips

  • Select a supplier before submitting — a supplier is required. If you try to submit without one, the form will show an error and block submission until a supplier is selected.
  • Set the right terms — Delivery terms, Tax type, and Payment terms are all required and appear on the order details.
  • Check the totals — confirm the Subtotal and VAT before submitting; the line totals update as you change quantity and cost. The Grand total is recorded as the order's Total Amount VAT-inclusive, so it's also what Treasury will release.
  • Track payment — the Paid and Balance figures and the status update as payments are recorded against the order.
  • View the order from a fulfillment task — once a Purchase Order is issued, ANTE tracks it through acknowledgement, delivery, and receiving/QC as tasks. Opening one of these tasks shows a View Purchase Order button with a read-only snapshot (supplier, items, totals, and payment status), so you don't have to leave the task to check what you're acting on.
  • Receiving pulls the order's items automatically — the receiving/QC step is pre-filled with the Purchase Order's items and quantities, so whoever receives the goods only needs to enter what was actually received and its inspection result. If the order came from a split award, each line also names its delivering supplier so a receipt covering several purchase orders at once still shows who shipped what.
  • Passing QC stocks the goods — once the receiving/QC step's result is approved (the workflow's Stocked step), ANTE automatically posts the received lines into inventory. Only lines marked Pass are stocked, at the quantity actually received — lines still Pending or marked Fail are not. Stock lands in the order's warehouse, or the company's main warehouse if the order has none set.
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