Purchase Order FAQs

A Purchasing Software creates a binding agreement between a buyer and a supplier. A Purchase Order sets forth descriptions, quantities, prices, discounts, and payment terms and so on. Once a Purchase Order has been approved and accepted by the supplier it authorises a Purchase transaction.

The purchasing software provides security for both sides. The supplier ensures payment, once all items and products have been delivered. The buyer doesn’t get surprised by unknown or unexpected bills.

You can create a PO from anywhere, anytime and get approvals instantly. On average our users need less than 60 seconds to create a Purchase Order and less than five minutes to get the final approval. Also, no information gets lost in our purchasing software. You can track all Purchase Orders 24/7.

Yes, no project is the same as any other. You can customise your purchasing software the way you want by choosing your departments, expenditure types, customising your approval chain and so on. Please check our video tutorials for further information.

The purchasing software works through mobile apps for iOS, Android and Blackberry. At the same time you can also use the desktop version, which works through your web-browser.

This depends on the average amount of users and Purchase Orders you require per month. Please review our pricing packages or send an email to sales@sargent-disc.com.

Most of the time this is possible, however, in some instances we may need to help you with the implementation. Please send us an email to sales@sargent-disc.com for further information.

We are running our own servers and secure all information through an SSL certificate. For further information please click here. We store your data for 3 months as standard, or 7 years with an additional cost.

Yes, please use the amendment button in order to keep the same Purchase Order ID.

Yes, you will find a list of them when you enter the same supplier name in a new Purchase Order.

Yes, choose the Purchase Order that you want to copy from the ‘View’ section and press the copy button on the right side of the Purchase Order box.

No. The control in DPO comes from approving or declining POs, not from creating them. A user can create as many POs as they like, in any department. This is to avoid bottlenecks. The PO number can be hidden until a PO has received final approval. This prevents users ordering goods or services unless a PO has received final approval.

You can either review your own Purchase Orders, all Purchase Orders, or search by departments and suppliers. In addition you will be able to use various filters, sort options and keyword searches. All lists include a net total at the bottom.

The administrator might have restricted the visibility of certain Purchase Orders for your user account. That’s why you might see only your own POs or the ones from your own department. In other cases you might have chosen the wrong filter, where your PO is not reflected.

Yes, select the Purchase Order you want to print and select the ‘open as PDF’ button on the right side of the Purchase Order box. Once you see the PDF, you can save and print the Purchase Order. You are also able to print multiple POs in a batch.

Yes, for an additional fee. For more information on this and any other customisation requests, please email sales@sargent-disc.com.

There are two possibilities. Either there are no Purchase Orders for you to approve right now, or you don’t have any approval rights. Please contact your project administrator if this is not correct. Please keep in mind that the approval list is customised to you like a to-do-list. You will only see Purchase Orders in there, when you are next in line for approving. Otherwise the list will be empty.

The project administrator assigned you the task of allocating Purchase Orders to certain account numbers. If you don’t know what that means, please contact your project administrator.

Depending on your administration settings, you may be able to amend a Purchase Order after it has been approved or declined. Contact your project administrator for more information.

No, this field is not mandatory. However, sometimes your comment might be helpful for the colleagues approving after you. All comments will be shown in a separate email and not directly on the PDF document itself.

There is no limit. You can set up as many approval levels as you want in the purchasing software. For further information please check our admin section video tutorials.

After the Purchase Order has had its final approval, the purchasing software will email the final PDF document to all members of the approval chain. You can also activate an automatic notification for the supplier.

Go to the drop down field next to your email address on the top right of your screen and select ‘Administration’.

The project duration depends on the licence that you or the administrator has chosen. If you want to extend the project duration of the purchasing software, please contact your project administrator or click on the extension button in the admin section/project information tab.

Your invoice address will be printed on the final approved Purchase Order, which might be sent to a supplier. This supplier will need your invoice address to create an accurate invoice.

Yes, you can work with multiple currencies in the purchasing software. You can either create a custom currency exchange rate or leave that field blank. In this case DPO will take the latest exchange rate.

Administrators and users can create and select multiple Expenditure Types. Common ones are ‘Purchase’ and ‘Rental’, but you can have as many as you need.

Approval Levels represent the number of approvals for each Purchase Order. There can be only one approval for each level. The assignment of approving users to each level can be made in the users section.

Yes, but only one person can make an approval for each level. Only the fastest user can execute the approval right, the other assigned users will lose their approval right at that moment. There is one exception if you choose ‘Approval by department only’ (see next answer below).

Normally, only one person can approve for a certain level in the purchasing software. However, if you work with different departments you might want each department to get its own approval by their department representatives, even though all that happens on the same approval level. In that case, choose the option ‘approval by department only’. In this instance, only head of departments can approve only their own department. For more help please review our video tutorial or contact support@sargent-disc.com.

Yes, but first make sure no user is assigned to that approval level.

If the pending Purchase Orders have received all approvals except the last level, they will automatically switch to final approval once you delete the last approval level.

An Administrator can edit the administration section of the purchasing software, the User cannot.

Yes, you can select as many administrators as you would like.

Yes. If this user has approval rights, make sure you install a new user for that approval level first, and then delete the other user.

If the creator of a purchase order has been deleted, their purchase orders will remain unchanged. However, if a user has purchase orders awaiting approval, then these will be automatically approved(see above answer).

You can decide whether the user is allowed to see all Purchase Orders, just their own, or the ones from the department he or she belongs to.

Yes, again you can select as many users as you would like to enter account numbers.

Yes, at any time. Even if certain Purchase Orders might have already received their final approval.

Automatic email notifications can be switched on in the edit window of each supplier, in the Supplier section in the Administration settings. Email notifications can be tailored depending on the supplier. Additionally, there is a check box at the bottom of the Supplier settings that when checked, every supplier created after that has email notifications switched on automatically. If a supplier was created before that box was checked, then email notifications must be switched on manually.