Approving and Sending POs

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This page describes the approval of purchase orders (POs) in Alma, including resending and deleting POs. For a list of links to pages with instructions for purchasing in Alma including creating PO lines, renewals, working with vendors, etc., see Purchasing. For an overview of the full end to end purchasing workflow see Purchasing Worfklow. For an overview of working with acquisitions in Alma, including links to relevant sections such as Infrastructure, Invoicing, Configuration, etc., see Introduction to Acquisitions.

To approve and send POs, you must have the following role:

Purchasing Manager

After PO lines are packaged into a PO and the PO is reviewed and saved using Save and Continue (see Packaging PO Lines into a PO), if the approval rules pre-configured by Ex Libris require manual approval for POs, the PO is sent for approval. You approve POs on the Approve Orders page (Acquisitions > Purchase Order > Approve).

Approve Orders Page

A PO will only go into Waiting for Approval if all the PO Lines within the PO have one of the following Acquisitions methods:

Purchase
Purchase No Letter

You can also view this page by selecting the task Orders Lines - Approval in the Tasks List in the persistent menu (see Tasks in the Task List) .

The Approve Orders page displays the following columns for each PO:

Order #
Status
Date - The date on which the PO received its status.
Vendor
Organization unit
Total price
# of lines

To manually approve and send POs:

Optionally view information for a PO, select View in the row actions list. The PO Summary page appears with information on the PO. The fields on this page cannot be edited. To edit the PO, select Edit in the row actions list for a PO to open the PO Summary page and modify the following information:
- Additional vendor, billing, and shipping information
  The available shipping methods are configured by a code table. See Configuring Shipping Methods.
- A list of each PO line included in the PO
- Attachments to the PO
- Notes for the PO
When Integrate by ERP Number is selected for the Export Orders (PO) job (see Financial Systems), a PO's ERP number must be filled in for the PO to proceed to the next stage of the workflow. If ERP number is not filled in, the PO is sent to the ERP to receive a number, after which it is re-imported to Alma using the Import PO Approvals job. If the ERP number is filled in, the PO (after it is approved in Alma) is sent to the vendor and the ERP simultaneously. For more information, see Integrating POs with the ERP Number for Approval.
On the Approve Orders page, select each PO that you want to approve and send and select Approve and Send. You can approve and send individual POs by selecting Approve and Send in the row actions list for a specific PO.

(New for November) The user that selected Approve and Send is saved in the DB as the PO Line Approver ID. This field is also saved for a user that selects the Order Now action from the PO line. For PO's which are sent automatically by Alma, the PO Line Approver will be "System". This happens when the PO Lines - Packaging job creates the PO and sends it out, when using integration with ERP and in some cases in EOD.

The approved POs are sent to the relevant vendors as the Order List Letter. For information on the Order List Letter, see Configuring Alma Letters. You can view the Order List Letter from the Attachment tab of the PO and the vendor.

After sending a PO line, the expected activation date of the related resource is updated to the expected activation date of the PO line.

Resending POs

For PO lines that have not been canceled and whose Acquisition method is Purchase, you can resend the PO to the vendor by selecting Resend Order for the sent PO. This option is useful when the order was successfully sent by Alma, but due to technical reasons on the vendor's side was not properly received or was lost.

If Alma could not send an order, the order appears in the Orders in Review page with an alert. To resend the order, edit the order and select Save and Continue. See Reviewing POs.

For more information on resending a PO, see the Resend a Purchase Order video (1:50 mins).

Deleting POs

To delete a PO, select Delete PO in the row actions list and select Confirm in the confirmation pop-up window.

For instances of when you would want to delete a PO, see Deleting POs.

You can also delete a PO from the main menu by selecting Acquisitions > Purchase Order > Delete PO.