Purchase orders are a fundamental part of the end-to-end accounts payable process within a company and help businesses provide transparency when managing their resources and relationships with suppliers.
Specifics
All authorized employees and roles (employees with access to the purchase) can:
Attach purchase documents
Upload and link invoices to purchases
Add purchase comments
View the purchase activity
Submit the respective expenses for approval
Payhawk administrators manage the purchase numbering conventions, discrepancy rules, approval workflows, and receipt requirements for expense categories.
Lifecycle of purchases
Each purchase in Payhawk follows stages that are managed by authorized people or roles based on workflows that are defined by your company's Payhawk administrators - for example, skipping the review or approval step.
The following table summarizes the purchase stages and their corresponding tabs in the Purchases app. It also specifies the actions available at each stage and the roles authorized to perform them.
Status (step and tab) | Actions, roles, and responsibilities |
Submit | This tab contains purchases that are not submitted or have been returned to the employee.
From here, requesters and authorized employees and roles can:
Once submitted, the purchase will automatically:
|
Review | This tab contains purchases that are submitted but not reviewed, or are returned for review.
From here, reviewers and authorized employees and roles can:
Once reviewed, the purchase will automatically:
|
Approve | This tab contains purchases that are reviewed but not approved yet.
From here, approvers and authorized employees and roles can:
Once approved, the purchase will automatically:
|
Receive | This tab contains purchases that are approved but not fully received.
From here, authorized employees and roles can:
Once the receive status of all purchase items has become N/A, Full, or Discrepancy, the purchase will automatically move under the Invoice tab.
|
Invoice | This tab contains purchases whose items are fully received (that is, have the N/A, Full, or Discrepancy received status), but the purchase is not yet invoiced.
From here, authorized employees and roles can perform the same actions that are available at the Receive step.
Once the invoiced status of all purchase items has become Full or Discrepancy, the purchase will automatically move under the Pay tab. |
Pay | This tab contains purchases whose items are fully received (that is, have the N/A, Full, or Discrepancy received status) and invoiced (that is, have the Full or Discrepancy invoiced status), but one or more associated invoices are still not paid.
From here, authorized employees and roles can perform the same actions that are available at the Invoice step.
Once the invoiced status of all purchase items has become Full or Discrepancy, the purchase will automatically:
|
Close | This tab contains the purchases whose items are received and invoiced (that is, have the Full or Discrepancy invoiced status), but the purchase is not yet closed.
From here, authorized employees and roles can perform the same actions that are available at the Receive and Invoice step.
Once the purchase has been manually closed, it will automatically move under the All tab.
|
All | This tab contains all purchases regardless of their above-mentioned statuses.
|
Matching purchases with receipts and invoices before payment
Purchases for goods require a testimonial of delivery in the form of a Goods Received Note (GRN) - or receipt note. The supplier then sends an invoice to the buyer requesting payment for the delivered goods or services. The invoice is automatically linked to the purchase by extracting its number from the invoice through the Payhawk optical character recognition (OCR) feature. If the number of the purchase is not on the invoice, you have to add it manually by clicking on the Purchase order number drop-down menu and selecting the number.
As a result, a three-way matching accounting process is automatically performed by Payhawk, meaning that the system checks the quantity between the purchase and the receipt note, and then the net amount on the purchase and the supplier's invoice before the payment is executed.
Purchases that do not require a GRN (receipt note) trigger a two-way matching process. The Payhawk system automatically checks the net amount on the purchase and the supplier's invoice.
Depending on the internal policy of your company, the organization may require receipt notes for purchases for both goods and services.
Useful resources