Purchase order statuses and versions
This unit describes the various statuses that a purchase order can have up to the time when it's confirmed. It also describes when new versions of a purchase order are made available to the vendor. The behavior varies, depending on whether you use change management for purchase orders or not.
Versions and statuses without using change management
The following list shows an example of the changes in status and version that a purchase order might go through.
- The initial version of the purchase order is created in Supply Chain Management - The status is Approved.
- The purchase order is sent to the vendor - A version is registered in the vendor collaboration interface, and the status is changed to In external review.
- The vendor sends an Accepted with changes response - The status is still In external review.
- You make some changes that the vendor requested - The state is changed to Approved.
- You send the new version of the purchase order to the vendor - A new version is registered in the vendor collaboration interface, and the status is changed to In external review.
- The vendor accepts the new version of the purchase order - The status is still In external review, unless the vendor account is configured to automatically set purchase orders to the Confirmed status when the vendor accepts them.
Vendors don't have to confirm a purchase order by using the vendor collaboration interface. They can also send an email or communicate their acceptance of a purchase order through other channels. You can then manually confirm the order in Supply Chain Management.
In this case, you receive a warning that states that the order is being confirmed even though there is no response from the vendor. The purchase order then appears in the confirmation history as an Open confirmed order that doesn't have any responses. At this point, the vendor no longer has the option to confirm or reject the purchase order.
The version of the purchase order that is available to other processes in Supply Chain Management is always the latest version, even if that version hasn't yet been registered in the vendor collaboration interface.
Versions and statuses with change management enabled
If change management is enabled for purchase orders, they go through an approval workflow to reach the Approved status. This process isn't visible to the vendor.
The following list shows an example of the changes in status and version that a purchase order might go through when change management is turned on. A version is registered when the purchase order is approved, not when the purchase order is sent to the vendor or confirmed.
- The initial version of the purchase order is created in Supply Chain Management - The status is Draft.
- The purchase order is submitted to the approval process (the approval process is an internal process that the vendor isn't involved in) - The status is changed from Draft to In Review to Approval if the PO isn't rejected during the approval process. The approved purchase order is registered as a version.
- The purchase order is sent to the vendor - The version is registered in the vendor collaboration interface, and the status is changed to In external review.
- You make some changes that the vendor requested, either manually or by using the Process PO update action on the response to update the purchase order - The status is changed back to Draft.
- The purchase order is submitted to the approval process again - The status is changed from Draft to In Review to Approval if the purchase order isn't rejected during the approval process. Alternatively, the system can be configured so that specific field changes don't require re-approval. In this case, the status is first changed to Draft and is then automatically updated to Approved. The approved purchase order is registered as a new version.
- You send the new version of the purchase order to the vendor - The new version is registered in the vendor collaboration interface, and the status is changed to In external review.