Micropodcast: MS Office Accounting Part One

MicroPodCast – Podcasts for Microsoft Office Accounting Users. Useful bookkeeping, software, and business tips for MS Office Accounting users, consultants, and business owners.

Today is the first day of our new series of tips for MS Office accounting users. Our Topic today is Creating Purchase Orders

Purchase orders are often the first step in the purchase flow in Office Accounting Professional by providing the vendor with a written order for products or services.

The purchase order is in many ways similar to a sales order, except that it does not contain tax information. It tells the vendor what you want to order and the prices and terms you expect to get.

Like quotes and sales orders, purchase orders are not posted as financial transactions. Rather they represent a request for a purchase at desired prices and terms.

There are several noticeable things about a purchase order:

Purchase documents do not contain sales tax information.
A purchase order can be modified until it is fully received.
Only service- and non-inventory items that have the “I sell this item” box checked can be selected on purchase documents. Inventory items (Office Accounting Professional only) are always available as they are defined as items purchased for resale.
When you receive the items on the purchase order, you can create an item receipt (or more item receipts if the order arrives in batches) directly from the purchase order (using the Receive Items button).
Just like sales documents, the purchase order can be printed and sent or emailed to the vendor.

Tip: If you want to create a drop-ship purchase order where the items ordered are shipped directly to your customer (or a construction site), simply type the customer name and address into the shipping address and the order will be sent directly to your customer.

If you are using Microsoft's Office Accounting, you may want to download & print our series for future reference or as a guide to using the new MS Office Accounting software.

I hope these Microsoft Office Accounting tips are helpful. If you are using QuickBooks, check out our new QuickBooks series or visit The QuickBooks Gal podcasts.

Next time: Sales Orders

If you have questions, drop us a line at info@custmbiz.com. We look forward to your comments and questions. Custom Business Solutions supports many software accounting packages such as QuickBooks and Peachtree as well as a variety of Point of Sales programs.