General Contractor

All-

We've recently started increasing our usage and tracking of PO's for materials.  One question we are running into is how much detail is enough?    PM's understand the need for accuracy but want less detail, fewer line items.   Sales / Estimators are listing, for good reason, all the materials they are estimating.  Some orders are super simple.    But some are longer.   

So, for example, an ABC Supply sales order might have 10-12 line items sometimes.  Some of those items go to similar Cost Codes, so lets say 3 CC's over 10-12 items.   

How are you using PO's ?

• Are PO's a lump sum (grouped by CC)?  with the detail being checked on the Sales Order?
• or Are you listing each line item for purchase on the PO? (replicating the Sales Order)
• Is accounting entering the bill against the PO, and PM's approve.... or the PM does it all

Its getting cumbersome quickly.  Thank you for your feedback!

-AA

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Andrew Amrhein
Controller
Florida Certified Contractors
St. Augustine FL
(904) 824-2301
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Great topic, AA. This is the classic bottleneck we see when companies start scaling up their purchasing.

We usually push for summarizing by Cost Code.

If you try to replicate the Sales Order line-for-line, you're just creating a data entry nightmare for AP. We try to teach PMs that a PO is a financial bucket, not a shopping list.

Using your ABC Supply example: If that order has 12 items but they all fall under "Roofing Material" and "Safety," the PO should just have those 2 lines.

As long as the Total $ matches the bill (within a small tolerance), AP processes it without flagging every 50-cent variance on a box of nails. Usually keeps the PMs happy because it's faster to enter, but keeps the costs hitting the right GL.

Hope that helps!

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Raphael Merlo
Fractional CFO
Bond CFO
Birmingham MI
(313) 566-3254
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Andrew,

We are a large company that is PO based. Our Purchasing department does about 80% of the buyout up front and creates detailed POs with many lines for materials, even if some go against the same phase codes. Job sites are responsible for maintaining their POs and updating them with PO change orders to keep committed cost correct. Since we have controls in place on who can create POs along with limits, we require jobs to receive against the POs that they maintain on a daily basis. Our ERP system allows Receipts applied against POs to post costs as they are entered so we don't have to wait for invoices. AP initializes invoices against POs/Receivers and if there is a match they post and pay based on terms - no approvals needed. If there is a mismatch they work with jobs to correct the issues. Since most of our jobs do have large amounts of materials received regularly they maintain spreadsheets for their own purposes which we have created imports into our ERP to easily update the Receivers. Everyone has a role in the process but having actual costs posted daily and committed cost accurate it allows our project managers to do Cost Projections much easier (along with other job components they manage).

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Paul West
Director of Enterprise Applications
The Middlesex Companies
Orlando FL
(407) 515-3585
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