Purchasing provides the following Document Types:

Purchase Agreement, Purchase Order, Quotation, Release, Request for Quotation, and
Requisition.

Purchasing provides the following document subtypes:

Purchase Agreement - Blanket and Contract

Purchase Order - Planned and Standard
Quotation - Bid, Catalog, and Standard
Release - Blanket and Scheduled
Request for Quotation - Bid, Catalog, and Standard
Requisition - Internal and Purchase

Bid - The quotation or RFQ is for a specific fixed quantity, location, and date.
Catalog - The quotation or RFQ includes price breaks at different quantity levels.

Standard Purchase Orders

You generally create standard purchase orders for one-time purchase of various items.
You create standard purchase orders when you know the details of the goods or
services you require, estimated costs, quantities, delivery schedules, and accounting
distributions. If you use encumbrance accounting, the purchase order may be
encumbered since the required information is known.

Blanket Purchase Agreements

You create blanket purchase agreements when you know the detail of the goods or
services you plan to buy from a specific supplier in a period, but you do not yet know the
detail of your delivery schedules. You can use blanket purchase agreements to specify
negotiated prices for your items before actually purchasing them.

Blanket Releases

You can issue a blanket release against a blanket purchase agreement to place the
actual order (as long as the release is within the blanket agreement effectivity dates). If
you use encumbrance accounting, you can encumber each release.

Contract Purchase Agreements

You create contract purchase agreements with your suppliers to agree on specific terms
and conditions without indicating the goods and services that you will be purchasing.
You can later issue standard purchase orders referencing your contracts, and you can
encumber these purchase orders if you use encumbrance accounting.

Planned Purchase Orders

A planned purchase order is a long-term agreement committing to buy items or services

from a single source. You must specify tentative delivery schedules and all details for
goods or services that you want to buy, including charge account, quantities, and
estimated cost.

Scheduled Releases

You can issue scheduled releases against a planned purchase order to place the actual
orders. If you use encumbrance accounting, you can use the planned purchase order to
reserve funds for long term agreements. You can also change the accounting
distributions on each release and the system will reverse the encumbrance for the
planned purchase order and create a new encumbrance for the release.

Purchase Order Types Summary

Standard Planned Blanket Contract

Purchase Purchase Purchase Purchase
Order Order Agreement Agreement

Terms and Yes Yes Yes Yes

Conditions Known
Goods or Services Yes Yes Yes No
Known
Pricing Known Yes Yes Maybe No
Quantity Known Yes Yes No No
Account Yes Yes No No
Distributions
Known
Delivery Schedule Yes Maybe No No
Known
Can Be Yes Yes No No
Encumbered
Can Encumber N/A Yes Yes N/A
Releases

Quantit
Items
Schedule
Knowy
Autocreate/Manually Contract
Planned
Blanket
Std PO
Firmed Supplier
Known
n PO
Yes Enter PO No
 No

? Contract Purchase Agreement:

? Details of goods or services to be purchased are not known
? Terms and conditions are specified with your supplier
Yes
? You reference contract purchase agreements directly on
standard purchase order lines

? Blanket Purchase Agreement:

? Effective date and expiration date
? Long-term agreement:
? Details of goods or services are known:
? Dates of delivery are not known
? Actual purchases occur when a blanket release is issued

? Planned Purchase Order

? Dates of delivery tentatively scheduled
? Details of services or goods are known
? Actual purchases occur when a scheduled release is issued

? Standard Purchase Order

? Know details of purchase:
? One time purchases
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Approvals
Oracle Purchasing has a powerful Approval functionality which uses Workflow
to route Purchasing documents through hierarchies before it gets Approved.
There are two methods to route documents for approval.
 [1] Approval Hierarchies (uses job/positions)
[2] Employee/Supervisor Relationships
[1] Approval Hierarchies
=================
Approval Hierarchies are hierarchies that have a JOB/POSITION relationship.
Purchasing utilizes jobs and positions as a roadmap to determine how and
where documents will be routed once the approval process has been initiated.
It is first necessary to have created all positions that are going to be used in
the system. Once all positions have been created, it is necessary to build the position
hierarchy.
Each POSITION has an approval limits, so when a purchase order exceeds the
limits of the POSITION, the purchase order is forwarded onto the next POSITION in
the Hierarchy.
The hierarchy for JOB/POSITIONS is defined on the Position Hierarchy form.
When this is complete or is changed, the Fill Employee Hierarchy concurrent
process must be run for the new hierarchy to come into effect.
You must set up Positions if you plan to use either security or approval
hierarchies.
PO Navigator -> Setup -> Personnel -> Position Hierarchy

[2] Employee/Supervisor Relationships

========================
This type of hierarchy does not use the Approval Hierarchy form, but is
Defined by the employee /supervisor relationship.
The supervisor of an employee is defined on the Assignment zone of the
Employee form.
SELECTING AN APPROVAL ROUTING METHOD
============================
There are two forms that determine the route that an approval will take:
[1] Financial Options (PO -> Setup -> Options -> Financial -> Human
Resources)
[2] Document Types (PO -> Setup -> Purchasing Options -> Document
Types)
[1] Financial Options:
==============
The Human Resources zone on the Financial Options form has an option called
"Use Approval Hierarchies".
This option determines which type of hierarchy is used for the approval
process.
When checked, the Position Hierarchy is used and when unchecked the
Supervisor Hierarchy is used.

Receiving
Main features of Receiving
• Receiving is done against Purchase Orders, Internal Orders, Inter Org
Transfers and RMA’s.
• Use routing controls at the organization, supplier, item, or order level to
enforce material movement through receiving.
• Define receiving tolerances at the organization, supplier, item, and order
level, with the lowest level overriding previous levels.
You can define tolerances for receipt quantity, on–time delivery, and receiving
location.
• Use blind receiving to improve accuracy in the receiving process.
 With this option, the quantity due for each shipment does not show and
quantity control tolerances are ignored. Also, the quantity is not visible in view
windows or in reports.
• Use Express Receipt to receive an entire purchase order with a few
keystrokes.
• Use the Cascade function to distribute a given quantity of an item from a
single supplier across multiple shipments and distributions.
• Record receipt of unordered items based on your item, supplier, or
organization defaults.
• Record receipt of predefined substitute items if you set your receiving
options to allow this feature.
• Decide how you accrue un–invoiced receipts. For instance, you can accrue
receipts perpetually or at period–end for expense items.
• Receipt Routings help to decide how Receipts are done in Purchasing. The
Options are Direct, Inspection and
Standard.
Receiving
There are two Forms for doing Receipts Transactions. One is the Receipts
Form and the other is the Receiving Transactions Form.
Using the Receipts form, you can query Open Receipts and either receive
them to Final destination (for Direct Routing) or in Receiving Bay (for Standard
Routing or Inspection).
If the Receipt Routing is Standard or Inspection, you can complete the
Transaction in the Receiving Transactions form.
One can either do a maual line by line Receipt or for quick data entry, use
Express Receipts or Cascading functionality.
Using Express Receipts, you can do Receipts of all lines in one go.
The Cascade function facilitates the distribution of a given quantity of an item
from a single supplier across multiple shipments and distributions.
The process starts at the first displayed line and allocates the supply available
to receive/deliver to that line from the cascade quantity you entered. The process
continues to the next line and again allocates the quantity available to
receive/deliver, continuing until either the process reaches the last queried line or
the cascade quantity is exhausted.
Using Unordered Receipts, you can receive items from a supplier when you do
not have a corresponding purchase order but want to receive the items so you can
track them on the system while you wait for a buyer to decide which purchase order
to use.
Use the Find Unordered Receipts window to find the receipts or RMAs that are
available for matching. Then use the Match Unordered Receipts window to specify
the purchase order or RMA number, release, line, and shipment schedule to which
you want to match the unordered receipt.

There is an important profile in Purchasing that influences Receiving.

RCV: Receiving Processing : Batch, Online or Immediate.

Batch
If the RCV: Receiving Processing Mode profile option is set to Batch, this
means that the Receiving Transaction Processor process has to be kicked
off by the user.
'Receiving Transaction Processor' is a Concurrent request which the user
will initiate from the 'Requests' screen .
 OnLine
If the RCV: Receiving Processing Mode profile option is set to Online, this
means that the Receiving process is completed 'on line' and the user will see
any errors displayed as the transaction processes.

Immediate
If the RCV: Receiving Processor Mode profile option is set to Immediate,
this means that the 'Receiving Transaction Processor process will start itself,
after a Receipt has been entered and saved, i.e. either from the 'Receipts‘
(enter receipt)
form or 'Receiving Transactions' (deliver or inspect) form.
Read Note 209995.1 for debugging Receiving errors.
Corrections
Use the Receiving Corrections window to modify receiving transactions to
correct errors. You can correct any receiving transaction except another Correction
transaction.
You can enter positive or negative corrections to any receiving transaction.
Purchasing -> Receiving -> Corrections