How to create a Blanket purchase order

A Blanker purchase order also called (BPO) is a purchase order which is a legal document and binding on the buyer for a commitment with a supplier.

You set up a fixed amount and till the time supplier remains below that amount, invoices can be processed against the purchase order.

Generally, buyers get approval for a blanket amount and then they keep on using that purchase order till the amount is consumed or the blanket purchase is not valid anymore.

Blanket orders make sense primarily for recurring services where the monthly amount is not fixed, so instead of raising a new PO every time, you can create a blanket purchase order

To create a new blanket order, click on Blanket from the New Order menu on the landing page. 

In case you don't see this Blanket option, contact your administrator so that they can assign you access.

Here are the options for creating a blanket order 

All the fields are similar to the standard purchase order. The main difference to note is the Blanket options 

Amount Based: Use this option when you don't know the unit cost of the service but you just want to have approval for a blanket amount. For example, you want catering services for monthly events but you don't know the exact amount till the event id done. 

Unit Price Based: Use this option when you want to restrict a vendor to a unit price as well as the overall amount. For example, you have hired a marketing consultant and she charge $100/hour but the actual work would be based on the project. In this case, you can create choose "Unit Price Based" 

Blanket order line items

Click on + Add item to add an item. You need at least one line to create a blanket purchase order. 

 Here is the description of the fields 

Description: Add a brief description about the service you are purchasing. 

Account: This is the chart of accounts. The value defaults from your user profile but you can change it to the appropriate value. 

Supplier: The name of the supplier

Category: Pick an appropriate category. Categories help you to identify the spend into buckets. 

Amount: That is the amount for which you are requesting approval.

Vendor amount: By default, the Amount field is shown to the vendor. Let's say you don't want to show the exact amount to the vendor then you can enter the amount you want to show to the vendor. 

Start date and end date of the service - Invoices can only be submitted within this date range 

After adding all the data, click on Submit to submit the blanket for approval