Working with Purchase Orders
Mouse Tracks also includes a way to track equipment that you're purchasing. From writing the purchase orders to receiving the items into inventory, you can effectively track your IT purchases. After using the purchasing portion of Mouse tracks, you will be able to generate spending reports by Cost Center, spending reports by Vendor and have an organized way to receive your purchases.
Defining Shipping Methods
From the Data Menu, choose Miscellaneous Tables -- Shipping Methods.
Defining Messages to Vendors
From the Data Menu, choose Miscellaneous Tables -- Messages to Vendors.
Defining Ship To Addresses
From the Data Menu, choose Miscellaneous Tables -- Ship To Addresses.
Defining Cost Centers
From the Data Menu, choose Miscellaneous Tables -- Cost Centers.
Warning: Cost Centers have fields that can store credit card information. It is not recommended that you type in the full credit card number unless you know that your database has sufficient security levels (Standard Edition Microsoft Access databases do not). To track purchases to credit cards, you may want to enter your credit card numbers in a masked format (e.g., "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1234"). If you are using SQL Server your DBA, Mouse Tracks Administrators and Mouse Tracks Users with 'Purchaser' Access will all have access to this information. This information also is displayed on printed purchase orders.
Defining Terms
From the Data Menu, choose Miscellaneous Tables -- PO Terms.
Defining Vendors
From the Data Menu, choose Miscellaneous Tables -- Vendors.
Adding Purchase Orders
To add a purchase order to Mouse Tracks, click the Add command from the purchase order list.
Purchase Order Numbers
By default, Mouse Tracks will attempt to add 1 to the most recent purchase order number. Therefore, if the most recent number were 1000, the suggested number would be 1001. However, it also will suggest numbers for alphanumeric purchase order numbers. If it fails to add 1 to the purchase order number, it will then try to add 1 to the rightmost numeric string. For example, if the most recent purchase order number is SAR1099, it will suggest SAR1100. If there are no numeric numbers on the right-hand side of the string, it will then try to find a numeric string on the left-hand side of the number. For example, if the most recent purchase order number were 1099SAR, Mouse Tracks would suggest 1100SAR. If the most recent purchase order number doesn't have a numeric beginning or ending, Mouse Tracks will not suggest a purchase order number and you will need to manually enter one.
Setting up Purchase Order Defaults
Have a Mouse Tracks administrator open the Configure Mouse Tracks form. Switch to the Purchasing tab to make changes to your company information, the default tax rate, and the tax ID number that appear on the purchase order. From this form, the administrator can also access the purchase order related tables and setup the late and warning highlight colors that appear on the purchase order list form. If a Mouse Tracks administrator has selected a company logo for your database, the logo will appear in the upper left hand corner of your printed purchased orders.
Mouse Tracks gives you a choice of two different purchase order forms. The 'Portrait' purchase order is similar to the PO used in Mouse Tracks 3.0 and earlier and has room for more line items per page than the Landscape PO. The primary difference for the 'Landscape' PO is that it includes the line item's cost center on each line. As the names suggest, the PO's will print with the selected orientation.
Duplicating a purchase order
You can quickly duplicate a purchase order record by clicking the duplicate record command on the purchase order list. When you click this command, you will be prompted for a new purchase order number. You can also select the option to have the line items copied to the new purchase order.
When you duplicate a purchase order, all duplicated line items will be set to 'Not Received'. Also, the purchase order date will default to the current day, and the purchase order deliver by date will default to the following day.
Closing Purchase Orders
A Purchase order is only closed once all items in the purchase order have been received. If you start creating a purchase order and do not add any line items, this will also be considered closed. As long as there are line items in a purchase order that are not received, the purchase order will be marked as open.
There are three ways to close line items in purchase orders:
Deleting Purchase Orders
To delete a purchase order from Mouse Tracks, select the records from the purchase order list and then click the Delete command. Make sure you want to delete the purchase order (see Closing Purchase Orders above).
Working with line items
When the purchase order detail form is open, you will see a list of line items for the purchase order. You can have a maximum of 30 line items for a single purchase order. The purchase order form will print on multiple pages if it can't fit all items on the same page.
To edit or add a line item, double click on the line item detail record.
To delete purchase order line item details, select the line item details and then click the 'Delete Item' command.
Notes:
The line item number in the list does not necessarily correspond to the placement of the line on the printed purchase order. If you leave blank lines in the purchase order, they will be discarded when the purchase order prints. The items will however, print in the order they are listed within the line item detail section.
Each line item can have a Cost Center associated with it. This is a new feature in Mouse Tracks 2002. For reporting purposes, keep in mind that the tax for the entire purchase order is applied to the primary Cost Center account on the Purchase Order Detail form.
Individual line items can either be taxable, or not taxable. However, the taxable status of the entire purchase order overrides line item settings. Therefore, if the purchase order is tax exempt, and a line item is marked as taxable, no tax will be added. Tax will only be added to the order if the purchase order is taxable, and at least one line item is marked as taxable.
Attaching Files to Purchase Order Records
Mouse Tracks 2007 Introduces the powerful ability of file attachments. The following steps will teach you how to attach electronic quotes, estimates, or any other files associated with the purchase order record.
The file is now stored in the database with the associated purchase order.
For more information on Attachments see Working with File Attachments.
Record History
Mouse Tracks records any changes made to a purchase order record in the purchase order history tab.
At this time the purchase order forms used in Mouse Tracks is not designed for modification. However, you can change the margins and the default paper size. To do this, open the Report List, select the Purchasing option, find the 'Purchase Order' entry and click Design. Then, click the Page Setup command to set the default margins and paper size for the Purchase Order report.
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