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Purchasing provides you with the features you need to satisfy your receipt, inspection, transfer, and delivery needs. You should be able to:

• Use routing controls at the organization, supplier, item, or order level to enforce material movement through receiving. For example, you can require inspection for some items and dock-to-stock receipt for others. See: Receiving Controls, Options, and Profiles.

• 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. You can assign looser tolerances to low-value items that you consume at high volumes. You can set enforcement options to ignore, warn the user, or reject transactions that violate the tolerances. See: Receiving Controls, Options, and Profiles.

• 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. However, if you choose to have visible receiving, then your receiving staff can see the quantity due. See: Receiving Controls, Options, and Profiles.

• Use Express Receipt to receive an entire purchase order with a few keystrokes. You can exclude certain lines for express transactions. See: Express Receipts and Receiving Transactions

• Use Advance Shipment Notices (ASNs) to enter receipts in the Enter Receipts window, reducing data entry time. See: Advance Shipment Notices.

• Use the Cascade function to distribute a given quantity of an item from a single supplier across multiple shipments and distributions. This function is enabled by a Receiving Options checkbox, Allow Cascade Transactions, and is available only when you have specified a source and an item in the Find Expected Receipts window. See: Cascading Receipts and Receiving Transactions.

• Specify invoice matching controls. You can specify two-, three-, and four-way matching on a purchase order line. Purchasing uses your receiving and inspection information to ensure that you only accept and pay for the items you order. Choose three-way matching if you want to receive items before you allow payment. Choose four-way matching if you require inspection and acceptance of receipts before authorizing payment. See: Receiving Controls, Options, and Profiles.

• Print the receiving and inspection documentation you need. For example, you can print Receipt Travelers. Also, you can prepare for incoming receipts by printing the Expected Receipts Report to help you identify items and quantities you expect to receive. You can use this report to plan your work, identify receipts satisfying an urgent demand, and control unexpected receipts. Finally, you can produce summary and detail receiving transaction reports by item, supplier, purchase order number, and/or receiving date range. See: Receiving Reports.

• Track, update, and record the receipt of intransit and inter-organization shipments.

• Enter different types of receipt transactions based on your organization's needs. For example, you should be able to record in one transaction a direct receipt of inventory items into inventory.

• Record receipt of unordered items based on your item, supplier, or organization defaults. For example, if your organization does not allow receipt of unordered items, you should not be able to enter a receipt unless it is matched to an order shipment. See: Unordered Receipts.

• Record receipt of predefined substitute items if you set your receiving options to allow this feature. You define the acceptable substitutes during setup for the items you purchase. See: Receiving Controls, Options, and Profiles.

• Automatically update related supply information, inventory balances, WIP operations, requisition details, and purchase order details while entering a single receiving transaction.

• You can record transfers of inventory items from receiving and inspection to inventory or to the shop floor. You can also record transfers of items to different locations in the receiving and inspection area. For example, you might need to move refrigerated items from the receiving dock into a cold storage area while you are waiting to inspect them. Purchasing lets you record these types of transfers in the same window you use to deliver to stock or expense.

• Record receipts against services and labor. You can enter either the total value of services received, or the amount of services tied to an invoice. For example, you might receive 40 hours of consulting services.

• Receive services, inventory, expense, and outside processing items using one screen. You acknowledge receipt of services by receiving amounts of the service, generally related to receipt of an invoice. You receive inventory items to expense or asset subinventories, you receive expense items to the requestor, and you receive outside processing to the shop floor (designated operations in your manufacturing process).

• Distinguish closed for invoicing from closed for receiving. Purchasing automatically closes your purchase order for receipt when it is fully received. You can manually close partially received purchase orders if you no longer expect any more receipts against them. Close for invoicing and close for receiving are managed using tolerances. You can specify that when you have received a certain percentage of a shipment, Purchasing will close the receipt. This is a soft close, and you can reopen the receipt. Purchasing rolls up closing to the line and header level, and "Closed" information does not show in the Open Purchase Orders Report. Also, if there is a remaining balance, closed quantities are no longer visible as supply scheduled receipts to MRP/ATP.

• Decide how you accrue un-invoiced receipts. For instance, you can accrue receipts perpetually or at period-end for expense items. Purchasing uses perpetual accrual for your inventory and shop floor item receipts. Purchasing and Inventory together provide you with perpetual visibility and control on your accrued liabilities for inventory items. Inventory lets you maintain the value of your inventories on a perpetual basis. And Purchasing automatically records your accrued liability in your general ledger as you enter receiving transactions. Purchasing also provides you with complete visibility and control of your inventories values, accrued liabilities for inventory and non-inventory items, purchase price variances, and invoice price variances. And Purchasing provides you with the information you need to facilitate your period close and your inventory, purchasing, and payables reconciliation process. See: Overview of Receipt Accounting.

• Identify and handle hazardous materials. You can use attachments to provide detailed handling instructions. Purchasing displays hazardous material information in the receiving, transfer, and inspection windows as well as on the Receipt Traveler. See: Purchasing Hazardous Materials.

• Track the quantity and destination of internally delivered items. You know exactly what items you receive and where to deliver them within your organization.

• Define detailed rules for locator within subinventories for the disposition of inventory receipts. See: .Defining Stock Locators.

• Track lot and serially controlled items. See: Control Numbers.

• Define which of your items require inspection. Purchasing lets you inspect received items before you move the items into stock or deliver them to the requestor. You can accept or reject items and provide detailed information about your inspection results. Purchasing lets you review your inspection results on-line. You can review your inspection results by receipt number, purchase order number, supplier, item, and/or transaction date range. Purchasing also provides summary and detail reports to help you analyze your suppliers' performance. You can produce supplier quality reports by buyer, supplier, and item. You can use the receiving inspection register to review your inspections by receipt. See: Inspections.

• Record returns to suppliers. You can return items that are damaged on receipt or that fail your inspection process. If you return items that you have already delivered to inventory, Purchasing automatically updates the inventory stock levels. See: Returns.

• Correct receiving transaction errors. Purchasing automatically updates the inventory balances if you correct the quantities of items that have already been moved into inventory. See: Corrections.

• Use flexible search criteria to choose receipts for review.

• View receipts details. You should be able to view all the details of your receipt, including matching purchase order and shipment information.

• Perform transactions with minimal effort. For example, you can record a complete receipt with only a few mouse clicks.

• Use attachments throughout the receiving process to more completely identify transactions and to inform users of special requirements. See: Attaching Notes to Purchasing Documents.

• Record drop shipments as receipts once the supplier informs you that the drop shipment has been delivered to the customer. See: Drop Shipments.

• Receive purchase orders for kanban replenishment requests that were generated from Oracle Inventory. Once you record delivery of a kanban item through the Receipts or Receiving Transactions windows, Inventory automatically receives a status of Full for the order, indicating that the inventory supply has been replenished. See: Kanban Replenishments.