Purchases

• Approve bills and purchase orders

  Approvals shows everything waiting on your decision across bills and purchase orders, and each row opens the document — the decision is made looking at it, not from the list. What needs approving is set by policies: amount bands per document type, naming either specific people or anyone holding a permission, with either all of them or any one required. Bands cannot overlap, so exactly one policy applies to any amount, and if none covers it, submitting approves the document immediately. Editing policies needs approval_policies.manage, deliberately separate from being able to approve.

• Pay a supplier, and apply it across their bills

  A payment belongs to the supplier, not to one bill, so a single bank transfer can settle several of their invoices at once — pick the supplier under Pay Bills, tick the bills being paid, and the total is worked out from what you enter against each. Only approved bills appear, because an unapproved bill is not yet a payable. Paying a single bill from its own page does the same thing behind the scenes. Cancelling a payment reverses every bill it settled, not just the one you opened it from, and needs a reason that stays on the record.

• Photograph a receipt and turn it into a bill

  Capture a receipt from Purchases → Receipts and it is saved immediately, image and all, whether or not anything can read it. If automatic reading is on, the figures are transcribed in the background as suggestions — never as verified — and the list says while a read is running. Review shows the image beside the figures with checks that must pass first: a supplier is chosen, subtotal and tax add up, and you tick to say they match the image. That tick is the confirmation; saving alone does not confirm. A receipt charged in another currency also needs the rate you paid at. Only then can it become a DRAFT bill, which still needs approval.

• Raise a purchase order

  A purchase order records what you have committed to buy before anything arrives. It is raised as a draft on the web, then submitted and approved — approving is a separate permission from raising, so the person who orders need not be the one who authorises the spending. An approved order can be marked as sent to the supplier and received against; it cannot be edited, so correcting one means rejecting it back to draft. Three separate statuses track it: approval, delivery and invoicing, because an order can be approved with nothing delivered, or delivered and never invoiced.

• Record a delivery against an order

  A delivery is recorded against the purchase order it belongs to — open an approved order and choose Receive delivery, and each line starts at what is still expected rather than what was originally ordered, so a second delivery cannot duplicate the first. Saving records a draft and moves no stock: posting is a separate step with its own permission, which is what lets a warehouse record what arrived and somebody else confirm it. Lot, serial and expiry numbers are captured here rather than on the invoice, because this is where the goods are in hand. Undoing a posted delivery needs a reversal with a reason, and it is refused if the stock has since been sold or moved.

• Record what you owe a supplier

  Bills are the purchase side of invoices: what you owe rather than what you are owed. A new bill starts as a draft and is not yet a payable — it has to be submitted and approved before any payment can be applied to it, and if no approval policy covers the amount, submitting approves it immediately. An approved bill is locked from editing; reject it back to draft to change it. Payments are made to the SUPPLIER rather than to one bill, so a single payment can settle several bills at once, and each bill shows only its own share.