The orders list

The Orders List View shows your purchase orders in one table. It is where you find orders, see what needs doing and add up what is committed; the order itself is where you change it.

Open it from the Orders menu, or with the list button above the orders on the Orders screen.

What it shows

It starts with the orders on the costing chosen at the top of the page, newest first.

Column	What it is
Order #	The order number. Click it, or anywhere on the row, to open the order over the list. Ctrl+click opens the full Orders page in a new tab.
Description, Supplier, Date	As entered on the order.
Status	Created, Approved, Sent, Billed (an invoice has been raised against it) or Voided.
Order value	What the order is for.
Invoiced	The supplier invoices raised against the order. Click the figure to see them.
Variance, Variance %	Order value less invoiced. Green is headroom; pink means more has been invoiced than ordered.

Order value, Invoiced and the variance columns only appear if your role can see costs and actual costs.

Columns chooses which columns you see - Comment is there too, off by default. Your choice is remembered on that computer. Click a column heading to sort by it, and again to reverse.

Flags

Small labels at the start of a row:

• Voided - cancelled and kept on record. Voided rows are greyed out.
• No contact - not sent, and no supplier contact is chosen, so it cannot be emailed. Open the order and choose one.
• Over - invoices against it add up to more than the order value.
• PDF - shows the purchase order PDF. Looking at it changes nothing: the order’s saved PDF, the one that goes to the supplier, stays as it was.
• Note - the order has an internal comment. Hover to read it; click to change it.

Finding an order

The controls above the table filter it as you type - there is no need to press Look Up.

To find	Use
An order by number, name or supplier	The Filter orders… box
One type of order	Categories
Orders at one stage	The status list: Approved, Unapproved, Approved Not Sent, Sent, Not-Sent, Billed, Not Billed, Voided, Not Voided
Orders on every job	The globe button (Show all). The table then also shows each order’s project and costing. Click it again to go back to this costing.

Show all covers every project you have access to. If an order you know exists is missing, check the filters first - a category or status left on from last time is the usual reason.

What needs attention

Above the table are counts across everything that matches your filter - every page, not just the one on screen:

Count	Meaning
awaiting approval	Not approved yet. An unapproved order cannot be emailed.
approved, not sent	Ready to go, but the supplier has not had it.
with no supplier contact	Not sent, and nobody to email it to.
sent 30+ days ago, no invoice	An invoice is missing, or the work did not happen and the order should be voided.
invoiced over value	More has been invoiced than ordered.
voided	Cancelled orders still on record.

Click awaiting approval, approved, not sent or voided to list only those orders; click it again to show them all.

Doing things from the list

Each row offers only what can be done to it next:

• Approve - on orders waiting for approval, if you can approve orders.
• Email - on approved orders not yet sent that have a supplier contact. It asks before sending.
• Invoice - raises a supplier invoice from the order, copying its lines.
• The comment button adds an internal comment. Comments are for your team: never printed on the order and never emailed.

To approve several at once, tick them and choose Approve selected. Each one is checked exactly as it would be on its own - an order with no items is not approved, and the message says which ones were not.

New order, the reports, Refresh, Generate all orders, Delete all unsent and Send all are at the top of the page as before, and the list updates when they finish.

The filtered total

Under the table, Filtered total adds up every order that matches your filter, across all pages:

• Order value leaves voided orders out, because they are no longer committed.
• Invoiced includes invoices against voided orders, because that money was still spent.
• Variance is the difference between the two.

That is your committed figure for whatever you filtered to - one category, one supplier (type the supplier’s name in the filter box), or every job with Show all.

Exporting

CSV downloads the rows on screen as a spreadsheet, with plain numbers Excel can add up. To export more rows, set Show at the bottom of the table to 500 first.

Check what the export contains before it goes anywhere outside the office - a commitments list shows what you are paying your subcontractors, which is not information a client needs.

A monthly routine

1. Turn on Show all to see every job.
2. Click approved, not sent - send them, or find out why not.
3. If sent 30+ days ago, no invoice shows a count, choose Sent in the status list and sort by Date to find them. Chase the invoice or void the order.
4. Look for rows flagged Over - agree a variation or query the invoice.
5. Void anything that is not going ahead.

Five minutes, and it keeps the committed figure honest - which is what everything in Committed vs actual cost depends on.