Edit purchase transactions

If you have Edit permissions to Purchasing transactions, you can edit most details for a transaction that has a state of Draft, Declined, or Pending.

Subscription

Purchasing

Regional availability

All regions
User type

Business

Employee

Project Manager

Warehouse
Permissions

Purchasing transactions: List, View, Edit, Delete, Add
Restrictions
  • An Employee user must be associated with an Employee record.

  • Employee users have the following access to transactions, depending on their permissions:

    • List, View, Add, Edit, and Delete: Can create, change, and delete transactions with a type of Quote, such as purchase requisitions. Can create and edit other transaction types in draft state only.

    • List and View: Can only list and view transactions with a type of Quote.

If Purchasing is configured with the Restrict employee user access to purchase documents enabled, Employee users are limited to only seeing the Quote type transactions that they created.
  • Project Manager users can List or View all applicable transactions. See Generate invoices for Projects for additional permissions related to project invoices
  • The user must not be excluded from user or user group access rights for the transaction definition.

The following table describes the conditions under which you cannot edit a transaction and gives possible solutions to enable you to edit the transaction:

Condition Possible solution

If the transaction definition Edit policy is set to "No edit".

Change the Edit policy on the transaction definition.

If you have previously printed a document for the transaction and the transaction definition Edit policy is set to prohibit the edit of a transaction after a document has been printed.

Change the Edit policy on the transaction definition.

If the transaction definition has Enable edit of supplier is set to "Never"

This restricts users from changing the supplier in Draft and Pending transactions.

Change the Enable edit of supplier setting on the transaction definition.

If the transaction requires approval and is in the approval cycle (the state of the transaction is Submitted or Partially Approved).

Do one of the following:

  • Delete the transaction and create a new one that contains the modifications.
  • Wait for the transaction to be approved or declined.

You can also check the approval history to see who needs to provide approval and ask that person to decline the transaction to end the approval cycle faster. To find the next approve:

  1. Select Edit or View next to the transaction.
  2. On the History tab, select the Approval history link.

When you edit and resubmit a declined transaction, it enters the approval cycle.

If you edit and resubmit an approved transaction, it enters the approval cycle only if the purchasing approval configuration on the Configure Purchasing page is set to require a new approval cycle if an approved transaction is modified.

If the transaction has been converted to another transaction.

Delete the downstream transaction. For example, if you want to edit a purchase order that has been converted to a PO purchase invoice, delete the PO purchase invoice.

If an actual landed cost has been linked to the transaction.

Delete the transactions that have actual landed costs linked to the transaction. To find the transactions with actual landed costs linked to the transaction:

  1. Go to the History tab on the transaction.
  2. In the Adjustment history section, select the first link where the Transaction name starts with SYS-LC Actuals Adj Incr. The system-generated inventory adjustment transaction that added the actual landed cost to the item valuation appears.
  3. Select the History tab in the system-generated inventory adjustment transaction.
  4. In the Landed cost details section, note the name of the transaction used to enter the actual landed cost (in the Landed cost transaction column).
  5. Repeat steps 2 to 4 to find all the transactions with actual landed costs that are linked to the original purchase.
  6. Delete the transactions with the actual landed costs that you found.

If an inventory adjustment has been linked to the transaction.

Delete the inventory adjustment. To find the inventory adjustments that are linked to the transaction, go to the History tab on the transaction and look in the Adjustment history section.

If the fiscal period is closed.

Open the fiscal period.

If the transaction is shared within a multi-entity company.

Shared transactions can only be edited at the top level.

If you display the transaction list at the entity level, you might see shared transactions. However, these transactions will be listed as "Not owned" by the entity and the Edit option won't appear.

If you have the appropriate permissions, go to the top level to edit the transaction.

If the transaction includes an actual landed cost that's been linked to a source transaction that's now in a closed period.

Open the fiscal period for the source transaction.

If your company is subscribed to the Taxes application and the transaction has been included in a tax return (VAT return or Business Activity Statement) that was prepared and submitted to a government authority using the tax submission process.

Enter an adjusting transaction.

If you edit only the following fields when you update a transaction and select Post, the transaction is saved instead of reposted:

  • Shipping method
  • Item description
  • Custom fields that have unique IDs from the custom fields on the AP supplier invoice

The exception is that if the transaction definition was changed after the last time the transaction was posted, then the system will repost the transaction after the edit.

  1. Open the applicable transaction list.
  2. Find the transaction you want to edit.
    3. If you're an Employee user, you'll see only the purchase requisitions and quotes that you created.
  3. Select More actions > Edit at the end of the row.
  4. Edit the transaction details as needed. See Field descriptions for details about each field.
  5. Do one of the following:
    • Select Post to repost the transaction. The transaction has a State of Pending and is ready for the next step in your workflow.
    • If the transaction has a State of Draft and you are not ready to post, select Draft to keep the transaction is the State of Draft.
  1. Open the applicable transaction list.
  2. Find the transaction and select Edit.
    3. If you're an Employee user, you'll see only the purchase requisitions and quotes that you created.
  3. Edit the transaction details as needed. See Field descriptions for details about each field.
  4. Do one of the following:
    • Select Post to repost the transaction. The transaction has a State of Pending and is ready for the next step in your workflow.
    • If the transaction has a State of Draft and you are not ready to post, select Draft to keep the transaction is the State of Draft.

Close or reopen transactions

A transaction remains in a Pending state if there are potentially other transaction types to which this transaction can be converted and the Partial conversion handling option in the transaction definition is set to Leave transaction open.

For example, many workflows include a purchasing debit memo as the last transaction in the workflow. When you post a PO purchase invoice, its status is set to Pending so that you can convert it to a purchasing debit memo in the future, if necessary. In this scenario, the Pending PO purchase invoice requires no action on your part and stays Pending indefinitely.

For transactions that were either partially converted or will never be fulfilled, the best practice to close transactions is to set up and use a close out workflow. See Close an obsolete purchase order for more information.

Close a transaction

You can manually change the state of a Pending transaction to Closed to stop the workflow for that transaction. Closing a transaction does not change any GL effect of the transaction and does not affect reporting.

  1. Open the applicable transaction in Edit mode.
  2. From the State dropdown menu, select Closed.
  3. Select Post.

Reopen a transaction

If you manually closed a transaction and now you need to convert the transaction to another transaction, you can edit the transaction and change the State from Closed to Pending to resume the workflow for that transaction. However, there must be another transaction definition in the workflow in this scenario. Otherwise, changing a transaction's State from Closed to Pending does not accomplish anything.

If the State of the transaction you want to open is Converted, you cannot edit the transaction. To reopen a transaction that has a State of Converted, delete the downstream transaction.

For example, if you want to edit a purchase order that's been converted to a PO purchase invoices, delete the PO purchase invoice.

Learn more about transaction states.