Help us improve

It makes absolutely no sense to require a company to generate a purchase order outside of Kashflow and then enter all of the information again once the bill has been received. This should be integral to the process just as the Quote to Invoice is on the sales module.

We would welcome the ability to issue and record purchase orders separately within Kashflow and convert them to a goods receipt invoice once the items had been received.

Hey Kashflow - atually this is a broader issue. What is really needed is an integrated way of creating cash flow forecasts.

This involves creating potential sales orders/invoices and potential purchase orders/invoices plus the ability to edit/convert to real ones plus appropriate reporting.

Without a cash flow facility, we are just investing time and effort in fulfilling statutory requirements with zero business benefit. All pain and no gain !

Given the number of votes for this feature request we are considering prioritising it onto our roadmap. To help facilitate this, we would like to reach out to KashFlow users like yourselves in order to understand precisely what you need from this feature in order to drive our design and solution. Please leave comments below and if you would like to take part in a conference call with our research and design team please state your interest below.

KashFlow Product Team

Absolutely agree Julie. This is why I���m in the process of changing to XERO.
KF is causing me no end of problems that are not being addressed.
Good luck. Danni

If it's not about making a new partnership and hence royalties / commission, then Kashflow tend not to be interested in what users need.  They have our data and know how difficult it would be to migrate elsewhere so they focus on what makes them profit.

Hi AF, Purchases in KashFlow are what you refer to as Purchase Invoices - we are planning to introduce Purchase Orders in the sense you refer to them as but this is a long term plan so I am unable to give you a date.

Purchase Orders At present it appears that using Purchase Orders affects the figures in the P&L and Balance Sheet (Creditors Report & Stock). This is incorrect as no affect should be made to the financials until either the goods are received or the purchase invoice is posted. You have an option on the sales side (i.e. Sales Orders), which would suffice for the purchase order side.

This has been marked as Planned for a very long time. Do you know when this will be available, as some clients are looking to move to other packages which deal with purchase ordering

I flagged this issue up many years ago
and nothing has ever changed on it. Just like so many other
annoying issues in KF. Its ironic that Julie says its not
intended to be used as a Purchase Order system when the default
heading for purchase PDFs is 'Purchase Order' and there is an
option for: "Give me a button on each of my purchases to print
it as a Purchase Order". Although I can't see ticking this or
not makes any difference to the purchases.

Basic things like this, including
Pro-forma invoices as mentioned before, are just never addressed
by the KF team. Instead development goes into more integration
with other packages which I'll never use.

Giles Parker

Hi Neil, the Purchases section in KashFlow is to record purchases - by entering supplier invoices as Purchases. It is not intended to be used as a Purchase Order system. We are looking to introduce a Purchase Order system in future.

I've been working with one of my clients who creates purchase orders in Kashflow. When an order is created, Kashflow posts the cost to the expense account, the input VAT to the input VAT account and creates a creditor in the suppliers account. In my view that is completely wrong and will lead to incorrect accounts being prepared - unless everyone is aware that's what actually happens. In any other accounting system I have worked with, the cost, VAT and creditor don't hit the accounts until the goods and/or supplier invoice is received.

So, say an order for £10,000 of materials are placed on 31 May - the day of the company's year end. Kashflow is recognising the expense of £10,000, VAT of £2,000 and a trade creditor of £12,000 - but no materials or supplier invoice have been received - because the goods are not delivered until June. I'm sorry, but that is just wrong. The transaction should not be recognised until the supplier invoice has been received - and some accounting systems allow you to actually log when the goods have been received - even before the supplier invoice arrives - so that a "goods received not invoice" report can be produced and the accounts adjusted accordingly.

My client (thankfully) accounts for VAT on a cash basis so the VAT entry from the purchase order didn't cause any error on their VAT returns - I wonder what happens where cash accounting is not used - will Kashflow include the input VAT in the return based on the order date - before a VAT invoice has been issued by the supplier? If that's the case then its a fairly serious problem!

We have been asking for this for years. not holding my breath.

Such a shame this isn't being planned into the updates!
We are an industrial door company where from PO stage up to receiving an invoice from our supplier can take up to 2 months.

We have resorted by placing ORDER in the suppliers ref box then their ref so we can seperate the POs from invoices. Before we were doing this, PO's were accidently being paid prior to receiving the invoice from our supplier causing a lot of confusion! 
We really feel this is something that is important to look into from Kashflows point.

I would love this, I have been asking ever since we started using Kashflow in August 2007.

We need to be able to "book in" part supplied orders as some items can be ex stock from our supplier whilst others can take up to 12 weeks. We would ideally convert a quote into an order and then into an invoice as an when the goods arrive. This would leave the outstanding items in the order list.

Absolutely agree. POs are a standard mode of operation as are Pro Forma invoices and neither are here. Really basic stuff in my lowly opinion.