Purchase Properties / General Tab

Opens a new set of purchase properties, with all the Purchase details values blanked out, and the same values for the Purchase order header values displayed as read-only. This allows you to manually complete details of another purchase that forms part of the same overall purchase order. (Only available after purchase details have been saved.)

The date that goods were ordered. This date is common to all purchases ordered on the same purchase order.

To change the Purchase date on an existing purchase, first click the link Edit this purchase order. This converts the read-only fields describing the purchase order into editable fields, and you can edit the Purchase date value.

Important:Changes you make to the purchase order details on this purchase affect all other purchases recorded on the same purchase order.

Displays the count of individual purchases (including the current one) that share the common purchase order header data.

Details of the item purchased.

When no SKU is recorded for a purchase, this description may be used by IT Asset Management to make recommendations for linking the purchase to the appropriate preexisting license. For this to work, a candidate license must be linked to only one product (although there may be multiple applications, versions or editions of the same product, linked to the license); and either:

This description appears in lists and reports to help identify the contents of this purchase.

Tip:For purchases of software licenses, there is a second reason to make this description a thorough identification of the licensed application (for example, including name and version). If you make future upgrades to the software license purchased here, this purchase may later be linked to a different, upgraded license. In that case, a complete description entered here will be helpful in auditing the original purpose of this purchase.

The total number of units that are acquired with this purchase, particularly applicable where the purchase was of some kind of bundle of multiples.

This value is not editable. It is calculated automatically by multiplying the Purchase quantity with the Quantity per unit (and as a signed integer, is limited to a little over 2.14 billion).

Note:For appropriate Purchase type values, the Effective quantity corresponds to the number of license entitlements that the purchase contributes to a linked license. Only the Software, Software subscription, Software baseline, and Not set purchase types can increase the license quantity (number of entitlements on a license). Software upgrade migrates entitlements from the previous license to the upgraded one.

The ordinal value of this purchase within the underlying purchase order.

This field is not editable, and reflects the order of data entry of purchases given the same Purchase order no. 

The name of the company that manufactures the purchased product.

If a recognized SKU is found for the product, the Publisher field is populated automatically. (This check is performed as you exit the Part no./SKU field, and may take a moment.) You can also click in the Publisher field to use the Search control and select the name of an existing publisher, or switch a name that was chosen earlier. For details about using the search control, see To Use a Fly-Down.

Tip:The publisher must first exist as a vendor record in your system. If not, navigate to the All Vendors page (Procurement > Purchases & Vendors > All Vendors and click Create a Vendor).

Use this field to track the kind of purchase.

If a recognized SKU has been entered for the product, the Purchase type field is populated automatically. If necessary, you can still update the value; but there must be exceptional reasons to make this differ from the value implied by the SKU.

Tip:At purchase processing time, when the purchase is linked to a license, the type from a recognized SKU is given priority over the purchase type. If there is a conflict at that time, this Purchase type is ignored, and the SKU Purchase type sets the effect of the purchase on the linked license.

If no SKU is recognized, you can select one of the following options from the drop- down list to indicate the type of item that was purchased:

Setting this purchase type automatically sets the Purchase includes support, maintenance, or other service agreement for the following period check box, and disables it so that it cannot be cleared until the purchase type is changed.

The number of individual items that are acquired with the purchase of a single group or pack. Single-item purchases (not groups or packs) always have a multiplier of 1.

Enter the number of items that are included per product unit that was purchased. For example, you might order a license pack which entitles you to install 10 copies of an application. In this case, you purchase only one product, and the Quantity per unit value is 10.

The Quantity per unit value is multiplied by the Purchase quantity value to calculate the Effective quantity.

This control may be set:

Tip:Remember that a license record may also inherit maintenance from an appropriate contract. If you have a long term maintenance agreement covering many products (such as Microsoft Software Assurance), you may choose to record this as a maintenance contract, and link the appropriate purchases and licenses to the contract. This also allows you to use the contract record to set rights that are dependent on the continuation of the contract, and have software licenses inherit those rights for as long as the contract exists. If the contract expires and this is the only source of data about maintenance recorded in IT Asset Management, you need to change the inherited rights manually in the contract records. However, if you have also:

automation can apply as the maintenance expires, potentially modifying the product use rights for you after the expiry date. This update to the license rights happens even when the license originally inherited rights from the contract record.

If the purchase of software includes a period of software maintenance or support, set this check box. When the check box is selected, the Effective date and Expiry date fields are enabled.

If this purchase is made under an enrollment (or affiliation) with a Microsoft Select agreement, this is the first of two fields that ensure proper tracking of your Select points per product pool.

Ensure that the correct product pool is identified for your enrollment (or affiliation) with your Microsoft Select agreement. If in doubt, you may be able to verify the product pool on your corporate price list or by consulting your Large Account Reseller (LAR, who should be identified on the properties of the enrollment, which should be linked to this purchase as the related contract).

Note:This value may have been calculated automatically when you accepted a default action in purchase processing automation, and linked the PO line item to your Select agreement. Where the PO line item included a recognized SKU that applies to a purchase under a Select agreement, but the PO line item was missing the Select pool or Select points values, the following adjustments were made: