Deferred Purchases

IT Asset Management (Cloud)
Tip: This page includes only purchases related to software licensing, so that only the following purchase types are included here (with other types being available in the All Purchases page):
  • Not set
  • Software
  • Software baseline
  • Software maintenance
  • Software subscription
  • Software upgrade.
Deferred purchases are the purchases which have not yet been linked to licenses, and were manually set to the Deferred status. Selecting a purchase on the Unprocessed Purchases page and clicking Defer moves that purchase to Deferred Purchases. Purchases can be deferred for a range of reasons, for example, incomplete licensing or SKU information, or conflicting priorities involving the publishers.

Actions you can take

  • To process a deferred purchase, select it and click Move to unprocessed (resume processing on the Unprocessed Purchases page).
  • You can open and update the properties of a purchase to deal with any alert or other issues. Modified purchase records stay on this list until you deliberately move them.
  • You can select and delete purchases from this list.
    CAUTION:
    Deleted purchases are no longer available across the system. There is no undo. If you delete purchases already linked to licenses, then the entitlements and compliance calculations are affected. When deleting purchases, make sure that you remove them from any imported source to prevent them from being imported back into IT Asset Management.
  • Create a management view: The Save view as feature of IT Asset Management enables you to create customized management views of a page by saving the applied user interface settings. For more information, see Creating Saved Views.
You can group deferred purchases based on any criterion: a vendor, purchase type, publisher, and so on. For example, you can select all of the deferred purchases related to a specific publisher, and click Move to unprocessed to bring your next publisher into focus. For details about grouping (and removing groups), see Grouping Items in Lists.
The following fields are available on the list of deferred purchases (listed in alphabetical order).
Tip: Any custom properties that you have added for this object are also available through the column chooser. Like other properties, you can also use these properties for filtering and grouping records on this page.
Column name Notes
Action
The system recommendation for processing the purchase. Purchases that have an Action of No recommendation need more information before an action can be determined.
Tip: Grouping the list by the Action column allows easy selection and processing of related proposals. If you expose the members of only one group, and click the selection check box in the header row of the list, only the exposed purchases are selected. Those hidden in closed groups remain unselected. For example:
  1. Group by Action.
  2. Expand the group for Add entitlements to a license.
  3. Click the 'select all' check box in the header.
  4. Review the recommended licenses (deselecting any that you don't like).
  5. Click Accept.

Not editable (although you can trigger recalculation of selected recommendations).

Contract no.

The identifying code for the contract.

Editable in the Contract no. field in the General tab of the contract properties.

Corporate unit, Cost center, and Location

The name of the related enterprise group.

Selectable in the Ownership tab of the purchase properties.

Created by

The name of the operator (or service account) that created this purchase record, as reflected on the History tab of the purchase properties. A service account name is likely when, for example, purchase records are created by imports of spreadsheets or other external data, especially if these imports are schedule-based.

Creation date

The date that the record of the purchase was created, reflected on the History tab of the purchase properties. Notice that this is unlikely to be the same as the date when the purchase was made, or the goods delivered.

Description

Details of the item purchased.

Editable in the Description field in General tab of the purchase properties (in the Purchase details group).

Effective date

The first date from which this purchase entitles you to support or maintenance on your software purchase. This value is set in the General tab of the purchase properties, but is only available when you mark the purchase as including support. (The column remains blank when the purchase did not include support or maintenance.)

Effective quantity

Total number of units acquired with this purchase. Depending on purchase type, these 'units' may be license entitlements, or maintenance coverage for this number of license entitlements.

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.
Expiry date

The last date on which this purchase entitles you to support or maintenance on your software purchase.

Editable in the General tab of the purchase properties.

Includes maintenance

Displays Yes if the purchase included a period of software maintenance or support. In this case, the Effective date column shows the start date for this purchase of support; and for details of the end date of the support purchased, see the General tab of the purchase properties. If no support provisions were included in the purchase, this column displays No.

Item

The number of this purchase within its related purchase order.

License type

The kind of license purchased. This value is not editable, and is supplied from the SKU and PURL libraries when the purchase records a recognized software SKU (matched in the SKU library). If there is no Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) number, or one that is not matched in the SKU library, this column remains blank. For details of an individual license type, please see the appropriate entry in the glossary.

Part no./SKU

The vendor's code that identifies the purchased item (the Stock Keeping Unit).

This value is added as Part no./SKU in the General tab of the purchase properties.

Publisher

The manufacturer of the product.

Editable in the General tab of the purchase properties.

Purchase date

The date that goods were ordered.

The Purchase date is recorded when the first purchase from the same purchase order is created. Thereafter it is accessible through the General tab of the purchase properties.

Purchase order no.

The identifying code of the purchase order authorizing the purchase.

Editable in the Purchase order no. field in the General tab of the purchase properties.

Purchase type
The nature of this purchase, such as software, hardware, maintenance and so on. Determines whether automated processing of the purchase can occur, and whether the purchase can contribute to license entitlements.
Tip: At purchase processing time, when the purchase is linked to a license, the purchase type from a recognized SKU is given priority over this Purchase type set in the purchase properties. It is best practice to keep these two values aligned.

The Purchase type value is selected on the General tab on the purchase properties.

Quantity per unit

The multiplier for the number of individual items included in each purchased unit (relevant for purchases of groups or packs).

The Quantity per unit value is added on the General tab on the purchase properties.

Recommended licenses
Shows one or more licenses affected by the recommendation. These may include:
  • From: An existing license, which (in the case of an upgrade) will lose entitlements to a new, upgraded license. When a proposal allowed an upgrade, but no suitable source license candidate was found in the existing licenses, this displays None identified.
  • To: Sometimes this may identify an existing license (for example, when additional entitlements or upgrades have been purchased, or for renewals). It may also display New license whenever the recommendation includes creating a new license to link to the purchase record.
    Tip: Multiple subscription purchases can attach to the same license, since the count of subscribed entitlements can rise and fall over time. However, separate licenses are proposed for subscription and perpetual licensing, and also for distinct products.
  • Additional comments about the maintenance provisions (for the To license).
Tip: When the license name is displayed as a hyperlink, you can Ctrl+click (or middle click) on the link to open those license properties in a new tab. Similarly, you can open the purchase properties in a new tab. This allows quickly switching between tabs to inspect any details in the properties of any affected objects.

Not editable (although you can trigger recalculation of selected recommendations).

SKU description

When a purchase identified a recognized SKU (Stock Keeping Unit), the associated description from the SKU is shown here. The column remains blank is there is no SKU, or if there is a SKU that is unrecognized (not in the downloaded SKU library). Typically the SKU description identifies the product and license details. This value is not editable, and is supplied from the SKU and PURL libraries.

Status
Shows the current progress of the purchase through the purchasing process. Values may be:
  • Cancelled
  • Completed
  • New
  • Pending
Tip: These values have no effect on license compliance calculations. If a purchase conveys license entitlements and is linked to a license, the entitlements are counted regardless of this status value. If you intend to cancel a purchase so that it no longer contributes to your license entitlements, be sure to disconnect the purchase from any licenses.

The Status value is selected on the General tab of the purchase properties.

Total price (currency)

The overall cost of this purchase, including tax and shipping.

Read-only calculated value in the Financial tab of the purchase properties.

Vendor

The reseller who sold this product.

The Vendor value is editable in the General tab of the purchase properties.

IT Asset Management (Cloud)

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