Purchase Orders not linking to Projects & Workflow Assistance

Hey all,

I’ve been searching for hours to figure this out – Whenever I create a Purchase Order from within a project based on a materials list that was created from within a project, none of it links back to the project itself once finalized.

It’s causing me issues as I can’t seem to be able to run basic reports such as cost/income analysis on a specific project.

I figured it would be able to do such a report based upon the sales order, but so far it seems like I’m wrong?

In the end, I just want to be able to figure out how profitable Sales Orders and Projects are without having to spend an hour totaling everything manually!

EDIT: I added some notes in the two posts below that clarify my issues in a better-worded way.

These may not include POs or BOMs but may help your learning progress

Cost centers and Project costing
Cost Centers by project AND by product? Is this possible? - #2 by max_morais_dmm

Cost centers aside, I feel like I might be missing some basic things –

Within a project, I can create a quotation/sales order without any issue. But if I go to create a materials list, or purchase order, do I not have a way to assign that specific PO to a customer account and/or project (preferably a project)?

That’s a huge thing for me – My projects are for large audio visual systems for cruise lines. There are hundreds to thousands of moving parts that I need to be able to accurately track. This system appears, on it’s surface, to be able to do that – but it seems like I’m finding some limitations that feel a bit… basic compared to the system as a whole?

I feel like I’m missing something, and the current web documentation doesn’t entirely line up with the current version of the software (some things are moved around, some are missing, etc…)

I feel like I should explain my workflow –

  1. I create a customer
  2. I create a project for the customer
  3. Any “items” that I intend to sell to the customer, I add in if they’re not in the system already.
  4. Any BOM’s that need to be generated, I go ahead and do that now.
  5. Within the project, I generate a quotation based around the BOM’s + individual items + fixed labor rates
  6. I convert the quotation into a sales order
  7. Within the project, I create a Materials Request
  8. Within the project, I create a Purchase Order

The Materials Requests and purchase orders never seem to attach to the project itself so I can track intended usage of the items purchased, and I feel like this is a large part of why I can’t figure out how to run the analysis I want to run.

I feel like I should also note that I’m far from an accountant, and thus far I’ve been using numerous Excel spreadsheets per project with final numbers being entered into Quickbooks Pro for everything I do. I’m trying to get away from that scatterbrained method of doing things and migrate to a solution where I can manage everything in one single consolidated place.

Projectr Form

Purchase Order Form

We use project modules, and we can see all the Purchase orders issued for a particular project. Have you linked your Purchase Orders with Project by inserting a custom link filed. This helps creating Purchase Orders and link it with a particular project. Please refer the images above.

What do you mean by a “Custom Link Field”? I feel like this basic functionality should exist without me having to create workarounds?

@Matthew_Rosenblatt. you need to attach the project under item details.

Secondly the profitability analysis for project will not show untill you receive and consume the items or make sales invoice and assign project

PO and SO are non financial transactions which don’t have any impact on your Profit and Loss

I meant new Custom Filed (Field Type : Link ).

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What do you mean by a “Custom Link Field”? I feel like this basic functionality should exist without me having to create workarounds?
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Well, recognize that one size does not fit all - an ‘out of the box’ implementation versus a non-standard customized one! You may want customizations, but that will cost you. Hence best to minimize these.

Appreciate too that client side customizations are less cost than those done server side, at least from a maintenance standpoint: With each (frequent!) upgrade only the former are ‘automatically’ maintained while the latter are up to you so best contribute those to the core to be maintained too.

For learning read the official docs - excellent but basic, watch the videos - these are more current , do the hands on library tutorial exercise and check out demo.erpnext.com for implementation ideas.

Welcome to the ERPNext learning curve! The ‘better together’ community here is here for support ideas and encouragement.

have fun