Purchase Order Uses in Business

Some of the search terms that bring visitors to OrderGen.com include questions like "What is a purchase order?" and "What is the basic concept behind purchasing order (procurement) software."

First of all, a purchase order is an official, binding document issued by a company's purchasing department, authorizing funding for the payment of products and/or services; payment is to be disbursed at some agreed-upon time either before or after receipt of the products or services.

While a purchase order can be hand-written using standard forms obtained at any office supply store, some companies or agencies issue numerous purchase orders during a typical quarter, making hand-written POs highly impractical. Also, there may be some concern about how professional such documents appear, and how seriously they may be taken by suppliers. This issue could be significant for many small businesses.

The basic concept behind purchase order software is to implement some fairly uniform and automated mechanisms for creating purchase orders. This has clear benefits when an organization needs to place repeated orders with the same vendor for the same collections of products and services. Using purchase order database software, all relevant information can be saved for subsequent usages. Database software also allows companies to audit and analyze such things as: what has been purchased, when, by whom, from whom, and how much money has been spent on what.

Attractive, professional-looking, custom purchase order reports can be created using software.

OrderGen - Three Generations
of Purchase Order Software

Applied Analytic Systems first developed version 1.0 of OrderGen in 1995 - 96, initially for in-house usage, then made available to customers of our invoicing software products. The first version was a 16-bit, basic database program developed with Borland's ObjectVision™, using Paradox™ database tables, designed to run both in Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, which had recently been released.

OrderGen v. 1.01 Last Revised, July 1996

The database could accommodate vendor company data, vendor product data and purchase order transaction data. Reporting was limited to the actual generated purchase orders, and a report listing all purchase orders created to date.

OrderGen 2.0 was another 16-bit version (1997) that upgraded OrderGen 1.0 from an ObjectVision runtime application to a Windows executable using the same Paradox database tables. This version had a limited release, and was never really marketed, since everyone was well into the process of migrating their operating systems from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95.

OrderGen 3.0 was a complete rewrite of the software. Initially developed in Windows 98, the database structures were completely redesigned, although Paradox continued to be the database engine driving the product.

The database was designed to support both single workstation usage and multi-user network access, and contained multiple reports on the vendors, products, and the purchase order transactions. This version was developed in late 2000 - early 2001, and released in 2001. Windows 2000 and Windows ME were the operating systems that were being used at the time. Naturally, this version was referred to as OrderGen 2000.

In 2005, OrderGen 3.0 received a thorough upgrade, developed in Windows XP Pro. This release updated the database structures and added internal requisition creation module. Instead of releasing a major upgrade (4.0), upgrading the software to OrderGen v. 3.1 allowed the existing user base to continue using the software without needing to purchase a new license.

A list of all updates since 2006 can be viewed at support.ordergen.com. The current "production version" is 3.1.9.799, released Dec 09, 2009. This version has been tested on Windows ME, 2000, XP (32-Bit), and Vista (32-bit).

Purchase Order Form 1.0 is a separate software program consisting of the OrderGen 3.1 purchase order report only. This application is useful for company managers who only create a few purchase orders every now and then. This software costs about 1/5 as much as the single-user OrderGen database version license.

The P. O. Form software has no database connected fields, and saves only the last set of data entered. It performs all the necessary mathematical calculations, including up to two tax percentages. The output report (i.e. the purchase order) looks identical to the output of OrderGen 3.1.

OrderGen Software News

New version 3.1.9.811 released on Feb 18, 2010. These version updates affect network users only. Single-user customers should not update at this time.

All purchase orders created with Build 3.1.9.811 and above can supply template information so that network users viewing a coworker's p.o. can preview and print the purchase order exactly as it was designed by the purchase order's creator.

Current network users should use the OrderGen Update feature to download the latest changes automatically.

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