Purchase Order Numbers

Do the purchase order numbers mean anything?

I have two scenarios where I can see wanting to create a purchase order and not have the PO# actually connect to a purchase.

Scenario 1 - Awards in Pack inventory.
I have awards on the Needs Purchasing report, but I also have a stockpile of them on hand. I can create a PO that has just the awards that I have on hand and then promptly close it out. I would then create a PO for the awards that need to be purchased. Does it matter that the first PO will have a number that never physically gets used?

Scenario 2 - Scout shop didn’t have the awards I need.
I create a PO and when I arrive at the store, they can only fill part of the order. I will delete the PO. Following this, I will create a PO that only contains the items which were actually purchased. In this scenario, there are three PO#s: the original one, the one that contains all the awards that were purchased, and the one containing awards that were out of stock.

Since Scoutbook doesn’t seem to allow for the unit having items on hand, or for the Scout shop to be out of stock in its award processing workflow, these are a couple of workarounds. I just want to know if there is any reason why I shouldn’t do them. I realize that it is extra work on me, but it will make it clean for when I need to purchase items.

Looking for feedback.

Michael,

PO#s are just sequential since the start of Scoutbook. There is no meaning to the value, it just provides a unique identifier for them.

@edavignon Thank you. That is great news. As a follow-on to my question. Will this cause any issues with the Advancement Reports that the POs generate? Especially since some reports will never make it to council, and some items might appear on multiple reports.

No, there is no issue with the advancement reports. Since the data is already in Scoutbook, most councils just file them (real or circular). The advancement reports go back to the days before units could electronically report their advancement and the data had to be entered after purchase of awards. Hopefully some day we will be able to show the Scout Shops a phone with proof that the data has been recorded and avoid the paper forms.

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Thank you for the clarification.

I’ve been able to do that at our Scout Shops in Metro Detroit for over a year now. At different times I’ve generated the advancement report on the fly and emailed it to the Scout Shop, and also just pulled up a Scout’s profile page and shown the people there that something was marked approved.

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