Purchasing

Path: Business functionality > Purchasing · tier official · system purchasing · narrative reviewed (checked by Opus)

Overview

The Purchasing section describes how a company buys goods and services in Business Central. It starts with an overview page listing the document types: purchase quotes, orders, invoices, returns, blanket orders and OCR invoices. Task pages then cover each step: requesting an offer with a quote, recording purchases with orders and invoices, combining receipts or order lines on one invoice, and handling returns, cancellations and corrections.

Other pages cover supporting setup and controls. These include lead time and date calculation, external document numbers, standard recurring purchase lines, purchase approval workflows, and checking invoice amounts before posting. Electronic documents (PEPPOL and OCR) and matching invoice drafts to purchase orders cover incoming invoices. A few pages are about contacts and master data, such as merging duplicate vendors and syncing contacts to Outlook.

Start with the overview page, then go to “Record purchases with purchase invoices” for the core flow. The Purchasing analytics subtopic covers reports, the Power BI Purchases app and ad-hoc data analysis for spend and vendor questions.

Key points

• Purchase quotes can be converted to purchase orders. Vendor templates and automatic vendor creation are supported.
• Unpaid posted purchase invoices can be corrected or cancelled with a corrective credit memo. This keeps the audit trail and reverses financial and inventory entries.
• Get Receipt Lines and Get Order Lines combine several receipts or order lines on one vendor invoice. Receipt-on-invoice creates the receipt automatically when you invoice.
• Incoming purchase invoice drafts can be matched to purchase orders and receipts. The matching shows order-match warnings and checks unit of measure and quantity.
• PEPPOL and OCR electronic invoices and credit memos can be received and converted into purchase documents using text-to-account mapping.
• Purchase returns and cancellations use credit memos or return orders, with options for exact cost reversing and item charge assignment.
• Purchase approval workflows use approvers, amount limits and notifications such as internal notes.
• The payment practices report shows agreed versus actual payment periods and the percentage of on-time payments.

Subtopics

• Purchasing analytics (43 pages)

More Learn pages

• Amend or cancel unpaid purchase invoices: Explains how to correct, cancel, or undo a posted purchase invoice and automatically create a purchase credit memo.
• Calculate dates for purchases: Learn how to calculate purchase dates to optimize inventory planning and streamline procurement processes.
• Check amounts on purchase invoices and credit memos: You can verify that the total amount on purchase invoices and credit memos equals the total amounts, including VAT, on the lines.
• Combine Receipts or PO Lines on a Single Invoice: Use the Combine Receipts function to invoice multiple purchase receipts from the same vendor on a single purchase invoice.
• Create a purchase quote to request an offer: Describes how to create a sales offer or a request for quote (RFQ) document to record your offer to a customer to sell products under certain terms.
• Enter external document numbers: Enter external document numbers for customers and vendors in sales and purchase orders, invoices, and credit memos. Use these numbers to easily find posted sales and purchase lines.
• External document numbers on purchase documents: Learn how to record vendor-assigned document numbers using the External Document Number or Your Reference fields, and understand the differences between these options.
• Match Purchase Invoice Drafts to Purchase Orders: Learn how to match incoming purchase invoice draft lines to purchase orders and receipts, review warnings, and prepare invoices for posting.
• Merge duplicate customer or vendor records: Describes how to consolidate information about customers or vendors when you have duplicate entries about some of them.
• Overview of tasks to manage to purchase: Outlines tasks to manage your purchasing or procurement processes, including how purchase invoices and purchase orders work.
• Payment practices report: Learn how to easily create the Payment Practices report for vendors and customers.
• Process returns or cancellations: Explains how to create and post a purchase credit memo when you want to return items to a vendor or cancel purchased services.
• Purchase items for a sale: Create a purchase invoice for a vendor or supplier directly from a sales invoice to buy products needed for a sale.
• Receive and convert electronic documents: Learn how to receive and convert electronic documents in Business Central, either directly from trading partners or through an OCR service.
• Record purchases with purchase invoices: Describes how to purchase inventory, noninventory items, or resources by creating and posting purchase invoices or orders.
• Save Business Contacts to Microsoft Outlook: Learn how to synchronize Business Central contacts with Microsoft Outlook and Teams to streamline communication and access contact details effortlessly.
• Set up and use a purchase approval workflow: This walkthrough takes you through all the stages involved in setting up and using a purchase approval workflow in Business Central.
• Standard recurring purchase lines: Set up frequently used purchase lines to insert them on purchase documents and quickly fill the lines with standard information.
• Work with blanket sales orders or purchase orders: Use blanket orders when a customer agrees to buy large quantities that you deliver in small shipments over a period of time.

Videos, posts and code changes

Linked by a Haiku matcher with a grounding quote from the item’s summary (link/topics.ts); machine-generated.

• #10290 [Main] -Drop shipment undo receipt fails for service and non-inventory items. (code change): “Undo receipt and undo shipment operations now work correctly for drop shipments”
• #10528 Track receipt on invoice per purchase order line (code change): “Receipt on invoice can now be set per purchase order line”
• #10898 [Extensibility Request] issue 30434: add purchase prepayment amount event (code change): “purchase prepayment amount event. An extensibility event allows purchase prepayment”
• #11134 [Main][All-E][Repair Item] Posted Purchase Invoice Order No. is blank when invoice rounding creates a generated line (code change): “Posted Purchase Invoice Order No. is blank when invoice rounding”
• #11149 [BE][Purchase Ledger Report] Wrong VAT Amounts on the report (code change): “Belgium-specific Purchase Ledger report now displays correct VAT”
• #11161 [29.x][BE][Purchase Ledger Report] Wrong VAT Amounts on the report (code change): “Belgium-specific Purchase Ledger report now displays correct VAT”
• #11274 [Master]-[Drop shipment reversal] Undo Shipment fails with blank Bin Code at bin-mandatory location (code change): “Undo Shipment fails with blank Bin Code at bin-mandatory location”
• #11339 Prevent order matching for invoice lines created by Get Receipt Lines (code change): “Matched order line functionality now rejects invoice lines created through Get Receipt”
• #11367 [29.X][Repair Item][SaaS][Drop shipment reversal] Undo Shipment fails with blank Bin Code at bin-mandatory location (code change): “Undo Shipment fails with blank Bin Code at bin-mandatory location”
• #11560 [E-Documents Core] [Peppol] - Enabling EDI capabilities with E-Documents. Send path (Self-Billed Purchase Invoice/Credit Memo → E-Document) (code change): “Enables exporting self-billed purchase invoices and credit memos as Peppol BIS 3.0 e-documents”
• #9044 [Master] Contact email is no validated during creation purchase documents_New (code change): “Contact email validation is restored during purchase document creation”
• #9084 Bug 640321: Blanket Purch. Order to Order drops extended text for later items (code change): “Fixes a bug where extended text lines are dropped when converting blanket purchase orders”
• #9443 [Extensibility Request] issue 30222: add handled event before RecreatePurchLines in Pay-to Vendor No. validation (code change): “integration event OnValidatePayToVendorNoOnBeforeRecreatePurchLines was added to the Pay-to Vendor No. field validation in Purchase Header”
• #9446 [Extensibility Request] issue 30216: add OnPostItemJnlLineJobConsumptionOnBeforePrepareJobLine event in codeunit 90 Purch.-Post (code change): “new integration event OnPostItemJnlLineJobConsumptionOnBeforePrepareJobLine is added to codeunit 90 Purch.-Post”
• #9448 [Extensibility Request] issue 30264: add and extend events in CalcBestDirectUnitCost (code change): “Two new integration events and an extended existing event provide customization points in purchase price selection logic”
• #9723 [Master] - Slice 626320: [Self-billing][VENDOR] Vendor‑specific Number Series for Self‑Billed Purchase Invoices (code change): “Vendors can now specify a number series for self-billed purchase invoices”
• #9729 [MAIN]-The system throws the error while posting a receipt against a Subcontracting Order. (code change): “Fixed subcontracting receipt posting to correctly handle multiple item variants”
• #9783 [Master] Purchase Return Order Posting Fails for Manually Reserved Lot-Tracked Items with Exact Cost Reversing Mandatory Enabled: “Applies-to Entry must not be filled out when reservations exist in Item Ledger Entry Entry No.=‘XXX’” (code change): “Purchase return order posting now correctly handles manually reserved lot-tracked items”
• #9863 [Extensibility Request] issue 29074: expose PurchLineQty in OnSumPurchLines2OnBeforeDivideAmount (code change): “The OnSumPurchLines2OnBeforeDivideAmount event now exposes the PurchLineQty parameter”
• #9947 Allow long localized sales and purchase line type captions (code change): “Sales and purchase document subforms no longer fail when a localized line type caption is longer than 20 characters”
• #9954 Restoring undefined action. (Purchase Orders page can’t be open in latest main) (code change): “Purchase Orders page can’t be open in latest main”
• #9962 [Extensibility Request] issue 30383: add purchase line transfer event (code change): “add purchase line transfer event”
• #9985 [Master]-For an Item of ‘Type’ Service or Non-Inventory we allow you to increase the Quantity of the Corrective Credit Memo which then if posted updates the Purchase Order with a negative Received and Invoiced values (code change): “Fixes corrective credit memos from posted purchase invoices with Service or Non-Inventory lines”
• Create Purchase Quotes for Contacts in Business Central (community post): “Creating purchase quotes in Business Central now allows selecting contacts”
• Create Purchase Orders from Drop Shipments (community post): “Create Purchase Orders action on sales orders eliminates the need to manually navigate”
• Dynamics 365 Business Central – How to use the “Recurring Requisition Worksheet” for Recurring Purchase Orders (community post): “Recurring Requisition Worksheet retains lines after generating purchase orders for reuse”
• Allow Over Receipts of Products (video): “Over receipt codes; Over receipt code tolerance percentages; Item-level over receipt codes”
• What’s New: Drop Shipments (2026 release wave 1) (video): “drop shipments; purchase order; flexible operation sequences; get order lines”
• What’s Cooking in Business Central: Edit Purchase Order Emails before Sending them to your Supplier (video): “Edit purchase order emails before sending them to your Supplier”

Business Central pages and reports

The pages, reports and queries this hub’s Learn pages name (ms.search.form, API reference), joined to the code by exact object id (data/index/docs-objects.json); a page shows the table it runs on.

• Page 49 “Purchase Quote” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 50 “Purchase Order” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 51 “Purchase Invoice” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 53 “Purchase List” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 56 “Purchase Orders” · on Table 39 “Purchase Line”
• Page 97 “Purchase Quote Subform” · captioned “Lines” · on Table 39 “Purchase Line”
• Page 136 “Posted Purchase Receipt” · on Table 120 “Purch. Rcpt. Header”
• Page 138 “Posted Purchase Invoice” · on Table 122 “Purch. Inv. Header”
• Page 140 “Posted Purchase Credit Memo” · on Table 124 “Purch. Cr. Memo Hdr.”
• Page 145 “Posted Purchase Receipts” · on Table 120 “Purch. Rcpt. Header”
• Page 146 “Posted Purchase Invoices” · on Table 122 “Purch. Inv. Header”
• Page 147 “Posted Purchase Credit Memos” · on Table 124 “Purch. Cr. Memo Hdr.”
• Page 177 “Standard Purchase Codes” · captioned “Recurring Purchase Lines” · on Table 173 “Standard Purchase Code”
• Page 189 “Incoming Document” · on Table 130 “Incoming Document”
• Page 190 “Incoming Documents” · on Table 130 “Incoming Document”
• Page 191 “Incoming Documents Setup” · on Table 131 “Incoming Documents Setup”
• Page 460 “Purchases & Payables Setup” · on Table 312 “Purchases & Payables Setup”
• Page 507 “Blanket Sales Order” · on Table 36 “Sales Header”
• Page 509 “Blanket Purchase Order” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 686 “Payment Practice Data List” · on Table 686 “Payment Practice Data”
• Page 687 “Payment Practice Card” · captioned “Payment Practice” · on Table 687 “Payment Practice Header”
• Page 689 “Payment Practice List” · captioned “Payment Practices” · on Table 687 “Payment Practice Header”
• Page 6103 “E-Document Services” · on Table 6103 “E-Document Service”
• Page 6620 “Blanket Sales Order Archive” · on Table 5107 “Sales Header Archive”
• Page 6622 “Blanket Sales Order Archives” · on Table 5107 “Sales Header Archive”
• Page 6623 “Blanket Purchase Order Archive” · on Table 5109 “Purchase Header Archive”
• Page 6640 “Purchase Return Order” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 6643 “Purchase Return Orders” · on Table 39 “Purchase Line”
• Page 6652 “Posted Return Shipments” · captioned “Posted Purchase Return Shipments” · on Table 6650 “Return Shipment Header”
• Page 9303 “Blanket Sales Orders” · on Table 36 “Sales Header”
• Page 9306 “Purchase Quotes” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 9307 “Purchase Order List” · captioned “Purchase Orders” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 9308 “Purchase Invoices” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 9309 “Purchase Credit Memos” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 9310 “Blanket Purchase Orders” · on Table 38 “Purchase Header”
• Page 9346 “Purchase Quote Archives” · on Table 5109 “Purchase Header Archive”
• Page 29 “Vendor Ledger Entries” · on Table 25 “Vendor Ledger Entry” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 518 “Purchase Lines” · on Table 39 “Purchase Line” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 36951 “PowerBI Reports Setup” · captioned “Power BI Reports Setup” · on Table 36951 “PowerBI Reports Setup” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 36996 “Detailed Vendor Ledger Entries” · captioned “Detailed Vendor Ledger Entries (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37009 “Purchases Overview” · captioned “Purchases Overview (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37010 “Purchases Decomposition” · captioned “Purchases Decomposition (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37011 “Daily Purchases” · captioned “Daily Purchases (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37012 “Purchases Moving Averages” · captioned “Purchases Moving Averages (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37013 “Purchases Moving Annual Total” · captioned “Purchases Moving Annual Total (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37014 “Purchases Period-Over-Period” · captioned “Purchases Period-Over-Period (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37015 “Purchases Year-Over-Year” · captioned “Purchases Year-Over-Year (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37016 “Purchases by Item” · captioned “Purchases by Item (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37017 “Purchases by Purchaser” · captioned “Purchases by Purchaser (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37018 “Purchases by Vendor” · captioned “Purchases by Vendor (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37019 “Purchases by Location” · captioned “Purchases by Location (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37020 “Purch. Actual vs. Budget Qty.” · captioned “Purchase Actual vs. Budget Quantity (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37021 “Purch. Actual vs. Budget Amt.” · captioned “Purchases Actual vs. Budget Amount (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37025 “Purchase and Sales Quantity” · captioned “Purchase and Sales Quantity (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37061 “Purchases Report” · captioned “Purchases Report (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37112 “Purchase Forecasting” · captioned “Purchase Forecasting (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37115 “Vendor Quality Analysis” · captioned “Vendor Quality Analysis (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37116 “Purchase Return Overview” · captioned “Purchase Return Overview (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37117 “Key Purchase Influencers” · captioned “Key Purchase Influencers (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Page 37118 “Purchase Quote Overview” · captioned “Purchase Quote Overview (Power BI)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 301 “Vendor - List” · captioned “Vendor List (Obsolete)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 304 “Vendor - Detail Trial Balance” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 307 “Vendor - Order Summary” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 308 “Vendor - Order Detail” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 311 “Vendor - Top 10 List” · captioned “Vendor - Top 10 List (Obsolete)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 312 “Purchase Statistics” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 313 “Vendor/Item Purchases” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 319 “Payments on Hold” · captioned “Payments on Hold (Obsolete)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 320 “Vendor Item Catalog” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 322 “Aged Accounts Payable” · captioned “Aged Accounts Payable (Obsolete)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 329 “Vendor - Trial Balance” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 409 “Purchase Reservation Avail.” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 707 “Inventory - Availability Plan” · captioned “Inventory - Availability Plan (Obsolete)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 709 “Inventory Purchase Orders” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 714 “Inventory - Vendor Purchases” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 716 “Inventory Cost and Price List” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 720 “Item/Vendor Catalog” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 1322 “Standard Purchase - Order” · captioned “Purchase - Order” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 2502 “Day Book Vendor Ledger Entry” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 4403 “EXR Aged Acc Payable Excel” · captioned “Aged Accounts Payable (Excel)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 4404 “EXR Vendor Top List” · captioned “Vendor - Top List (Excel)” · via Purchasing analytics
• Report 6102 “E-Doc Sample Purchase Invoice” · via Purchasing analytics

Source: Microsoft Learn (CC BY 4.0). Descriptions are Learn’s own.