3 "Blanket" orders allow staff to invoice an encumbered amount multiple times,
4 paying off the charge over a period of time. The work flow supported by this
5 development assumes staff does not need to track the individual contents of
6 the order, only the amounts encumbered and invoiced in bulk.
10 . Staff creates PO with a Direct Charge of "Popular Fiction 2015" and
11 a charge type of "Blanket Order".
12 . The amount entered for the charge equals the total amount expected
13 to be charged over the duration of the order.
14 . When a shipment of "Popular Fiction" items arrive, staff creates an
15 invoice from the "Popular Fiction 2015" PO page and enters the amount
16 billed/paid for the received shipment under the "Popular Fiction 2015"
17 charge in the invoice.
18 . When the final shipment arrives, staff select the 'Final invoice
19 for Blanket Order' option on the invoice screen to mark the PO as
20 'received' and drop any remaining encumbrances to $0.
21 .. Alternatively, if the PO needs to be finalized without creating
22 a final invoice, staff can use the new 'Finalize Blanket Order'
23 option on the PO page.
25 ===== New Components/Terminology/Concepts
27 * Invoice Item Types have a new flag called 'blanket', available under
28 Admin -> Server Administration -> Acq -> Invoice Item Types in the
30 * Any direct charge using a 'blanket' item type will create a long-lived
31 charge that can be invoiced multiple times.
32 * Such a charge is considered open until its purchase order is "finalized"
34 * "Finalizing" a PO changes the PO's state to 'received' (assuming there are
35 no pending lineitems on the PO) and fully dis-encumbers all blanket charges
36 on the PO by setting the fund_debit amount to $0 on the original fund_debit
38 * Invoicing a 'blanket' charge does the following under the covers:
39 .. Create an invoice_item to track the payment
40 .. Create a new fund_debit to implement the payment whose amount matches the
42 .. Subtract the invoiced amount from the fund_debit linked to the original
43 'blanket' po_item, thus reducing the amount encumbered on the charge as
44 a whole by the invoiced amount.
45 * A PO can have multiple blanket charges. E.g. you could have a blanket
46 order for "Popular Fiction 2015" and a second charge for "Pop Fiction
47 20156 Taxes" to track / pay taxes over time on a blanket charge.
48 * A PO can have a mix of lineitems, non-blanket charges, and blanket charges.
49 * A 'blanket' Invoice Item Type cannot also be a 'prorate' type, since it's
50 nonsensical. Blanket items are encumbered, whereas prorated items are
51 only paid at invoice time and never encumbered.