The purchase order execution pipeline

Beginning from its creation, a purchase order flows through a set of transactions and statuses until its completion. This chain of transactions and purchase order statuses is called the purchase order execution pipeline.

There are two default pipelines: the standard Purchase Order Execution pipeline for organizations that own their nodes, and the Drop Ship Purchase Order Execution pipeline for organizations that use drop ship nodes for purchase order handling.

A purchase order execution pipeline provides Sterling Order Management System Software with a means to perform actions, such as sending notifications or logging alerts, dependent on the location of the purchase order in the pipeline. It also provides you with a means to track a purchase order from creation to completion and perform any manual interventions, if necessary.

The purchase order execution pipeline from which your business runs is unique to how your system administrator has set up your business environment. However, every purchase order execution pipeline generally begins with a transaction that creates a purchase order and ends with a transaction that indicates a purchase order has been shipped.

A transaction is an occurrence that needs to be tracked and can call certain actions to be performed. A purchase order status describes what state a purchase order is in and moves it from transaction to transaction.