What is Difference Between Complex Purchase Order and Standard Purchase Order?

Oracle Services Procurement – Complex Purchase Orders – Oracle Services Procurement is part of Oracle Advanced Procurement Suite and provides state-of-the-art functionalities to strategically procure services that deals with various procurement aspects such as Prepayment, Retainage etc. In addition to the Temporary Labor Procurement functionality, Oracle Services Procurement helps us to significantly improve the Lumpsum and Milestone type procurement activities through Complex Purchase Orders.

Following Points to be noted in relation to Complex Purchase Orders:

• Complex Purchase Orders can be created, updated and viewed using Buyer Work Centre only.
• The Schedules/Shipments for the standard purchase orders is called as “Pay Items” in the complex purchase orders.
• There are 3 types of Pay Items available in the complex purchase orders as – Milestone, Lumpsum and Rate. Availability of the pay items for selection in the buyer work center depends on the line type and document style setups.
All line types that are configured with “Fixed Price” value basis will have all types of Pay Items available for selection.
• Line types with “Quantity” value basis will have only the “Milestone” Pay Items available for selection.
• It is received through work confirmations and not through standard PO receipt process.
• Partial completion of Milestone Pay Items is not allowed while creating work confirmation but the same is allowed for Lumpsum and Rate Pay Items.
• Progress Payment can be made using milestone type complex purchase orders.
• Retainage and advanced payment can be handled using complex purchase orders.
• Work Confirmations can be created using Oracle iProcurement, iSupplier or Buyer Work Centre.
• Work Confirmation approval mechanism uses Oracle Approval Management Engine (AME).

Required Setups:

Enable Services Procurement:
Once you have purchased the licenses of Oracle Services Procurement module, please setup the “PO: Enable Services Procurement” profile option to “Yes” at the site level.

Document Style Setup:
Responsibility: Purchasing Superuser or similar
Navigation: Setup -> Purchasing -> Document Styles
You will find seeded complex purchase order styles in the Document Style page.
Click on the Update icon to update the style definition as appropriate.
In this setup, you will be able to enable/disable the document types, commodities, pay items and progress payment options for the complex respective complex style.

Line Type Setup: 
Responsibility: Purchasing Superuser or similar
Navigation: Setup -> Purchasing -> Line Types
You will find all the seeded line types here but in case you need to define a custom line type to be used for complex purchase orders, please note that, all the “Fixed Price” Value Basis line types will be able to use Milestone, Lumpsum and Rate Pay Items while the “Quantity” Value Basis line types will be able to access “Milestone” Pay Items only.

The main difference between complex PO and standard PO is:
1) Complex PO can have Milestone, Lumpsum and Rate but not standard PO
2) Complex Purchase Orders can be created, updated and viewed using Buyer Work Center only.

However standard PO can be created, updated and viewed in both BWC and PO forms.

Also, We generally create standard purchase orders for one-time purchase of various items. We create standard purchase orders when we know the details of the goods or services we require, estimated costs, quantities, delivery schedules, and accounting distributions. If we use encumbrance accounting, the purchase order may be encumbered since the required information is known.