Epic focuses on the requesting, authorising and tracking purchase items. A Purchase Item is a tangible material or a bought-in service. A purchase item maps to a line item on a purchase order. Purchase items are divided into materials and subcontracts. This division is for clarity only - both are processed identically.
Categories
A purchase item is a categorised record.
Cost
Centre
Purchase items are assigned to cost centres -
most normally tasks. Purchase items can be viewed via
the purchases plug-in or on the project
editor.
Lifeline
A purchase item has its own lifeline
- a sequence of statuses through which it passes. This sequence is dependent
upon the business process.
| Status | Description |
| Requested | A purchase
item has been created and requires a suitably authorised user to agree to
it. This may involve first seeking supplier quotes to check against authorised spending limits. |
| Authorised | A suitably authorised user has accepted this purchase item must be bought. |
| On Hold | An item, previously at either 'Requested' or 'Authorised' that is not being progressed |
| On Order | The purchase item has been ordered from a supplier. |
| In Quarantine | This status may not be used - it depends on set-up of the purchasing process. |
| Available | The item has been delivered (and is necessary inspected and approved) so is available for use. |
| Used | The task has been cancelled. Costs so far assigned will be added to the invoice but no new costs can be assigned. |
Categorised
Costs
Purchase items normally record a single figure for their cost.
However following
the principle of progressive disclosure,
you can choose to view
and use 'categorised' costs for the purchase item.
Epic actually stores
up to three fields for the cost of a purchase.
Each field can represent anything you choose, for instance estimated cost, committed
cost and actual cost.
However note that for price calculations, Epic simply sums all of these fields.
By default, when using only a single figure, Epic simply uses the first of the
fields.
Categorised costs have nothing to do with the purchase item record's categories.