Procurement

Requisitions

A purchase starts as a request from a department. Go to Inventory → Requisition.

Requisitions can be filtered by department, date and status.

Record the requesting department, the items and quantities, when they are needed, and why. The reason matters when the request is questioned at approval.

Requisitions go to Inventory → Approval. An approver can approve, reduce quantities, or decline with a comment. Only approved requisitions become purchase orders.

Vendors

Inventory → Vendors holds suppliers.

Vendors are listed with their category and contact information.

Record the name, category, contact, KRA PIN, bank details and payment terms. Vendor categories let you compare quotes across suppliers of the same thing.

Vendor Balances shows what is owed to each — the creditors list, and what to check before a payment run.

For finance staff who only need oversight, View expenses and suppliers opens Finance → Suppliers in read-only mode. They can inspect supplier statements, bills, credits, write-offs and payment records and print or export them. Adding or editing a supplier, recording or voiding a payment, refunding credit, writing off a balance, and clearing, bouncing or expiring a cheque still require the appropriate operational or administrator role.

Purchase orders

Inventory → New PO turns an approved requisition into an order.

Purchase orders can be searched and filtered by date, vendor and status.

Choose the vendor, confirm items, quantities and agreed prices, and set the delivery date. The order is the school’s commitment, so it should be issued by someone with the authority to make it.

Active Purchase Orders shows what is outstanding, and Overdue shows what has passed its delivery date. Chase from the overdue list rather than from memory.

Receiving goods

When a delivery arrives, use Receive Items against the purchase order.

Enter what actually arrived, not what was ordered. This is the whole point of the step. If 50 were ordered and 48 delivered, record 48 — the order stays partially open, stock goes up by 48, and the vendor cannot be paid for 50 without the discrepancy showing.

Check quantity, condition and specification before receiving. Once received, the goods are the school’s.

Bills

Inventory → Bills records the vendor’s invoice against the order.

The bills workspace summarises payable, overdue and paid amounts before listing vendor bills.

Match the bill to the purchase order and the receipt. Three things must agree: what was ordered, what was received, what is billed. Where they do not:

• Billed more than received — query with the vendor before paying.
• Received more than ordered — an unauthorised extra; decide whether to keep it.
• Price differs from the order — check whether an increase was agreed.

When recording a bill, open Vendor and select the supplier. The list is searchable: type any part of the supplier’s name to narrow it, then choose the result. The same search-and-select interaction is used for long Inventory lists throughout the module.

Every bill also needs a Bill votehead / posting account. Search the billing voteheads and choose the account where the cost, asset or payable should be recognised. The grouped account list opens above the rest of the bill form and remains readable in both light and dark mode. ShuleOne hides only automatic control accounts that it must post itself; valid legacy payable voteheads remain selectable. If unsure, ask the school accountant rather than choosing an account because its name looks close.

When recording or editing a bill, enter each line’s description, quantity, unit price, discount and tax. ShuleOne calculates the line total. On a narrow screen, scroll the line-items table sideways to reach Tax, Total and the remove-line button. Bill, payment and reporting windows open above the Inventory sidebar, so the left edge of the form and its controls remain available while the window is open. Schools with a long bill history can search and open the register without loading full supplier records for every bill. The register requests only the current page from ShuleOne; use Previous and Next to request another page. Searches, supplier/status filters and column sorting are applied before the page is returned. The register opens with the newest recorded bill first, using the bill’s permanent record ID rather than its invoice date. Selecting Bill / invoice sorts by the number itself, so imported values such as BILL-9999. appear in their correct numeric position alongside current bill numbers. Text entered in search and bill forms therefore appears immediately even when the school has thousands of historical bills.

To pay an approved bill directly, choose Record payment. You may enter an amount above the displayed balance when the school has paid the supplier more than that invoice requires. ShuleOne settles the bill, saves the surplus as refundable supplier credit and automatically applies that credit to a future bill from the same supplier. Confirm the overpayment amount carefully before recording it.

For a post-dated cheque, the surplus is saved as pending supplier credit. It is shown in the payment and supplier-credit registers but cannot be used against bills or refunded while the cheque is pending. The maturity date only makes the cheque eligible for clearing; it does not prove that the bank honoured it. From Finance → Suppliers → Payments, clear the cheque using the actual date on the bank statement. ShuleOne then activates the credit and applies it to eligible open bills for that supplier, oldest first. Any amount left remains available for a later bill or refund. If the cheque is bounced, expires or is voided before clearing, ShuleOne cancels its pending credit and reverses its bill allocations.

Payment requests

Once a bill is matched, Inventory → Payment Request passes it to finance.

The request carries the bill, the order and the receipt, so finance can see the goods arrived before paying. It becomes a payment voucher.

Keep the sequence

Requisition → approval → order → receive → bill → pay. Each step is a control. Paying a bill with no order behind it, or receiving goods nobody requested, removes the control and is where procurement problems begin. When an emergency forces a shortcut, record the steps retrospectively the same day.

What’s new - 2 September 2026

The bill register now opens with the most recently recorded bill first. Bill-number sorting uses the numeric part of the number, including historical spreadsheet imports, instead of alphabetic text order. ShuleOne also prevents two bills in the same school from receiving the same internal bill number.

What’s new - 1 September 2026

Inventory dialogs now remain above the sidebar on every Inventory page. The bill register also loads a compact bill summary, reducing the delay for schools with many years of supplier invoices. Search, filters, sorting and pagination now run on the server, which returns only the visible register page and keeps search and bill fields responsive. Session handling now uses the signed-in access token consistently, so opening or saving an inventory bill does not trigger an unnecessary token refresh and return the user to sign-in.

What’s new - 31 August 2026

For staff who work across several schools, open supplier bills and batch-payment allocations are now always limited to the currently selected school. After switching schools, Finance → Suppliers will not carry bills from the previous school into the payment window.