Set up purchasing and expenses

Purchasing work flow

In Turbine, purchasing and expenses work in a very similar way.

The Turbine Purchases module lets you manage purchase requests – things you want the company to buy for you. If you are a team leader or a line manager, you can also use it to manage requests from other people. Purchase requests go through several stages:

• The initial request from an employee
• Approval by a line manager, team manager or Turbine account owner (depending on your company’s policies)
• Turbine forwards the request to the company’s purchasing manager who orders the item(s) and marks them received
• The employee, manager or purchasing manager can mark the request completed

Expenses work flow

Expenses are where an employee has bought something for work and wants the company to pay them back. Expense claims go through several stages:

• The initial request from an employee
• Approval by a line manager, team manager or Turbine account owner (depending on your company’s policies)
• Repayment by the company’s finance manager (e.g. at the end of the next month with their pay)
• The employee, manager or finance person can mark the request completed

Define roles

1. Log in as the admin user
2. Select Roles on the Settings menu
3. Select who is going to be responsible for purchasing. People in this list  get an email each time an purchase is approved and approved purchase requests will appear in their dashboard.
4. Similarly, choose the people responsible for paying expenses claims.

Set up cost centers

1. Select Purchases and Expenses on the Settings menu
2. Then set up cost centers. Add a new one by clicking New cost center.
3. (Edit existing cost centers with the pencil icon and delete an existing one with the cross icon)
4. You can set a budget for a cost centre by clicking on the pencil, ticking with budget and entering a budget amount. (Note that Turbine doesn’t stop you overspending a budget but it warns you when you make or approve a request that will go over budget.)
5. The currency you choose for a cost center changes the currency for the whole request.
6. Tick ‘Inactive’ to hide the cost center from request forms.

Set up suppliers

1. Add pre-approved suppliers Suppliers so that your staff can select from pre-approved companies.
2. You can also bulk upload suppliers from Upload data page on the Settings menu.
3. It is possible to stop employees being able to add suppliers when they make requests. Check the options on the Purchases and expenses page on the Settings menu,

Set up approval ranges

You can set up different approval ranges here. For example, you can treat purchase orders for less than $500 differently from requests worth more than that. Click new range to create a new approval range. Edit existing ones with the pencil icon and delete existing ranges with the cross icon.