Purchase Orders and RFPs

Purchase Orders is where a commitment to a vendor gets approved, tracked and paid against; RFP Management is the register of procurement requests you have run.

When you’d use this

A purchase order is waiting on you and you need to approve or reject it.
Someone asks how much you have open with a vendor right now.
You need the line items and the total on one PO, with the grant it is charged to.
You want a list of RFPs and where each one stands.

Work the purchase order queue

Go to Muin for Spend > Purchase orders.
Four tiles summarize the position: Total POs (YTD), Open POs, Open PO Value, YTD Spend.
Four tabs split the queue, each with a count: All POs, Pending Approval, Open, Received.
Narrow it with the search box, the vendor select, and the status select: Draft, Pending Approval, Approved, Sent, In Transit, Received, Closed.
The table shows PO Number · Vendor · Description · Created · Amount · Status · Actions.

Approve a purchase order

On a row in Pending Approval, click Approve.
Read the confirmation. It names the commitment in plain terms: approving releases the order to the vendor and they can begin fulfilling against it. There is no un-approve on this screen, so reversing it means cancelling the order with the vendor directly.
Click Approve order.

On a grant-funded order you also see the procurement method, the quotes, the exclusion check and the award, in the Inbox on the web and on Muin Go.

Raise a new purchase order

Click New PO. You need procurement create access; without it the button is disabled.
Pick the Vendor, add a Description and Requested delivery date if you have them. When grant money pays, pick the Award: Muin checks the federal buying rules for the order. See Grant Procurement Compliance.
Add one row per item under Line items: what it is, the quantity and the unit price. Add line adds a row; the running Total updates as you type.
Click Create draft PO. The order is saved as a Draft with its PO number and opens on its detail page.
On the detail page, click Submit for approval. The order moves to Pending Approval and routes to its approvers.

If the server refuses it (for example, the vendor is no longer on file), the reason appears inside the dialog and nothing is saved.

Export the queue

Click Export as CSV. The file holds every purchase order that matches your current tab, search and filters, not just the page you are looking at. If nothing matches, you are told so and no file is downloaded.

Reject one

Click the reject action on the row.
Rejection Reason is required: the confirm button stays disabled until you have written one.
Click Reject. The order goes back to Draft with the reason recorded on it, and can be submitted again. If the server refuses, the reason appears inside the dialog and what you typed is kept.

Move an order through to closed

The PO detail page shows one next step for the order’s status. Each needs procurement manage access.

Status	Next step	Result
Draft (new, or rejected)	Submit for approval	Pending Approval
Approved	Mark as sent, once you have sent it to the vendor	Sent
Sent or In Transit	Mark as received, once the goods or services arrive	Received
Received	Close order	Closed. You confirm first: a closed order cannot be reopened.

Record the vendor’s bill against the order

When the vendor’s bill arrives, go to Finance > Bills and click Record bill. Pick the vendor, then pick the order under Purchase order, and enter the bill’s lines. The bill opens with its three-way match: Matched when the bill agrees with the order and what was received, or Partial match with each amount and quantity gap listed. See Bills.

Read one purchase order

Open a PO from the queue, or go to /vendor/orders/{id}.

The heading is the PO number; the subheading is its description.
Created Date, Required By, Created By and Total Amount sit at the top.
Approval Workflow shows the stages: Created, Manager Review, Finance Approval, Send to Vendor.
Line Items lists Item · Qty · Unit Price · Total, then Subtotal, Tax, Shipping and Total.
Notes takes a note with Add note: use it for anything the next approver needs.
Grant attribution is where you set Charge to grant, which is what ties the spend to an award.
Grant procurement, on an order paid from an award, shows the band, the method, the quotes, the exclusion result and the clauses. Needs the Grant Procurement Compliance add-on.
Download PO (PDF), with the add-on, downloads the order with its Appendix II contract clauses once the order is submitted.
Related Documents and Activity show what is attached and what has happened.
If the order is pending, the banner at the top carries Approve and Reject directly.

RFP Management

Go to Sidebar → Vendors → Procurement → RFP Management.
Four tiles: Total RFPs, Open for Responses, Awarded, Total Value.
Four tabs with counts: All RFPs, Open, Under Evaluation, Awarded.
Each RFP is a card showing where it stands. Statuses are Draft, Open, Evaluation, Awarded and Cancelled.
AI Procurement Insights summarizes the picture across the register.

Create an RFP

Click New RFP.
Give it a Title. Category, Responses close on, Estimated value, the budget range, Description and Requirements are optional.
Click Create draft RFP. It is saved as a Draft with its RFP number and appears in the list.

The close date cannot be in the past, and the budget minimum cannot exceed the maximum.

Publish, evaluate and award

Each RFP card carries View Details plus the one next step for its status. The workflow steps need procurement manage access.

Draft: click Publish, choose the close date, then Publish RFP. The RFP becomes Open and vendors can respond until the close date.
Open: click Evaluate Responses and confirm. This closes the RFP to new responses and moves it to Evaluation. It cannot be reopened.
Evaluation: click Complete Evaluation, select the winning response, add an optional reason, then Award RFP. Only responses that were submitted and not rejected can win. Awarding is final: an awarded RFP cannot be changed or cancelled, and vendors are not notified automatically.

What you cannot do here yet

Being straight about it saves you hunting:

The purchase order queue export is CSV only; there is no Excel export. With Grant Procurement Compliance, one order downloads as a PDF with Download PO (PDF).
There are no RFP templates, and an awarded RFP does not create or link a contract. Record the contract under the vendor separately.

Everything described in the sections above does work: the queue, the filters, new purchase orders, the order lifecycle from draft to closed, CSV export, approval, rejection with a reason, the PO detail, notes, grant attribution, and RFPs from draft to award.

What it affects

Approving a PO commits the amount to the vendor and moves it into Open, which changes Open PO Value.
Charge to grant on a PO is what makes the spend appear against that award.
A PO’s spend feeds vendor concentration, which is 25% of the vendor risk score.
A rejection’s reason is retained on the order for audit.

When it goes wrong

What you see	What it means	How to clear it
“No purchase orders found”	Your tab, search, vendor or status filter excludes everything.	Switch to All POs and clear the search and both selects.
Reject stays disabled	The rejection reason is blank.	Write the reason.
“Failed to load RFPs”	The vendors service did not answer.	Reload the page.
“No RFPs found” / “Create your first RFP to get started with procurement.”	The register is empty for that tab.	Switch to All RFPs.
Award RFP stays disabled, or “nothing to award”	No response is selected, or the RFP has no submitted responses.	Select a response; an RFP with no submitted responses cannot be awarded.
A workflow button is disabled	You have procurement view or create access but not manage.	Ask an administrator for procurement manage access.
A PO you cannot see at all	The screen is gated on vendor procurement permission and the vendors module.	Ask an administrator for procurement access.

Next step

Procurement: approvals routing and the wider procurement flow.
Vendor scorecards and risk: what your spend concentration does to a vendor’s risk score.
Approval rules, who an order routes to and at what amount.