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"Manual Nos." for Entering a Purchase Order

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Posted on by john.ellis

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Hi:

Until I checked the box for "Manual Nos." in the No. Series, Business Central would not let me even begin the process of creating a new purchase order.

Before checking the box and in trying to create a purchase order, an error appeared saying that the purchase header did not exist.

Again, I did not get this error until I checked "Manual Nos."

Why do I have to have "Manual Nos." checked?

John

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Mohana Yadav 60,993 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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Do you have "Default No.s" checked?

you should have one of them checked.

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john.ellis 3,510 on at

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Yes, I already did.

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Mohana Yadav 60,993 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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are you entering No. field manually or what field are you trying to enter?

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john.ellis 3,510 on at

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OK.

After pulling in the vendor and starting to enter a line item, the application told me that data from the header was missing.

My guess is that that's because, with "Manual Nos." checked, there is a field in the header that you use to select the document ID and therefore the next number for the purchase order that you're trying to create.

In all of the tutorials and videos on entering a new purchase order, this document ID/number field is not used.

That's why this is all strange to me. And, again, the only solution is to check "Manual Nos." Why?

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Mohana Yadav 60,993 Super User 2025 Season 2 on at

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the moment you select Vendor, the system should auto fill the next Document No.

Do you have any customizations?

Could you please share a screenshot of document after entering the vendor no.

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Daniel Rimmelzwaan 3,485 on at

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It's just how numbering series work. All master tables and document tables have a number series. The system gets the next number from that series automatically. If you want to be able to assign those numbers manually, you have to set up the number series as one that allows manual numbers. That's what the "Manual Nos." field is for.

Tutorials about POs don't mention the number because setting up number series is not considered to be part of the process of order entry. See if you can find a tutorial about number series. It can be a bit tricky, but it'll make sense once you understand how it works.

By the way, the way it is supposed to work is that as soon as you enter the vendor number on a PO, the system inserts the header record, and that then gets the next number form the number series. By the time you go down to the line, it should already have a full header record. You need to share the exact error message for us to help you with that error.

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