What is a purchase requisition (PR)? What “PR raised” means

You usually meet the phrase on a screen, not in a textbook. A storekeeper, an engineer or an admin raises a PR. A manager sees “PR raised” in a queue. Until that queue moves, no supplier has a promise, and accounts has nothing to pay. The rest of this page is what the statuses mean, what a decent PR contains, and how it differs from the purchase order that follows.

What does “PR raised” mean?

It means the requisition has been submitted into the approval queue. The employee has described what they want. The company has not agreed to spend, and no vendor has been told to supply. If you are the requester, your job at this point is to wait, or to answer the question the approver sends back. If you are the approver, the spend is not real until you act.

Teams use a handful of statuses. The words differ by ERP. The situations are stable.

PR full form and the words around it

• PR full form. Purchase requisition. Some companies say purchase request. Same document.
• PR number. The internal reference on that request. Vendors normally never see it. Do not print it on the invoice and expect accounts to treat it as a PO number.
• PR release strategy. An SAP phrase for the approval ladder: which roles must release the PR, in which order, based on value, plant or material group. A non-SAP company has the same ladder. It is just an approval matrix.
• Indent. In many Indian plants an indent is the store or user request that becomes the PR, or it is the PR itself. If your plant treats “indent” and “PR” as two steps, the indent is the need and the PR is the formal request. If everyone uses them interchangeably, do not invent a difference in the procedure. Write down which word is the one that enters approval.

Give the PR its own number series, separate from the PO. PR-2026-0441 and PO-2026-0902 should not be the same counter, or a vendor who is copied on the wrong email will treat the requisition as an order. The PR number stays inside the company. The PO number is the one that goes on the challan and the tax invoice. Mixing them is how a goods receipt gets booked against a document the vendor has never seen.

What a purchase requisition contains

The purchase requisition form is a blank of those fields.

Purchase requisition process: from PR to PO

Five moves, then the procure to pay process takes over.

1. The user writes the need as a PR, not as a message to a vendor.
2. The approval workflow routes it. The requester does not approve their own PR.
3. If the spec is too thin, buying or the approver sends it back. That is a correction, not a delay to feel bad about.
4. Buying sources a price, or calls off a rate contract, and creates the purchase order.
5. The vendor is told. The PR status becomes converted. Receiving and payment happen against the PO, not against the PR.

Purchase requisition vs purchase order

A direct purchase order skips the PR. That is sometimes right for a tiny or emergency buy. It is also how maverick spend starts, if “emergency” becomes the normal path.

Purchase requisition example

Meera in maintenance at a Pune plant needs 40 bearings, SKF 6205-2RS or equivalent, for a line that is due a shutdown on the 18th. She raises PR-2026-0441 on the 2nd: quantity 40, unit NOS, ship-to the Chakan stores, need-by the 16th, cost centre Maintenance, suggested vendor the bearing stockist they used last quarter, estimate ₹280 each. She does not email the stockist.

Her manager approves on the 3rd. Buying checks two other stockists, issues PO-2026-0902 at ₹265 each plus GST, and the PR shows as converted. Stores will receive against the PO number. If the manager had rejected it because the shutdown was postponed, the status would be PR rejected and nothing would be ordered. The filled fields are the ones in the table above. A screenshot of one company's SAP screen would go stale. The fields will not.

Types of purchase requisitions

• Stock. Replenishing something stores already keep. Often raised from a reorder level rather than from a person.
• Non-stock. A one-off the company does not hold: a spare, a tool, a service.
• Service. Manpower, AMC, transport, a contractor. The “quantity” is hours, trips or a lump sum, and the specification is the scope of work.
• Capex. An asset. The approver is usually different, and the PR should point at the capital sanction, not only at a cost centre.
• Emergency. The line is down. The path can be shorter. It should still create a PR or be marked on the PO as after-the-fact, or you will not be able to see how often “emergency” is used.

Approval rules and common mistakes

• The person who needs the item does not approve it. Separation is the point.
• Set the ladder on amount and on type. A ₹2,000 consumable and a ₹20 lakh machine should not wait on the same person.
• Do not approve a PR you cannot specify. Send it back.
• Do not let the suggested vendor become a quiet instruction to skip quotes. It is a suggestion.
• Do not convert a rejected PR by phoning the vendor. That buy is invisible, which is the expensive kind.

A form you can copy

If you do not have a system field for this yet, start from the purchase requisition form and delete any line your plant does not use. A short form people complete beats a long form they avoid.

What to do with a PR that is stuck

A purchase requisition that sits in 'raised' for a week is usually missing one field, not a policy debate. The approver cannot tell whether the ₹280 is per piece or per box. The cost centre is the requester's department rather than the plant that will use the bearings. The need-by date is blank, so nobody knows it is urgent. Send it back with the missing field named. Approving it 'in principle' and fixing the spec on the purchase order means the PO and the PR no longer match, and the audit trail says the approver agreed to something they never saw.

Emergency PRs are the other pile. If every second request is an emergency, the approval path for emergencies has become the normal path, and the normal path is decoration. Cap emergency to a value, require a reason that is not the word 'urgent', and review the list monthly. The ones that repeat are candidates for a stock level or a rate contract, which is a better fix than a faster approver.

Once a PR is converted, stop editing it. Quantity changes belong on the purchase order, as an amendment the vendor has accepted. A PR that keeps changing after the PO exists gives you two versions of the truth and a goods receipt that matches neither.

How Procupy handles this

In Procupy the requisition is the record the approver sees, with the lines, the need-by date and the value. Approval follows the route you set, and the requester is not the approver. Once it is approved, buying can source it or raise the purchase order from the same lines, so the specification is not retyped. The status you watch is the same idea as PR raised, approved and converted, without a separate spreadsheet to keep in step.