Sometimes you need to work backwards.  Let's say a vendor offers you a special price of $40 for 10 reams of copy paper.  The copy paper normally costs $5 per ream, but you're not sure what the discount should be.  You can have the program automatically calculate the percentage discount and even figure sales tax (if it is applicable).  To do so, select STOCK TOOLS >> CALCULATE DISCOUNT from the Menu Bar.

You can either calculate the overall discount or an individual discount for a product:

Calculate Overall Discount from Total Amount

In the top blank on the Calculate Discount dialog box, enter the total amount charged.  Using the example above, you would enter $40.  Click on "Calculate Overall Discount," and the program will automatically make the appropriate adjustments on the purchase order.  You'll see that $10 will be entered in the "Less Discount" blank, a percentage discount of 20% will be indicated just to the right of the "Overall Discount" blank, and $40 will be entered in the "Total Due" blank.

This is a simple example, but this feature becomes very useful when you have tax or shipping involved and the calculations become more involved.

If tax is not involved, an overall discount can be calculated so that it exactly matches the desired amount. That's possible since the calculation is made by adjusting the figure in the Less Discount blank on the Main Purchase Order Screen. (In rare situations when a tax calculation would create a difference, AnyPO will notify you.)

When an overall discount is calculated, only the Less Discount figure on the Main Purchase Order Screen is adjusted.  No discount will be shown for each of the products listed in the Item Area.  (Whenever a sale is discounted by use of Less Discount--in comparison to a percentage discount--no discount will show for the individual products.)  The reason for this is that if each of the individual product were discounted separated, more often than not, the rounding process involved in the calculations would cause the Total Due to be a penny or more higher or lower than the amount you are trying to achieve.  For more information on how AnyPO! calculates discounts, see Discount and Less Discount.

Calculate the Discount of an Individual Product

You can also work backwards and calculate the discount of an individual product that you've listed in the "Item" area of the purchase order.  To do so select the item from the list on the bottom of the Discount dialog box by moving the color highlight to the correct row.  To prevent the color highlight from jumping around, keep it in "Quan" column.

After you move the highlight to the desired row, type in the amount in the "Enter Discounted Total" blank on the bottom of the screen.  Then click on "Calculate Item Discount."

Note that because of rounding limitations, you may not be able to get exactly the amount that you've entered in the "Discounted Total" blank.  The rounding error increases as the numbers becomes larger.  Higher priced items will result in larger rounding errors.  AnyPO will calculate the closest amount that is possible under the constraints imposed by rounding.  If you must achieve perfect accuracy, list only one item on the purchase order and use the first method described above.  The first method allows you to achieve perfect accuracy.