Using Voltara Intelligence · Lesson 7 · field plant corporate admin

Assets, stores and buying

Read an asset's record and warranty, get a part onto a job without counting it twice, and take a purchase from request to paid invoice knowing who signs each step.

By the end of this lesson you can find an asset's record and warranty position, book the parts a job used exactly once, and say who raises, approves, orders, receives and pays for a part, and where the app will not protect you.

Warm-up, from memory: (1) A stock alarm says “This clears itself once … is back in stock.” What do you raise? (Lesson 3) (2) On the completion form, which corrective-job field must never be left blank? (Lesson 2)

(1) A purchase request for the part, not a work order. (2) Equipment downtime hours (enter 0 if the fault caused no production loss).

Everything below was done on 15 and 16 October 2026 in the training copy at Aden Solar, running the current code, by Tariq (technician), Sara (supervisor), Paul (plant manager), Carla (corporate) and Adam (admin). Messages in quotation marks are the app's own words.The training copy has five assets at Aden and two spare parts we added for this lesson: an inverter cooling fan (TRN-FAN-230, $85) and an inverter display panel (TRN-DISP-01, $240).

1 · The asset record

Where: Asset Vault (technicians: Assets) → Asset Intelligence. Every work order, alarm, permit, spare and warranty hangs off an asset, so search the register by tag, name or serial and open Detail. Its tabs hold the work orders, PM schedule, health, documents, warranty, alarms and spare parts for that one piece of equipment.

Asset Intelligence Center as Tariq: Add Asset button, tabs Registry, Hierarchy, Health, Lifecycle, Warranty, Coverage; tiles total assets 5, operational 5, restricted 0, high or severe risk 2; the register with five Aden assets (two solar module strings, two central inverters, one tracker motor) showing OEM and model, serial, status, health score, and Detail, WOs and Archive buttons. — The register as Tariq sees it. **Add Asset** and **Archive** are shown to technicians, but both are refused (*unauthorized*): only plant, corporate and admin users can add or archive equipment.

The completeness figure under-counts The register reports how complete its data is (37.5% at Aden). It checks four fields the app has since replaced, so it flags Manufacturer, Model and Warranty expiry as gaps on inverters that show “Siemens / SinEtaX-XS” and a warranty end of 15 January 2028 one tab away. Read the record, not the percentage. This has been reported as a fault.

Warranty: check the date yourself

Asset detail for Central Inverter Block A, Warranty tab: warranty start 15 Jan 2023, warranty expiry 15 Jan 2028 with 456 days remaining, duration 5 years; warranty claims table with WCL-2026-001, component failure, dated 01 Jun 2028, status general notification. — INV-001's warranty runs to 15 January 2028. Claim WCL-2026-001, dated 1 June 2028, was accepted anyway, with no warning.

A claim is only worth raising if the failure happened inside the warranty term. The app does not check this for you: Tariq raised a claim with a failure date months after the expiry and it was filed. Compare the failure date with Warranty expiry on this tab before you raise a claim, and attach the job's photos and readings as evidence. Anyone at the plant can raise a claim; only corporate and admin users move it on (acknowledged, in progress, resolved).

2 · Parts for a job

Where: Asset Vault → Inventory & Stores (technicians: Parts Requisitions). Stock is held per plant: a part at Aden cannot be issued to a job at another plant (move it with a stock transfer first).

Step	Who	What the app did
Reserve parts for a planned job, so nobody else takes them	Plant, corporate, admin	Sara: “Reserved 2 units.” Tariq: “Not authorised.”
Issue the part from stores against the job	Everyone at the plant	“Material issued to the work order.” The part is booked to the job at its price.
Issue more than is free		“Cannot issue 1: only 0 free. 2 on hand, 2 committed to other work orders.” Parts reserved for another job are not free.
Reorder when stock falls to the reorder level	The app	A draft request appears (PR-AUTO-…). Nobody is told and nothing submits it: someone must open it.

Book each part once The completion form has a Parts Used from Inventory list that starts empty and does not show parts already issued from stores. Anything you add there is taken off the shelf again. Tariq fitted one display panel on WO-2026-1012: issued once from stores, then listed at completion. Stock fell by two, the job carries two panels ($480), and the consumption report counts two. So: if the part was issued from stores, leave Parts Used empty; if you took it without an issue, list it there instead. Never both. This has been reported as a fault.

Spares Consumption Insights table: TRN-FAN-230 Inverter cooling fan 230 V quantity 4 value 340 on 1 work order and 1 asset; TRN-DISP-01 Inverter front display panel quantity 2 value 480 on 1 work order and 1 asset. — Consumption on the Stores page. Each job actually used half of what is shown: two fans and one panel were each booked twice.

Two more things the app allows that you should not do: a technician can book stock in on the Stores page with no purchase order (“Stock received (GRN).”), and a part can be issued with no job at all, although the reply still says “issued to the work order”. Both make the stock count wrong.When adding a new part, Category must be one of spares, consumables, tools, ppe or oils. Any other word is refused with the misleading “Could not add material (duplicate SKU?)”.

3 · Buying: request to paid invoice

Where: Asset Vault → Procurement Center (technicians: Stock Requests & Receipts). One purchase passes six hands:

Step	Who	What the app did on 16 October
1 Request (requisition)	Site, plant, admin; corporate can too from this form	Tariq: “PR PR-2026-0002 submitted successfully.” Six fans, $510. Refused if the plant has no budget for the year.
2 Approve	Corporate or admin only, never the person who raised it	Tariq and Paul: refused. Carla: “Fully approved (all 1 level(s) complete)”.
3 Order (convert to PO, send)	Plant, corporate, admin	Sara: “converted to PO-2026-0001”, then “PO sent to supplier”.
4 Receive (goods receipt)	Site, plant, admin	Tariq: 8 refused (“exceeds the outstanding 6”); 4 accepted: “PO partially received (4 of 6)”.
5 Invoice (enter the supplier's bill)	Plant, corporate, admin	Sara entered 6 × $85. The app matched it three ways: “Over-billed … needs review: Invoiced qty 6 (cumulative 6) exceeds received 4.”
6 Pay (approve, then mark paid)	Corporate or admin only	Sara: “Only finance (corporate/admin) can approve…”. Carla: “tick override and give a reason”.

How many approvers a request needs depends on its value, with the standard bands: under $5,000 one, from $5,000 two, from $50,000 three, each a different person.

Purchase Orders table: PO-2026-0001, Aden Solar, no material, supplier Any Supplier Ltd, quantity 6, total value $510, expected delivery 25 Oct 2026, status partially received 4 of 6, approved at level 1. — The order after Tariq received four of six fans. Note the empty material column and the supplier, both explained below.

Four gaps to cover by hand

Requests typed on the form are not linked to the stock item. The four fans Tariq received did not reach the shelf: stock stayed at 0 and the “Out of stock” alarm stayed on. After receiving, ask the storekeeper to book the parts in on the Stores page against the PO number.
The supplier is free text. “Any Supplier Ltd”, which is in no supplier list, got a purchase order. Check the name against Supplier Center before converting.
An override needs any reason at all. Carla approved the over-billed invoice with the reason “ok”. Finance: write what was checked, or reject and ask for a credit note.
Automatic requests can be self-approved. When Adam's issue triggered PR-AUTO-966656, Adam approved it himself: “Fully approved”. The “not your own request” rule only works on requests a person typed. Never approve a request your own stock movement raised.

All four have been reported as faults.

4 · Practice

Allowed or refused?

All ten were tried in the training copy on 16 October 2026.

Put a purchase in order

From memory: (1) You issued a filter from stores to your job this morning. What do you put in Parts Used when you complete the job, and why? (2) Six fans were received against a PO but the shelf still shows 0. What happened, and what do you do? (3) Before raising a warranty claim, what do you compare?

(1) Nothing. It was already booked to the job by the issue; listing it again takes it off the shelf a second time. (2) The request was typed on the form, so the PO is not linked to the stock item and the receipt moved no stock. Ask the storekeeper to book them in against the PO number. (3) The failure date against the warranty expiry on the asset's Warranty tab.

Your part, by role

You are	You do
field Technician, storekeeper	Issue parts against the job, once. Raise requests for what the plant needs. Receive deliveries, counting what really arrived. Check warranty dates before a claim.
plant Supervisor, plant manager	Reserve parts for planned jobs. Convert approved requests to orders with a listed supplier and send them. Enter supplier invoices. Clear draft automatic requests.
corporate Finance, approvers	Approve requests (never your own, including ones your actions raised). Set each plant's yearly budget. Approve and pay invoices; override a mismatch only with a written reason.
admin	All of the above at every plant. Keep the approval bands and the part categories right.

Do next (15 minutes), in the app Open one asset you work on and read its Warranty tab: how many days are left? Then open Procurement Center and follow one recent order from its request to its invoice: who signed each step, and does the received quantity match what reached the shelf on the Stores page?

Questions? Ask me in the chat, for example “how do I move a spare to another plant?” or “why is my request refused for budget?”. Then try it: find one part your plant holds and check whether its stock, reservations and last issue make sense together.

Reference: Stores and buying card · Glossary · Previous: Lesson 6 · Next: Lesson 8, Reading the numbers