The Suggested Purchase Order (P/O) program automates part of the purchasing process and tells you when to buy and how much to buy. It is an electronic to-do list for the purchasing agent. The Suggested P/O queue proposes two purchase quantities. The short buy quantity brings the projected inventory levels (PIL) up to order point for the items that fell below order point. The line buy quantity either meets the vendor target or buy the calculated economic order quantity (EOQ), whichever is greater. See, How the Minimum Order Cycle Works or How Eclipse Uses Package Quantities in Line Buy Calculations for more details about how the system makes this calculation.
The Suggested P/O queue deals primarily with buy lines. Buy lines are groups of products that you purchase together to meet a vendor target. See the Buy Lines Overview for more information about how buy lines work.
The Suggest P/O program runs once a day, usually over night, unless otherwise specified through the Scheduling program. If your company is large and product movement is high, you may choose to run the program more than once per day. The Suggested P/O Queue lets you view, sort, and convert the information as best meets your business needs.
Once displayed, you can change the view of the last column on the Suggested Purchase Order Queue. Use the ChgVw hot key to display either the Total Buy or the Last Line Buy column. The default is Total Buy.
The following signs may display on the Suggested P/O Report when using the View hot key to drill into details:
A plus sign (+) indicates that there is at least one warehouse in the network that has zero (0) on hand.
An asterisk ( * ) indicates there is at least one branch that has negative on hand.
A question mark (?) indicates there is one item on an overdue P/O.
A buy line displays on the queue if any items within that line have fallen below the order point when the Suggested P/O program runs for that line. The purchasing agent can then decide if it is best to do a short buy or a line buy. A short buy would purchase only those items that are below order point. The line buy quantity reflects all items needed to make the vendor target based on the line buy days calculation at the time the report generates. The Suggested P/O Queue helps you prioritize and sort buy lines.
You can display information on the Suggested P/O Queue differently to help distinguish which products to purchase first. You can display the products in groups: Normal, Emergency, Overdue POs, Open POs, and Select queues.
We recommend purchasing agents view the Emergency queue first. These buy lines have products on backorder to customers or negative on-hands quantity. Buylines with zero ($0.00) carrying cost usually require a full line buy. Then review using the Select queue and select 25 hits. This process helps you replenish items that are purchased frequently first.
You can then use the Normal, Overdue, and Open queues to pick up any additional lines that need to be addressed.
Note: Use the SUGGESTED.PO.QUEUE authorization to access to work with the Suggested PO Queue.
Displays all buy lines with at least one item below order point. We recommend running this queue after checking the Emergency and Overdue PO queues.
Displays all buy lines that need to be purchased immediately that are non-stock or stock items that are backordered. The Suggested P/O Queue displays only those items that have a negative projected inventory level (PIL ) combined in all branches. For example, if product A has a PIL of 1 in branch 2, and a PIL of 1 in branch 3, then the sum of the PILs is 0 and the item does not qualify as an Emergency buy in a central warehousing scheme.
After reviewing the Emergency queue, decide if you want to purchase from a your normal supplier if the vendor target is met, or an emergency procurement vendor.
We recommend running and converting the buy lines in this queue first, based on comments and needs for the business.
Displays all buy lines currently on overdue purchase orders. If you have emergency items that need to be purchased that day, and you have an overdue purchase order from your vendor, you may be able to add the emergency products to the overdue purchase order without penalty.
We recommend you run the Overdue PO queue before the Open PO queue.
Displays all buy lines that are currently on open purchase orders. If customers are inquiring if their non-stock or backordered items are in process, you can use this queue to provide them with accurate information.
We recommend you run the Open PO queue before the Select queue.
Displays a prompt to let you enter Rank Number, Rank, and Minimum Hits for the products you want to display. For example, you can find out how many products with only 10 hits are below order point by entering 10 in the Minimum Hits field at the prompt.
The rank number refers to the Ranking Method number is set in Product Ranking. Product Ranking compares, the activity of a product against all other products within the same price line, a group of price lines, or all price lines.
From the Suggested P/O Queue screen, you can convert the suggestions from the queue for any view to a purchase order. After converting a suggested purchase order into an actual purchase order, you can modify it before committing or saving the order and sending the order to the vendor.
See Also:
Converting Suggested Purchase Orders to Actual Purchase Orders