How to create a Regular Purchase Order¶

As for the parameters that should be configured in Blindata, please check the PO Parameters section first.

There are two types of purchase order processing that can be done in Blindata.
The first is for stock items ordered from a distributor or supplier and the second is for bought in blinds ordered from a blind manufacturer.
The first type is referred to as a regular purchase order and the second as a bought in the purchase order.

So these are settings that related to the 'Regular Purchase Order', please check the following.

Stock Items > Regular PO Options

It is first necessary to set up certain parameters in the Stock record.

The following parameters are found in the 'Regular PO Options' tab.

Purchase Order Generation – If this field is set to true, purchase orders will be generated for stock items.

Stock Held In House – If this field is set to true, a purchase order will be generated if there is not enough stock in hand to fulfil the order.

The quantity that is saved relates to the 'Minimum Order Quantity' and 'PO Add On Amount' held against the stock item.
For example, if 25m of fabric is required but the minimum quantity is 100m, then 100m will be stored in the quantity field.
Or if 10m of fabric is required and the “PO Add On Amount” is 20, then 30m of fabric will be ordered.

If the ‘Unit Of Sale Minimum Quantity’ is entered as a unit description amount ie be able to hold ‘100m Roll’ for example.
After the ‘Unit Of sale’ or this field are amended, the ‘Minimum Order Quantity’ will be updated

Please note that the supplier should be specified in the 'Stock Item > General' tab.

Generating Purchase Orders from the Orders Screen

To create a purchase order from the orders screen, select an order where you entered relevant blind details or component details with specific stock items and click the 'Create PO' button.
This brings up the following window:

Please note that purchase orders will be created for all stock items that suit the purchase order configuration.

Then check the 'Purchase Order Enquiry' tab:

At the bottom of this screen, there are the following buttons:

1. Generate Regular PO – this allows the user to create a regular purchase order.
2. Amend – this allows the user to amend or deliver purchase orders.
3. Update – this is where purchase orders can be turned into invoices.
4. Delete – orders can be deleted here.

Please note that we can generate purchase orders for stock items in two different ways, either by generating purchase orders from sales orders as described above or by entering a new purchase order:

When you click on the 'Generate' button, the program will group all sales order stock transactions for that supplier for that date range and display them on the screen.
The quantity ordered field can be adjusted to change the amount to a round figure or any specific amount.
If you do not wish to order a particular stock item, the line for this item can be removed by clicking on the ‘Delete’ button.
If you want to add further stock items to the purchase order, click the ‘Add’ button.
Once this has been done, the order can be saved, printed and e-mailed (to do this you must have SMTP settings entered in Administration > Parameters > Set Connection).

Purchase Order Enquiry > Generate PO

We have made an alteration to the ‘Generate PO’ function to include generating PO records for stock items that do not have sales orders for them.
There is a new parameter in Administration > Parameters called ‘Include General Stock in Generate PO’.
If this parameter is set to true, and if ‘Stock Held In House’ = true and ‘Stock In Hand’ < ‘Re-order Level’ in the stock record, then a PO detail line will be generated for this product with ‘Ordered’ = ‘Minimum Order Quantity’ or a multiple of this to bring ‘Stock In Hand’ up above the ‘Re-order Level’.
This is not dependent on stock transactions having been created from sales orders.

For regular purchase orders, if ‘Stock Held In House’ = true, a stock amount is now generated if (stock in hand + on purchase order – on sales order) < re-order level, and then the purchase order amount is brought up to the suggested order level by multiples of ‘minimum order quantity’. For example, if

Suggested Order Level = 500
Reorder Level = 300
Stock In Hand = 400
On Sales Order = 160
On Purchase Order = 100
Minimum Stock Quantity = 100

Then (400 + 100 – 160) is not < 300 so no PO amount would be generated for that item.

Example 2

Suggested Order Level = 500
Reorder Level = 300
Stock In Hand = 400
On Sales Order = 260
On Purchase Order = 100
Minimum Stock Quantity = 100

Then (400 + 100 – 260) < 300, so 240 is less than 300, so we would have to generate an amount of 300 to bring it up to the Suggested Order Level.

When ‘Stock in Hand’ minus ‘On Sales Order’ falls below ‘Re-order Level’ a stock order is generated to bring the stock in hand amount back above the ‘Suggested Order Level’ in multiples of the ‘Minimum Order Level’. Previously this was only being generated so it was over the ‘Suggested Order Level’.

There is a new PO parameter in the system called ‘Ignore Sales Orders In Generate PO’, which defaults to false.
If it is set to true, then the PO generation function only compares 'stock in hand' with (Re-order Level - On Purchase Order) amount.

There is a new parameter called ‘Display Stock Warning If Below Re-order Level’ which defaults to false.
This will not affect the existing stock warning logic if the amount calculated is below the stock in hand.
If the flag is set to true and the amount calculated takes you below the re-order level but above stock in hand, then the message will not appear.

Stock Shortfall Report

It is now possible to generate records for a ‘Stock Shortfall Report’.
There is a new button on the ‘Stock Enquiry’ form called ‘Shortfall’ which generate a form showing what stock is required.
This l ignores the ‘Stock Held In House’ and ‘Purchase Order Generation’ flags and looks at all stock records (that are not inactive).
There is then be an option to print the records that are in the form, along with the fields.

The records will print out in supplier then stock code order. There is also a choice of which columns to print. This will also look at filtered records.

It will show all stock records with Not In Use = false and where Stock In Hand value < Re-Order value.

Stock Items > Shortfall

The ‘On Purchase Order’ column now appears on this form and is also included in the ‘Shortfall’ calculation.
Therefore the shortfall is calculated as Stock In Hand + On Purchase Order – On Sales Order – Reorder Level.

It is now possible to parameterise the data that appears in the Shortfall form.
This can be done in Administration > Parameters > PO Parameters.

Purchase Order Enquiry / Shortfall

At the moment there is a ‘Generate’ button in the regular PO for creating PO detail lines.
We have a user that uses the ‘Shortfall’ button on the Stock Enquiry form and would like to apply the same rule when ‘generating’ PO detail lines.
Currently on the Shortfall Report in ‘Stock Enquiry’ there are two ways of displaying information:
1. If ‘Override Shortfall Rules’ if ticked in Parameters then Shortfall Conditions and Shortfall Formula are used.
2. Otherwise records where ‘(Stock In Hand + On Purchase Order) < Reorder Level’ are displayed.

For regular PO generation we use two ways as well:

1. If ‘Ignore Sales Orders In Generate PO’ is ticked in Parameters then we add stock items where ‘(Stock In Hand + On Purchase Order) < Reorder Level’ – this is the same as condition 2 above.
2. Otherwise we add stock items where ‘(Stock In Hand + On Purchase Order – On Sales Order – Allocated Stock) < Reorder Level’.
We have made the following changes:
1. Changed the Shortfall routine to take ‘Ignore Sales Orders In Generate PO’ into account as well.
2. Changed PO Generate routine to take ‘Override Shortfall Rules’ and Shortfall Conditions and Shortfall Formula into account.

There is now a column in this form for ‘Last Stock Checked’ and also for ‘Update Checked’.
There is also a button at the bottom of the form for ‘Stock Item’ which will allow the user to edit the stock record.

Before running the regular PO routine, it is useful to look at the ‘Fabric Requirement Report’ (in Stock Control > Reports) or the ‘Stock Transactions Total Report.
This will give a good idea of the stock that is required.

The ‘Fabric Requirement Report’ only lists fabrics whilst the ‘Stock Transaction Report’ lists all stock items that may be required.

The first field to be selected is a supplier, followed by the start and end sales order date.
The dates selected here relate to the stock transactions created for the sales order dates chosen.
If you want to create a purchase order for all sales orders that were created the previous day, then you would enter yesterday’s date.

There is now an import routine for detail lines for a regular PO.
There is a button on the ‘Generate Regular Purchase Order’ form called ‘Import’.
This imports records from a spreadsheet that has fields for stock code, unit of sale, quantity.

Order Processing > Orders > Component Detail Entry

When a component detail line is entered for a miscellaneous item, it is then possible to create a PO using the ‘Create PO’ button on the ‘Order Amend Enquiry’ form, if ‘Regular PO from Order Amend Enquiry’ is switched on in PO Parameters.
The problem with this is that if a sales order contains blind type detail lines as well, other POs could be created.
Therefore a separate parameter called ‘Misc Regular PO Only from Order Amend Enquiry’ has been created.
The ‘Purchase Order Regular – Bespoke 64’ report has been amended so it shows the ‘Comment’ field from the sales order in the detail line if it is a miscellaneous component detail line.
Also if this new parameter is switched on (Misc Regular PO Only from Order Amend Enquiry) when the regular PO is created, it does not group the records by stock code – it creates one PO detail line for each relevant order detail line.

Delivering Regular Purchase Orders

This can be done in several ways.

The first is to deliver a purchase order with the 'Deliver' and 'Deliver All Selected' buttons.
The second is to deliver a purchase order with the 'PO Deliver Import' button with the same file format as the 'Regular Import' routine (see above).
The third is to deliver a purchase order with the 'Deliver Scan' and 'Deliver Filter Records' buttons:

As well as pointing at the relevant detail line, it is now possible to scan the barcode for the item and this will then bring up the above form.
There is a new button for this called called ‘Regular Deliver Scan’.

There is a new user permission for this button.

Use Regular PO Cancelled Status

There is a new flag in Administration > Parameters > PO Parameters called ‘Use Regular PO Cancelled Status’.
If this is switched on, then detail lines within regular POs can be cancelled and set with a status of ‘Cancelled’.

There is a new menu option called Purchase Order Stock Delivery.
This appears below ‘Purchase Order Enquiry’ in the Purchases menu.
The purpose of this new form is to allow a user to select a supplier, which will then display all the outstanding regular PO detail lines for that supplier.
The user will then be able to select detail lines from multiple regular purchase orders.
This is required because quite often suppliers will send out more than one PO delivery at a time and they will both need to be delivered at the same time.

Once the supplier is selected, records are displayed with the following columns:

PO Number, PO Date, Expected Delivery Date, Revised Delivery Date, stock code, supplier part number, stock description, and all the other column choices that are available in Purchase Order Enquiry > Amend.
There are also column choices, related sales order numbers, save configuration and default configuration choices in the context menu. There is also a ‘Copy to Clipboard’ option on the context menu.

When the detail lines are first displayed for the supplier, they can be filtered to only show outstanding records ie not delivered.
But it is also possible to unfilter the records so all detail lines can be shown – although we have restricted this to between dates – same as ‘Purchase Order Enquiry’.

In addition, if you want to send an EDI XML File with the purchase order details to the supplier, then please check the EDI section for more details.

Print Stock Label at Purchase Order
It is now possible to print out stock labels once a regular PO has been entered. To do this, the following must be set up.

The relevant stock records should have flag ‘Print stock Label’ = true.
The ‘Calculate Stock Label Count’ should be set to true in Parameters > PO Parameters.
A report name must be filled for ‘Stock Label’ in Parameters > Other Reports.

If you need to invoice a purchase order then please use the Purchase Invoicing section.