Purchase Order Processing¶

Please check the PO Parameters section first.

And check the purchase order functionality divided by type of the purchase

How to create a Regular Purchase Order

How to create a Bought In Purchase Order

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.

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.

Blind Details > Blind Type Amend

Then whether or not a blind is added to bought in purchase orders are determined by the selection of 'Stock Control' and 'Bought In' in the blind record.

In case when the blind type is 'Bought In' there should be another record added in the 'Blind Types > Bought In Blinds' table:

It is possible for a customer to buy the same type of blind from more than one supplier.
For this please add a new supplier record to the 'Blind Details > Bought In Blinds' tab and then select a supplier in the blind detail.

In addition, we have created a new parameter in the blind type record called ‘Use Fabric Supplier’ .
If this is set to true, then the supplier from the fabric record is used as the bought in supplier.
This supplier should already be set up in the Blind Type > Bought In Blinds form.

Bought In Purchase Orders
A scenario could exist where a customer could purchase different blind types from which are bought in blinds from different suppliers.
For example:
Blind type KR is bought from supplier ENA002 and supplier ENA002 has to send the order back to check prior to sending it to the customer.
Blind type AR is bought from supplier GRA002 and the order is to be drop shipped.
Previously the only place to determine if the supplier is to send directly is a parameter in the customer record called "Direct Delivery by Supplier"
This has been altered to also decide where to deliver based on the supplier record.
There is a new flag called ‘Direct delivery to customer delivery address’.
If this is set to true it goes to the customer delivery address.

Generating Purchase Orders from the Orders Screen

To create a purchase order from the orders screen, select an order and click the “Create PO” button.
This brings up the following window:

Select the blinds you wish to include in the purchase order and click “OK”.
The purchase order can be amended in the Purchase Order Enquiry screen (see below)

Generating Purchase Orders from the Purchase Order Enquiry Screen

We can generate purchase orders for stock items in two different ways, either by generating purchase orders from sales orders or by entering fresh purchase orders.

First of all, go to Purchases > Purchase Order Enquiry

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. Generate Bought In PO – this allows the user to create a purchase order based on sales order stock transactions that have been entered.
3. Generate Partly Bought In PO – purchase orders can be generated for blinds that are being made by other blind manufacturers.
4. Amend – this allows the user to amend or deliver purchase orders.
5. Update – this is where purchase orders can be turned into invoices.
6. Delete – orders can be deleted here.

Generate Regular Purchase Order

This can be used to generate a purchase order from existing sales orders or to manually add a purchase order.
When a sales order is created, providing the blind type record has ‘Stock Control’ switched on, ‘on sales order’ stock transactions are created when the detail lines in the sales order are saved.
These ‘on sales order’ stock transactions make up the bill of materials for the sales order.
It is these stock items that are grouped by stock item when ‘Generate’ is clicked in the purchase order.

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.

Purchase Order Enquiry > Regular PO

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 which has fields for stock code, unit of sale, quantity.

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).

Generate Bought In Purchase Order

This option works as above, but generates purchase orders for blinds that are bought in from a supplier, rather than components and fabrics.

Viewing Sales Orders

If you right-click anywhere on the ‘Purchase Order Enquiry’ form, the following context menu will appear:

This allows you to view the sales orders that relate to the purchase orders, view PO delivery dates, alter the field columns that appear on the ‘Purchase Order Enquiry’ form and refresh the screen.
Selecting “View Sales Orders” brings up the following menu, giving an overview of the sales orders relating to the purchase order.

Related sales orders can also be viewed for an individual fabric or component in the purchase order entry form by right-clicking and selecting “View Related Sales Orders”.

Delivering Bought In Purchase Orders

To do this you must first select the correct record in ‘Purchase Order Enquiry’, then click on the ‘Amend’ button.
You can then select individual lines for delivery by selecting the appropriate stock item, then clicking on ‘Deliver’. Alternatively, multiple lines can be delivered at once by clicking on “Deliver All Selected”.

The following prompt will be displayed when bought in blinds are received.

The following two will appear when stock items are delivered, allowing you to choose a Goods Received Note Number.

This can be done for all the stock items that have been delivered in that purchase order. Once this has been done, the purchase order can be saved.
The effect of entering these deliveries will be to update both the purchase orders and also the ‘stock in hand’ and ‘on purchase order’ figures for the relevant stock items.

Delivering Regular Purchase Orders

Order Processing > Orders > Bought In Price Search

There is now a facility to make it easier for a company to decide if they want to manufacture a blind themselves or buy it from another supplier, and then to decide which supplier to buy from.

At the moment there is a flag in the blind type record to decide if the blind is to be manufactured (stock control = true) or if it is to be bought in (bought in = true).
There is also a partly bought in the flag.
The problem is that the decision to manufacture or to buy in may only be made at the time the sales order is entered.

The following changes have been made:

There is a new parameter, held against the blind type, called ‘Manufacture / Buy In Choice’.
If this is set to true, then the user has the choice of flagging the sales order detail line as ‘Manufacture’ or ‘Buy in’ on the detail line form.
If, in the blind type record, ‘Stock Control’ = true, this defaults to ‘Manufacture’, otherwise it defaults to ‘Buy In’. If ‘Manufacture / Buy In Choice’ = false, the program functionality remains as it is.
Also, new functionality has been written so we can look for the best price for a bought in blind.
At the moment it is possible to set up multiple suppliers for a blind type in Blind Details > Blind Types > Bought In Blinds.
We can hold different cost price tables against these blind types.

There is now another new parameter, held against the blind type, to determine whether the ‘Best Price’ search is applied or not.
If ‘Best Price’ = true when a sales order detail line is entered for a bought in blind, we are now able to search prices for each supplier, according to width, drop and fabric group.
These prices are then displayed and the user has the opportunity to choose the supplier they want to buy the blind from.
If ‘Manufacture / Buy In Choice’ = false and ‘Best price’ = true, then the option for ‘to manufacture’ will not appear.
If Administration > Users > Advanced Permissions > display Costs = false, then the cost prices will not be shown.

Order Processing > Orders > Supplier Comparison

There is a new parameter called ‘Show Supplier Comparison’, which defaults to false.
Previously if ‘Manufacture/Buy In Choice’ was switched on, it showed ‘Supplier’ in the left hand bottom of the form (which is fine) and also in the middle part.
The middle part (in the red rectangle) no longer appears unless ‘Show Supplier Comparison’ = true.

Bought In / Manufactured Blinds

We have a customer that runs four companies and is going to have all four in Blindata, set up as different departments.

Company A is a retail company ie they sell blinds but do not manufacture any blinds themselves.
Company B will manufacture some of the blinds for them and others will be manufactured by outside vendors.
All four companies will use the same blind types. When company A enters an order for a roller blind, they want to create a bought in PO for this roller blind.
The vendor will be company B.
The plan is that they create an EDI bought in PO, which is sent to the FTP server.
It will then be imported as a sales order for Company B (the customer being Company A).
This means there will be two sales orders on the system. The blinds will be made by Company B and then delivered to Company A.

The problem is that they are both sharing the same blind type. For Company A it is a bought-in blind, but for Company B it needs to be a ‘Stock control’ blind.
At the moment the blind type can only be set as one or the other.

If you enable the 'Manufacture / Buy in Choice' parameter in the blind type record, you can also use this blind type as 'Bought In'.
When adding a detail line for this blind, it is possible to select a supplier/vendor from the drop-down list and create a Bought In PO from this.

This functionality has been modified in the following way:

A 'Supplier' drop-down list has been added to the Department Edit screen.
When a detail line is entered for a blind and Manufacture / Buy in Choice = true then the department record is checked and the supplier selected automatically if a supplier is selected in Department.

Regular PO from Order Amend Enquiry

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.