Item Purchase Selection Workspace

Use this workspace to create an item purchase selection based on stocking information from the Item Information Card or on non-delivered sales orders.

Use the fields in the Selection Criteria island to select which items, vendors, sales orders, and customers to include in the purchase selection. When you click "OK," Maconomy runs through the selected criteria and creates item purchase orders and item purchase order lines using the information in the Item Purchase Control island. Maconomy creates one item purchase order for every vendor that is included in the item purchase selection. Using the One Order per Buyer field, you can split the selection up into one order per combination of vendor and buyer specified on the item information cards (or item groups; see the Buyer field) of the included items.

Maconomy automatically specifies the company to which the selected warehouse is assigned as being responsible for the item purchase orders that are created. See "Multiple Companies" in "Introduction to the G/L Module" for more information about the concept of responsible companies and the company specification on warehouses.

When setting the price of the items, Maconomy uses the delivery date on the order line as a reference to the issue of the price list that is valid at the time of delivery.

An item purchase order that you create as part of the item purchase selection can contain a maximum of 100 lines. If more lines are required, Maconomy creates an additional number of item purchase orders with the same vendor.

Purchase Based on Stock

When you create an item purchase selection from inventory balances, Maconomy calculates the quantity, using the reorder level and the maximum inventory specified on the Item Information Card and the regulations in percentages from a possible seasonal model in the Seasonal Models workspace to which the current item is assigned. First Maconomy calculates the expected available inventory at the delivery horizon, that is, the current date plus the delivery time. If you use the Inventory Profile for the current item and inventory, Maconomy calculates the available stock from the current inventory plus the entered receipts, less the entered shipments in the period up to the horizon date. Otherwise, Maconomy calculates the available stock as the current stock plus existing item purchase order volume, less sales order and backorder volumes. By using an Inventory Profile, you avoid purchasing items for sales orders that are to be delivered later than the item's delivery horizon.

If the calculated future stock is less than or equal to the reorder level of the item, Maconomy suggests a purchase that brings the stock level up to the maximum level of the item. For items that you assigned to a seasonal model for the warehouse to which items are bought, Maconomy regulates the reorder level and the maximum inventory with the percentages that you specified on the line in the seasonal model that is valid on the day on which the item is to be delivered at the earliest, that is, today's date plus the item's delivery time. If the reorder level for an item is 8 pieces, and the item stock on hand is 10 pieces, Maconomy does not create an item purchase order line for the item in the current warehouse. However, if the item in the current warehouse is assigned to a seasonal model in which it is specified that the reorder level is to be regulated with 50% in the current period, Maconomy regulates the reorder level to 12 pieces so that the item stock is smaller than the reorder level. This regulation then results in the creation of an item purchase order line for the item.

If you specify the recommended purchase quantity in the Item Information Card workspace as being larger than 0 in the Recommended Purchase Quantity field, one of the following situations occurs when you create an item purchase selection:

• If you need a larger quantity of items than the one specified as the recommended purchase quantity, Maconomy suggests a whole number multiplied by the recommended purchase quantity. Maconomy never suggests a purchase quantity that exceeds the one allowed by the maximum stock level.

  Example:

  • Maximum stock level = 34
  • Available quantity = 10
  • Difference between maximum and avail. = 24
  • Recommended purchase quantity = 5

  Because Maconomy suggests a whole number multiplied by the recommended purchase quantity, you can order 4 times 5, that is, 20 items, and still be within the maximum stock level of the item. If you ordered 5 times 5 items, the maximum level would be exceeded.

• If the difference between the maximum stock and the available quantity is smaller than the recommended purchase quantity, Maconomy still suggests the same purchase quantity, even though the maximum stock level is exceeded. If you want to change that, you must manually specify another recommended quantity in the Item Purchase Orders workspace for each item involved.

If one of the vendors that is affected by the item purchase selection is blocked, or if you do not have access to the vendor, Maconomy does not create any item purchase orders. You can remove the blocking of a vendor by deselecting the Blocked field on the information card of the vendor in question.

Purchase Based on Sales Orders

When you create an item purchase selection from sales orders, you can either enter the purchase quantity manually in the Sales Order to Item Purchase Orders workspace, or Maconomy can add it automatically to the backorder quantity or the as-yet-undelivered quantity. In the Sales Order to Item Purchase Orders workspace you can also specify precisely which order lines are to be selected for purchasing, as well as which vendors you are buying the items from. You can also create item purchase orders directly from this workspace, but then you can only create an item purchase order for one sales order at a time, which means that you cannot create joint item purchase orders for items in different sales orders.

Maconomy converts the suggested purchases from sales units, which are used to calculate inventories, to purchase units. Maconomy does this using the Sales/Purchase Unit conversion factor in the Item Information Card. If this results in a quantity that is lower than the minimum purchase unit of the item in question, Maconomy sets the quantity to zero on the resulting purchase order line.

In practice, an item purchase selection consists of a number of item purchase orders. Maconomy creates one item purchase order for every vendor in the selection. You can edit the item purchase orders in the Item Purchase Orders workspace, where you can add and delete item lines.

If one of the vendors affected by the item purchase selection is blocked, if you do not have access to the vendor, or if you do not have access to every sales order for which item purchase orders are being created, Maconomy does not create any item purchase orders. You can remove the blocking of a vendor by deselecting the Blocked field on the information card of the vendor in question.