On-Demand Purchase Orders

The ‘On-Demand’ function is designed to assist in automating the production of purchase orders to supply specific sales orders or jobs.  Industry terms such as ‘procure’ orders or ‘back to back’ orders may be used to generally describe this type of process.  The system could also be appropriate in a true indent-ordering scenario.

The default mode of operation effectively groups sales order lines that have not been previously ordered, and raises a purchase order (per supplier) with one consolidated purchase order line per product line.  These orders can effectively be generated continuously with very little user intervention.

The scope of this module is limited to assisting the creation of purchase orders and is not intended to provide complete back-to-back functionality or other automated supply chain management.  The end user should be aware that any changes forced by customer or supplier changes after purchase orders have been created will not automatically change the status or quantities of those purchase orders.  This process must be handled manually outside this program.

A scan process constructs a drillable pro-forma set of data. Products are tagged to their main supplier (as set on the stock item) but may be manually moved to an alternate supplier (and therefore another purchase order). Quantities cannot be amended directly on this form.  An ‘Order’ button is used to action each supplier order, allowing the selection of which orders will be placed.  Basic purchase order header information is keyed as part of this procedure.

Built-in selection criteria allows a product range to be defined for the scan, and custom selection criteria can be added by way of user-defined purchase groups (including SQL script filtering).

An alternative mode of operation allows stock to be ‘soft allocated’ against the sales orders. Once all stock on hand has been allocated, a second run can be performed to create top-up purchase orders for the remaining sales orders for which stock was not ‘soft allocated’.  This feature could be used if the intention is to use a buffer stock holding, or to automatically ‘use up’ previously returned stock in the warehouse.

On-Demand vs. Forecast Purchase Orders

On-Demand purchases contrasts to other methods available in MYOB Exo Business for generating purchase orders. ‘Manual’ purchase orders simply allow a single purchase order to be raised, and the items manually selected. ‘Forecast based’ purchase orders are used to raise a purchase order against a selected supplier (for products normally purchased from that supplier), to ensure stock levels are always above minimum threshold levels.

End-User Scenarios

The following scenarios illustrate possible uses of the Distribution Advantage module.

Fresh goods supply

"Our customers are restaurateurs. They place orders for fresh seafood, fresh salads up to 12.30 for delivery late afternoon/or early following morning. We want to e-mail a single consolidated purchase order to each supplier, our Seafood and our fresh Salad Supplier at 12.45 and at 4.30pm. We 'poll' (or scan) for outstanding sales orders manually twice per day."

Effectively many sales orders to one purchase order.

Portal, Virtual Warehouse, Ship-Direct (charge-through) orders

"We have a large product range but hold no stock. Our customers order products via a web site. We need to organize supply as quickly as possible. Therefore as each Sales order is entered we wish to have a distinct purchase order created and e-mailed (faxed) for each supplier. We have the order-polling feature set to poll automatically every 3 minutes. Each purchase order contains the delivery address of the sales order customer and the goods are shipped direct. The supplier invoices us (with proof of delivery) and we invoice the customer."

Effectively one sales order to many purchase orders.

Viewing Statuses

To control and indicate the sales orders that have been processed by this module, the system maintains a status code per line within the sales orders. It also updates the corresponding purchase order number of the sales order lines. This information can be exposed on the line periscope of the sales orders form using extra fields. A status code is also updated to the purchase order lines. These status codes may be used for selective reporting if multiple ordering processes are used.