Link Purchase Order to Customer Account

[don_godreau]

We have a process in our organization where certain customers are allowed to order product that we do not carry. When they place their order, these customers have already negotiated price and quantity with the specific vendor in question.

The purchase order may be created for one quantity of stock, but the custom is allowed to leave this stock in our warehouse (once received) and draw down upon that stock quantity for a period not to exceed 180 days after receipt (managed through reporting).

We had originally implemented the "Bought-in process", whereby a Sales Order was created first  and then due to article master settings (item category group = BANC) an associated Purchase Order would be created for the entire amount ordered. HOwever, this process did not allow us to provide the flexibility of drawing down on the received stock, as the original sales order was holding all of the requested inventory and preventing subsequent orders or outbound deliveries to be created for the partial stock requested. In effect, the entire quantity on the Sales Order/Purchase Order was expected to be shipped at the same time.

So, we tried using the Scheduled Lines functiionality (the system required is to create scheduled lines until all of the "sold" inventory was exhausted) but this started to create Outbound deliveries automatically for us, and our agreements state that the customer draws are upon THEIR request.

Just to add complexity to this, more than 1 customer is allowed to procure the same product, so we need a way to link the original procured quantity to the specific customer, in effect reserving the inventory for use by that customer alone.

Any ideas or suggestions are entirely welcome!

Don

[Former Member]

Hi Don,

The last sentence implies that the ideal process would be to use the sales order with link to PO. So looking at the problem this caused: "In effect, the entire quantity on the Sales Order/Purchase Order was expected to be shipped at the same time" - can you check what settings you have in the shipping view of the customer master? Here you control how many partial deliveries are allowed, perhaps this master data will allow you to change the behaviour? In any case when creating the delivery to ship the product (VL01N or VL10A?) can you not reduce the delivery item quantity manually, leaving the remainder open on the sales order for a future delivery?

Just some ideas!

regards

Marcus

[Former Member]

Hi,

I am with marcus. Partial deliveries can be done with configuration.

Regards,

Rama