Distribution, Manufacturing, and Internet Modules

[photo7589]

HI

Customer is on 4.40 pu 7 or 8.  They create SO's with drop ship items and often times they use the same item number multiple times on the same SO but add a comment to the line which is to differentiate it from another line.

IE:  Item 123, qty 3, comment - Red

       Item 123, qty 4, comment - Green

When they go to Auto Generate PO's, they click the box to summarize drop ship items by vendor, they do not check the box to summarize multiple item by vendor.  They also set the 'include SO comment' to 'immediately follow the item'. 

The PO Creates with 1 item, it adds the qty's of all items from the SO (same item number) and adds the comment of just the last item. 

IE:  Item 123, qty 7, comment - Green

Expect to see:  Item 123, qty 3, comment - Red

                           Item 123, qty 4, comment - Green

Customer does not want to have 2 PO's created, hence the 'summarize drop ship items by vendor'. 

If we create the SO without drop ship items and Auto Generate the PO with the same setting, we get the 1 PO, 2 items as expected .

Is this WAD or a bug? Or am I missing setting somewhere?

Thanks

Nancy

[skirmoochsage]

Photo, I'll forward your comment / question to a colleague.

[Luke]

Hello Nancy,

It's working as designed, but if a design isn't working for you, please let our management know by submitting an enhancement request. There's a link in my signature for that. This "Auto Generate from Sales Orders" tool is chocked full of special features that people have requested over the years.  It's one of those things that everybody does a little differently, so it needs to be flexible.

I worked on the big 4.50 rewrite of this feature, and your question was raised then.
Both of the "summarize" features work by turning multiple lines into a single line by adding the quantities together. We try to be careful not to combine lines that differ in ways that might affect the cost or other accounting aspects, but we don't pay attention to differences in line comments when we're making that decision. Without a clear understanding of what people are using the comment for, I'm unsure whether it would be desirable to not combine the lines, combine the lines and repeat the comment in each of them, combine the lines but try to string the comments together, or some other solution.  We decided to combine lines with different comments and not preserve those comments when we summarize. In the 4.50 implementation, we've tried to make this clear by disabling the "Include Sales Order Item Line Comments" option if either "summarize" option is selected. We also documented the incompatibility in the online help.

I can offer an alternative that's not as nice as what you're wanting, but it might solve your problem today. This works in 4.50 and I think it works in the old 4.40 implementation also. Add additional comment lines to specify your quantities and colors. Use "Summarize Drop Ship Lines by Vendor" to minimize the number of purchase orders generated. Set "Include SO Comment Lines" to "Folowing the Item Only" to make the comment lines that follow an item flow from the sales order to the purchase order.
So your sales order would look like
Item 123, qty 3
/C "3 red"
Item 123, qty 4
/C "4 green"
This would result in one purchase order that looks like
Item 123, qty 7
/C "3 red"
/C "4 green"

[photo7589]

Thanks Luke

It doesn't appear to work in 4.40 like 4.50 does.  The other thing that is weird about this process (in 4.40) is that if the items are not designated as drop ship in the SO, the PO separates them as desired (1 PO, 2 items, separate comments).  What would be the reasoning for the difference between drop shp and non drop ship? 

Thanks

Nancy

[Luke]

In the Sales Order module, "drop ship" is a line property.  A customer can order several different things from you, and if some of them need to be shipped directly from your vendor to your customer, you mark them as "drop ships".

In the Purchase Order module, "drop ship" is a header property.  The vendor will want a separate purchase order for each address they have to send things to.

When "drop ships" are not involved, we're going to ask the vendors to send everything to you.  We don't have to worry about creating separate purchase orders to be shipped to other addresses.  The only time the autogenerator has to think about starting a new purchase order is whenever it sees a new vendor (or in 4.50 when the sales order number changes and  the "Combine Sales Orders by Vendor" option isn't selected).

In your example, there's no real "combining" going on.  You happen to have two sales order lines that happen to have the same item on them that happen to need to be ordered from the same vendor.  That's why what you want to see is working for "non-drop ships". 

When the autogenerator sees a sales order line marked for "drop ship", it knows that it's going to have to create a special "drop ship" purchase order with the customer's address on it.  By default, for simplicity's sake, that's exactly what it does; immediately.  If you instead choose to "Summarize Drop Ship Lines by Vendor" the autogenerator will wait and try to combine as many of these dropship lines as it can before generating purchase orders to minimize the number of purchase orders created.

It sounds like you'd have been happier with some middle ground - put the lines that need to be "drop shipped" from the same vendor all on the same purchase order, but don't try to combine the lines together because  you want to preserve the line comments.  Not everyone will want to do it this way, but it sounds like a good enhancement request for a new option if you'd like to submit it.

[MStefanou]

@Luke, I have moved away from telling customers to add a /C comment between items.  It really causes issues when some items ship, and some items do not ship.  Then you have "orphaned" comments that do not necessarily wind up where you expected them  when the Backorder Sales Order is recreated. 

[photo7589]

Thanks Luke, the explanation actually makes sense!  Yes I would like that middle ground, can you arrange that in the next day???? 

I don't like the /C workaround either for the same reason as MStefanou but I do appreciated the suggestion.

On the same subject but different issue, the Ship Date/Promise Date doesn't flow thru to the Auto Generated PO.  I tested in 4.40 and 4.50. 

In 4.50 there is actually a field for 'PO Required Date' but that doesn't seem to come over either. 

Bug or WAD (for both versions)?

I did find this customer has a piece of custom that would also make for an interesting enhancement - the custom brought the lines from the SO over to the PO in the order it was showing in the SO.  Currently it resorts numerically/alphabetically. 

Nancy

[Luke]

I really would love to implement this for you today, but I don't get to make the schedules for all the people who would have to design, document, test, and package it up for you.  The only thing I can really do is ask you to submit an enhancement request that describes what you want, and more importantly why you want it, and product management can put it on the master schedule.  I can bring this thread to their attention too.

When we added all those new features to Auto Generate in 4.50, there were some things we thought about doing, but decided not to do in 4.50 because there just wasn't enough time or not enough perceived demand.  Preserving the line order between sales orders and purchase orders was one of those things.  We thought about it, discussed it, estimated how difficult it would be to implement, and then couldn't come up with a strong enough reason to justify spending the time to do it in the time we had.  We could always add that feature later though.  Would you mind submitting an enhancement request that explains the business process that would be improved by having the lines in the same order?

I think I can help with the Ship Date/Promise Date thing.   In 4.50 in Purchase Order Options on the "Generate" tab, we put a bunch of settings for Auto Generate that we thought you might want to "set and forget".   You want the "Base PO Lines Required Date On" setting.  By default, the PO line's "required date" is based on the PO header date.  You can change that to "SO Promise Date", which will make the sales order line's "promise date" flow into the purchase order line's "required date" when you generate the line.

The "PO Number" and "PO Req Date" on the sales order lines are there to let the sales department know about the purchase order.  They get populated during auto generation.  Unless you've given someone special permission to access those fields, they're locked.  (Security Event is "Allow Editing of Purchase Order Fields in Sales Order".)  You'd normally only edit those manually if something unusual happened in the P/O module after the purchase orders were created and you wanted to manually fix the link.

Thank you for the feedback on this. 

[photo7589]

Thanks for all your help on this, it is very much appreciated.

Nancy